Ya my tank is kind of new but the sponge filter is very establishedI saw the plastic bag of leaves you brought WagglePets , in a previous post.
You want numbers of leaves so I have to give them?
All I can say is add 6 leaves every week or two. You will see the leaves slowly disintegrate but they disintegrate at different amounts of time over the course of a year. As we only pick up oak leaf from the ground once a year the leaves are quite different when 11 months old . They are already falling apart. So I can’t tell you if you brought leaf from this winter or last winter. I don’t know when they were picked up , in early autumn or late in the season. From a young tree or an old tree. From the new growth branches or from branches that had leaves all summer. It’s impossible to give you an accurate answer.
If you are like me you won’t put new leaf in on exactly the same day after water changes. If you are like the wind and the rain leaves will fall in different amounts throughout the season.
You want numbers.
Add 6 big leaves each week.
Should you choose to leave them in the tank until they are skeletons that’s fine, I like that look.
I believe cherry shrimp eat whatever is on the leaves from day one? You watch them and tell me I am wrong. Ok it must take a few days for biofilm to grow, a week maybe.? You will see the shrimp take an interest in a new leaf straight away.
A very well cycled filter IS all that is important in a cherry shrimp tank in my opinion .
Sorry if you want to believe the people that tell you you must have an established tank before you can have cherry shrimp then don’t listen to me. I am telling you you must have a very established sponge filter and that is all to begin with. In time the glass should be as filthy as this. While a bare bottom tank is not ideal for cherry shrimp it definitely works. Note the couple of dozen BN pleco fry that dictate the need for bare bottom . And yes by the time this population had exploded the glass is covered in biofilm/ algae.
That’s true
