I have a line on some Crystal Red shrimp which my wife completely adores. I already have plenty of Cherry shrimp in my current tank. These would be going into a 10 or 20 gallon tank, and I don't have any extra equipment so this is all from scratch. Hoping to get everything purchased quickly so I'm looking for some equipment and other advice...

First of all, I see two different size for 10 gallons, 20.25x10.5 and 24.25x8.5.. which is the standard? It might not matter if I find something used when I go shopping anyways.

The biggest thing I need to figure out is how to get my pH at or under 7 consistently. My tap is 8.4 so this is probably not going to work. Can I buy water from a LFS that is lower than this? Or use bottled/distilled water mixed with my tap? Is bottled water consistent? Do I need an RO unit, would this even help?

Filter - I want something completely silent. Hopefully not even the hum of a cannister. It doesn't have to move too much water.

Any ideas?

You can use distilled water to add to your tap to bring the ph down. You'll also have to make sure your substrate is inert or it will leach minerals back into the water and elevate your ph and reverse your efforts (talk about frustrating!). Another method that's been used successfullly in the past is to use peat moss in your filter. It will acidify the water gradually but won't do anything to lower your TDS (total dissolved solids). Peat Moss does decompose so you'll have to check it from time to time and probably replace it every month or so. Another drawback to peat is the tendency for staining the water. If you can handle a light brownish tint to your water, peat moss may be the most cost effective solution.
To get back to TDS, the total dissolved solids, depending on the composition of your solids, TDS can greatly increase the ph level. Take limestone for example which is a alkaline sedimentary rock and often found in municipal tap waters, water with high levels of dissolved limestone have very high ph readings. A more expensive solution that directly deals with TDS is to buy a Reverse Osmosis system which is becoming quite affordable on eBay. For a few small tanks, you could probably get by with a 50 gallon per day unit, although I do recommend a larger unit of 100 GPD (they tend to last longer and are cheaper overall to operate and maintain--despite being a bit expensive at the outset).

Regardless of which methods you choose, you'll need to perform water changes so you may want to think ahead on how you want to handle that. Those will help stabilize your system and prevent the natural acidification that occurs in aquaria over time.

Just my two pennies, I invite debate or counter-opinions. You just have to try and be nice and yes, Clunkster, this means you
best regards
mike

I was reading the above and i was thinking very good answer Then i read the last bit What did i do
Right the only other way to bring your pH down apart the above is to use one of the many comercialy available chemicals that change the pH, but i must admit i am not a fan of using chemicals to change the water chemistry. If you go down this route be very carefull with changing the pH slowly otherwise you could end up with it crashing.
Regarding your question about tank sizes, sorry i cant help you there as i am not sure what standard sizes are in the U.S. not sure if they are the same as the U.K. Personaly i think you would be better of with the longer tank or the wider tank, for surface area/footprint

Yikes.. those RO units are close to $200. Or am I looking at the wrong ones? So much for doing this cheap!

And if I use RO water would I need to add chemicals back, I see something called RO Right?

Yes you will need to add some trace elements back to the water.

I think you're looking in the wrong places. Here's a good one for just over a hundred

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regards
mike
p.s. eBay is where I got mine too. You have a lot of options. As a matter of fact, here's a pre-done search for you

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Wow, thanks! Now can you convince my wife to let me have a trash can in the laundry room?

Any recommendations on the water conditioner? RO Right, Equilibrium, ?

Just be careful with the trash can. They develop overflow demons which when full grown will create vile opportunities for the water to leave the can and make its way to the floor! LOL

For my softwater tanks, I don't use any conditioners during my waterchanges. I pump it straight from my demon infested trash cans to the tanks. I don't think you need to add any conditioners. My tanks have an abundance of driftwood and are pretty stable at around 6.8 PH. With the R/O unit, you'll have very soft water and neutral too, right at 7.0 as there's nothing in the water composition to create acidity or alkilinity. For your shrimps, it should be just fine. This is my opinion vice experience, since it's about shrimp which I've never personally raised. I do know a little something about water composition and it's from that vantage I'm answering.

If there is anyone reading this with shrimp experience (annericebowl comes to mind), please tally-ho and make sure my advice on the water is sound.
best regards
mike

LOL I have no experience with CRS, but I do know that they are a relatively delicate shrimp--especially if you want to breed them (which is why they are so darn expensive).

I find all of my shrimp info at

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The admin's name is Mustafa. He's been the main driving force behind the shrimp keeping hobby, a shrimp breeder, and very strict on his forum. Be SURE that you do a very thorough search on his forum before you post anything--along with reading the forum rules when signing up. But, there is loads of information there.

That's really all I can help on that, though. I keep red cherry shrimp, Singapore shrimp, and the typical ghost shrimp. The only one of the three that I have had easy success in keeping and breeding is with the RCS (they breed like rabbits for me). I don't use any sort of special water for them. I just use tap water (I think the pH out of the tap is abut 8.2) that I age in (ALOT) of one gallon milk jugs with Prime (I age the water for about a week). I have recently moved them to my planted 30 gallon long (which is where all of my shrimp are), and they do just fine in there. I have to admit that I have no clue as to when I checked the pH last, but all species are doing just fine in there. Oh, and I have an AquaClear 50 modified with a sponge over the intake and a DIY water deflector. The only noises that I hear from the filter are the CO2 bubbles.

And a 20" long tank is the standard 10 gallon size.

Lots of advice there that I certainly can't improve on, but I'll put one idea out there...

If you find you DO have to alter the ph lower chemically, I highly recommend Seachem Discus Buffer. MUCH less rebound & zero clouding.

Post pics when you're set up - would love to see them.

Hey, I just founf this over on petshrimp. This is a post from Mustafa:

If you really mean "distilled," as in pure H2O, then I would not recommend it. Although the wild cousins of our CRS live in very low conductivity water, there is always something in the water still. Just RO water should be fine, but not DI (deionized) water. I would get a conductivity meter and measure your water. Usually, RO units still leave enough ions in the water so that conductivity is somewhere around 10-50 microsiemens/cm, which is ok. My tap water has a conductivity of about 80, so it's almost like RO water. If your conductivity is too low, you can still mix some of your tap water in with your RO water. Just mix in a little bit at a time and measure conductivity until you get the right number. Also, do a search on "conductivity" to see some of the threads where similar issues have been discussed in connection with bee/bumblebee/CRS/serra group shrimp.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I have been reading petshrimp.com and shrimpnow.com for a few weeks to figure out what I'm going to do.

This is the RO unit I'm going to go with, recommended by a friend, and the breeder I'm buying from is using RO+DI.

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Now I need to figure out whether I'm doing a 10 or 20 gallon and find a stand that will work for me. After that is a huge order to Big Al's for all my equipment and I'm good to go!

I've got a vacant 20 gallon high woodenstand, excellent condition. for Trade or sale, until two nights ago, it held my 20 with my abn pair. I moved the tank to a rack.
mike

Got any pics? 20 high is 24x12?