Shrimp and Fish for beginners - It's easy!
Fish-keeping in general can sometimes be a little daunting to new keepers. If you haven't done your research (and sometimes even if you have!) it can be very difficult to work out what is going wrong when something does.
Shrimp can be the same; but with a bit of basic knowledge, keeping shrimp can be super easy and satisfying! This post is meant as a complete beginner guide for shrimp, but can be applied to fish just as well.
Essential Knowledge
The No.1 most important thing you should know for any fish keeping is the nitrogen cycle.
The is especially important for shrimp, since they are more sensitive to ammonia than fish are.
Follow these rules
Once you understand the Nitrogen cycle, the following guidelines become intuitive:
Get a good filter.
This is a requirement for a hassle-free aquarium. Your filter must be 6-10x your tank size in volume per hour. So a 50L tank should have at least a 300L/h filter.
Don't put too many fish in (or have a large enough tank)
A general rule of thumb is 0.5cm of adult fish for each litre of water. This means 5 neon tetras for a 20 litre tank. Even though they are 1cm when you buy them, they will grow to 2cm. Same for gold fish: they will grow very big, it isn't a particularly good beginner fish, but if you do want them, make sure to plan for its growth. Shrimp and snails are fairly, light-weight. You could count about 5 shrimp as 1cm, a 20L tank with a decent filter and plants will be fine with 5 small fish and 10 shrimp and/or snails.
Don't feed too much
Keep an eye on how fast your fish and shrimp eat the food you put in the tank. You should never have food sitting in your tank for more than an hour, so if your fish or shrimp do not eat it by then, you are feeding too much. Small regular feeds are better as well and look up guides for the particular fish you are keeping and how much to feed them.
Add some plants
Add some moss or plants. Ideally you should have a light for them, and for convenience sake do get a timer for the lights so you don't have to constantly switch them off or on.
Water change
You should regularly change 30-20% of the water once per week. More on smaller tanks. If you keep this up regularly you will likely have very little issues, if you don't, expect things like Algae etc. Remember, the water you add into the tank should be treated tap water, or tap water that has sat outside for 1 week (this is enough time for the chlorine and chloramine in tap water to evaporate).
Relax!
Keeping tanks is awesome and relaxing. Once you get the basics it's not that hard and usually fairly hassle-free compared to other pets. Feel free to ask me any questions you have and enjoy!