New to aquariums, is my setup ok for a mantis shrimp?

[Gigaboom]

I'm soon purchasing my first mantis shrimp (a N. Wennerae), and I just wanted to know if there are any glaring problems that need fixing with my current setup. The tank is a 10 gallon, and I started running it a week ago. I performed my first water test today, and the results are as follows:
ph - 8.1
Kh - 14.5
ammonia - 0 ppm
nitrites - 0 ppm
nitrates - 7.5 ppm
specific gravity - 1.026
I used an aquaclear 20 as my filter
attached is an image of the aquarium

 

[Shibaken3]

I suggest not starting off with your dream fish/shrimp, most likely it will die bc of ur inexperience. Start off with a damsel.

 

[Stomatopods17]

ditch the decor and go standard live rock.

N-wennerae doesn't get big (max about 2 inches), but they are one of the most common hitchhikers because they mine out their own cavities in rock work, it'll make its own tunnel and the decor isn't thick enough and probably not mine-able for it.

Decor and mantis shrimp do not do well together. They either destroy it or it hinders their own burrow requirements, just find a rock with some starter holes for it and it'll do the work for you, if its in an unpleasing location in the rock, just turn the rock once its established.

N. Wennerae typically sticks in its home once it establishes and closes the door to its cavity at night, after its established you can maybe pretty it up a bit with macro algea or coral without risking it destroying them.

 

[Gigaboom]

I put in some live rock, and I did the tank's first water change.
here are my new test results:
8.3 ph
15.5 dkh
0.2 ammonia
0 nitrite
5 nitrate
1.027 salinity

should I be worried about the high salinity or ammonia?

 

[Oldreefer44]

Read up on tank cycling. A week is normally too soon to add anything.

 

[Stomatopods17]

I put in some live rock, and I did the tank's first water change.
here are my new test results:
8.3 ph
15.5 dkh
0.2 ammonia
0 nitrite
5 nitrate
1.027 salinity

should I be worried about the high salinity or ammonia?

Salinity on the high side, take out half a gallon and add fresh water, retest.

The lower end the better; 1.023 is a good sweet spot, 1.020 is pushing it, 1.019 I'm personally uncomfortable with but ik most fish stores go with it.

constant 24/7 1.025-1.026 is the dream, but keep in mind how evaporation works; you lose water but you don't lose salt so that 1.026 might swing up to 1.028, 29, etc if you don't auto top off the water daily. This isn't that advanced of a system to have an auto top off, so 1.023 is a good sweet spot since it won't rise to critical levels if you forget to fill water.

I don't cycle my tanks tbh. Never had issues, tank cycling just means letting nitrifying bacteria grow so it handles ammonia produced by live stock better, but in a 10 gallon like that you ain't going to see a little n. wennerae nuke the system unless you over feed it. You wanna watch for algae blooms though, that early ammonia from sand stir up and rock will quickly turn into nutrients for hair algae.

 

[Gigaboom]

I did a water change then a test 2 days ago, and I noticed that my nitrates were high (20 ppm) and my ammonia was still at 0.2 ppm. I'm doing another water change now, to try to lower nitrates. Do you think that the tank is ready for some inhabitants? also, I tested my saltwater mix and it had 0.8 ppm ammonia. Is this normal? attached is all my water test results so far

 

[Stomatopods17]

There should be no reason freshly mixed saltwater would have ammonia in it, assuming you're testing it mixed in a separate container. Ammonia is a gas associated with decaying matter (think sweat, urine, etc.), clean salt wouldn't have anything related to decay and unless you're mixing it in the same bucket as a cleaning solution then there might be something wrong with your test kit/reading it incorrectly.

What brand of salt are you using? Brand of test kit? Date on the kit if its chemical based?

 

[I never finish anythi]

Are you using tap water ? Or rodi ? Also dkh is high ????

 

[Gigaboom]

There should be no reason freshly mixed saltwater would have ammonia in it, assuming you're testing it mixed in a separate container. Ammonia is a gas associated with decaying matter (think sweat, urine, etc.), clean salt wouldn't have anything related to decay and unless you're mixing it in the same bucket as a cleaning solution then there might be something wrong with your test kit/reading it incorrectly.

What brand of salt are you using? Brand of test kit? Date on the kit if its chemical based?

instant ocean salt, red sea test kit, and I can't find the date on my test kit.

 

[Gigaboom]

Are you using tap water ? Or rodi ? Also dkh is high ????

tap water

 

[I never finish anythi]

Tap water can be used , but you need to lower that dkh it's very high .

 

[Stomatopods17]

Tap water depends where you live, but even in the cleaniest locations it needs treated with some water conditioner.

In PA I don't even drink my tap water, let alone give it to my dog or use it in aquariums.

I don't use red sea so unsure where the date would be located. Salt mix is fine, you can probably take a water sample to an LFS and see if the parameters match with your results just to be sure it isn't an accuracy issue.

 

[Kasrift]

You might want to do a little more research, seems like you are rushing this. Read up on cycling a tank, maintaining parameters, and water maintenance. You should be using RODI water for mixing, should have zero ammonia before adding inhabitants, and will need to understand basic requirements for shrimp to molt and be healthy.

 

[Gigaboom]

I think I figured out the problem. I'm using seachem prime as water conditioner, and on the seachem prime webpage it says that it can give false positives for ammonia when using certain test kits.

 

[Gigaboom]

You might want to do a little more research, seems like you are rushing this. Read up on cycling a tank, maintaining parameters, and water maintenance. You should be using RODI water for mixing, should have zero ammonia before adding inhabitants, and will need to understand basic requirements for shrimp to molt and be healthy.

Are there any specific RODI filters you recommend?

 

[Stomatopods17]

As long as its a 4 stage RO/DI it should work. I honestly don't know for certain what the higher stages add.

I personally like the more portable ones you just screw into a faucet and turn on, but they are slow to fill water. You can fill up a bin, aquarium, or garbage can for reserve water if it takes too long to get a gallon.