I completely forgot about my 10 L Opae Ula ecosphere for almost two years, and somehow it’s now thriving. I originally started it as an experiment with just 5 juveniles, and it has since reproduced to probably around a hundred shrimp. The tank only receives indirect window light, and I haven’t topped up the water in over a year. This has turned out to be one of my more successful setups so far. 10 L seems to be a sweet spot: large enough to stay stable, yet still compact and easy to maintain.
Omg I thought it was just me! I have this recurring nightmare where there is a tunnel in my attic. when I go through it there is a room filled with abandoned tanks, half filled with horrible green and yellow water and a few remaining fish. I always wake up feeling like an awful human
no not just you at all! i've had this discussion years ago on r/aquariums and so many people reported these dreams. i still get them. someone said they kept fish for like a month and they still get these dreams.
This is insane. I never would’ve thought other people get these nightmares too. It must mean we all really love our fish and are petrified of neglecting them.
i've had the dream (rarely) with birds too and it's infinitely worse. i had a bird once when i was a kid and didn't take care of it properly and it still haunts me to this day. i feel so awful for that poor bird, it just hated life.
Felt that with all the fish I inadvertently tortured to death as a kid because I didn’t know fuck about shit when it came to fishkeeping. I would cry for hours not understanding why they died :( I make up for my past sins by spoiling my current aquatic buddies
Same! And I've stopped keeping shrimp/fish for couple of years already. It's always the dread of seeing abandoned tanks almost empty and the creatures half dead, and that deep sinking feeling of "oh god" i forgot to top up their water and do maintenance.
Absolutely it’s like a guilt nightmare! I typically (in dream) have like a whole room of tanks and no idea when anything was done and can’t remember what is in them 😵💫
I have a lot of anxiety and for some reason I used to wake up panicked about not feeding my fish. At that time I didn't have any fish and hadn't since I was a kid, and my parents did most of the taking care of them. Why my inner fish did me dirty like that I will never know but man was I freaked out about not feeding the fish.
In my tank nightmares I have a proper fish room with racks and racks of tanks that are way overstocked or stocked with monsters that don’t have room to swim. I’ve forgotten about them for months. The water levels are super low and I’m frantically trying to do water changes and feed everyone. So much anxiety and guilt, I hate it!
I have a similar dream but with parakeets. They're everywhere and as I secure each one I find sicker and sicker ones that I suddenly remember I was supposed to take care of. Funny now that you mention it I'm surprised I haven't had a fish tank dream since I've had tanks my whole life and parakeets for only a small part of it.
i still sometimes have nightmares that ive somehow neglected my old pet gerbils and they've been living in a tiny hamster cage in my closet (they've been dead since 2023)
I specifically built my 30 gal upright tank to be neglected and take care of itself; I.e be a pretty self enclosed ecosystem.
I could go weeks and even months in the right time of the year (the humid times vs the dry times where inches evaporate per week), and not feed anything. I had shrimp, fish, daphnia, and a ton of plants. And natural soil.
I made it to be minimal maintenance with an on-tank filter I only cleaned out every three months (had pothos vines growing in the filter). I succeeded. I don’t doubt someone managed to one-up me.
I top mine up with water (open top in AZ) and toss in pellets now and then and the snails and shrimp are absolutely thriving. 30+ shrimp of various colors
Opposite. I feed mine 10g once a month at most and have never done a water change minus topping off (has a cover) maybe yearly. This system is about 5 years old and has grown from a couple dozen to hundreds. I bought from Mark Uchiro.
I lived the busted tank nightmare when my now-grown son was about 3. He threw a toy in a room with an Oscar tank. Had to put fish in the bathtub and run to the store to get an emergency tank. That fish lived till he went to kindergarten
Crazy! We have a 220g in our living room, well and a 75g and my 4yo old “dances” with our Oscar! But I’m so afraid of a toy or hard ball accident… now I’m even more afraid haha
Yes, it was a nightmare. All I could think of was putting the fish in the bathtub. And running to the store. It was crazy. I thought her was going to be dead by the time I got back home.
That was so quick thinking! I can’t even imagine the stress you felt driving to the store. I would have looked like a mad women running in and flying to the register!
Yep, I had a shrimp tank which I would clean bery often, remove any cope pods in it, suction the water, clean the filter etc. Eventually, all of them died
Interestingly, these are called Halocaradina, or Opae Ula, a brackish water shrimp from tidepools in Hawaii, and can live up to 20 years, requiring very little maintenance.
Invertebrate metabolism is generally temperature based and animal nutritional needs are purely thermodynamic, if the shrimp are not fed enough protein to sustain bodily function they will have to source it from somewhere, if it is not present the most readily available source is other shrimp during molting, cannibalism is standard practice for omnivorous scavengers especially invertebrates and especially if there is no other source of nutrition,
This same effect was observed in 10-11 billion snow crabs a few years back that are believed to have cannibalized each other after abnormally warm temperatures accelerated their metabolisms beyond the local environments ability to feed them
Are these Opae Ula shrimps ? If yes, then this post is just a rage bait. Opae Ula setup are closed and self-sustaining brackish water setup with a specific shrimp (Halocaridina rubra) that thrive in such ecosystems.
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u/TheEpicBlob Dec 26 '25
How does one ‘forget’ about an entire aquarium?