shrimp bowls!

My amano shrimps are now living in unheated, filtered bowls. Well, a one gallon bowl, and a large vase. Each with a tiny sponge filter. I like the bowl better, but wasn't sure if all 7 shrimps would be okay in that small of space, so I put four in the bowl, and three in the vase. Tested water parameters this morning, neither container has ammonia or nitrite, and if I don't feed much at all- leaving them to mostly eat algae and biofilm- perhaps the bio-load will be small enough to have them all in the bowl. I will evaluate. Anyhow, for now, the vase

has hornwort bits up top, a handful of gravel, several stones, a chunk of sponge (for extra bacteria transfer to avoid cycle), some subwassertang and two anubias.

The bowl has two very large stones (pinkish one is sitting on extra sponge piece),

elodea pieces,

bits of rotala stem,

subwassertang

and spirodela polyrhiza. I like the way the duckweed looks, but already I think the hornwort in the vase is better as a floater- duckweed carpets the top so thickly I wonder if it reduces gas exchange? and it's funny to watch a shrimp crawling on a bit of hornwort suddenly pull it down with his small weight.

The shrimps hid most of the day after being moved-

but now they are crawling around and it's fun to watch them.

Today I added an oak leaf

I thought the shrimps would crawl all over it- and they did approach after a while-

but really they prefer picking over the sponge filter and plants right now

I'm not expecting to have to feed them much- maybe once a week put in a tiny crumble of fish food, or a dandelion leaf or something- and I wonder if I could just top off this bowl, or if it will need biweekly water changes? I haven't kept a setup like this in a while, so will have to do water testing now and then to keep tabs on it for a while.