Opae Ula!

Hello! I’m Alex, a college student who was gifted an Ecosphere a few weeks ago by my mom. I love little creatures, and I appreciate the thought of the gift, but as soon as I saw the orb I knew I had to get them out of there. So I set up a 1-gallon tank, broke open the orb, and let the 5 opae ula shrimp into their new home on November 25th! I was completely not expecting to have this responsibility, but thankfully opae ula are easy to take care of and I do have experience with freshwater and saltwater aquariums, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.

However, I received them over Thanksgiving break, so I had to be extremely fast in the moving process so I would be able to take them back to school with me in their tank. After discussing it with my local fish store, I decided to skip cycling and move them into the tank just after acclimation. Of course, this was only successful because opae ula are so hardy, and was far from ideal.