In this video I build a super simple shallow aquarium (only 10 inches tall) specifically for breeding my Blue Dream / blue cherry Neocaridina, and I show you how it evolves into a proper little ecosystem in just 120 days. Because I can’t afford to keep buying tanks (multi-tank syndrome is real), I build most of mine myself. I add a basic UGF box in the corner using two pieces of glass, fill it with crushed lava rock for surface area, then sprinkle 3–4g of bacterial powder to kick-start that dusty green wall algae. That green wall is gold for baby shrimp because it’s basically food. By day 8 the tank is already covered in green dust algae, and it proved to me you don’t need active soil to get those green walls going—you just need the bacterial powder at the start. I cycle the tank using a tiny amount of household ammonia (or you can use fish food), wait until ammonia is gone, and at week 4 I move around 150 Blue Dream shrimp into the new breeding setup. After 3 months the colony doubles, plants explode even without active soil, ferts, or CO2, and the tank is packed with microfauna like seed shrimp, copepods, and detritus worms. I also go over my maintenance: RO water remineralised with Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ to around 230–250 TDS, 30–40% water changes every two weeks, and siphoning waste because it’s a bare-bottom tank. For me, shrimp keeping is about building a big colony and enjoying daily feeding time—and this setup makes that easy.