tolstoy21

Oh this is just a temporary situation. They have a much larger tank with driftwood, lava rock, botanicals, etc. I just had to clean it out and now have to set it back up. Hopefully they will be back in their home by tomorrow evening. I know there is no realistic way to keep this quantity of shrimp in a 10 gallon for any stretch of time. I think what happened, if I were to speculate, is that the matten filter I used had too small of a PPI and, after a year and a half of use, it hit critical mass and started tanking the water quality. Once I saw more than a few deaths, I knew something was up.

@JettsPapa Honesty, they aren't as fragile as people make them out to be, at least not the CRS I have (maybe I'm lucky? Maybe crystals are more hardy?). Hate to admit this, but I moved them with zero acclimation from a Ph of 3.2 and a TDS well into the 200s, to a Ph of 6.6 and a TDS of 140, and didn't lose a single shrimp. (A few brave and pioneering souls tested the transition for a few days before I moved their brethren). I've also these shrimp wind up in other tanks (my guess is riding in on a plant or net) that are like 80 degrees with TDS well into the 300s, and they have been in there ever since. They don't breed in there, but the few hitchhikers have lived in those waters for over a year now. On the other hand, they did start dying off once the Ph totally bottomed out into the low 3s. I should have noticed something was up when they stopped breeding. (Notice there are no babies in my picture!).

I kid of course! I had a massive Ph crash in my shrimp tank and had to relocate everyone to deal with it. All I had spare was a 10 gallon. Hopefully they will be re-homed by tomorrow.

I would say so, so long as you have the correct foods and the correct water params. Also, you'll need to move the eggs/fry to their own tank or to a breeder box. Other than that, I don't feel they are that hard. Well, maybe it's too early for me to say that seeing as I haven't raised the current batch of fry to adulthood. But it seems like to me, if there are males and females present, and the water is to their liking, they are going to mate.

I finally emptied my 10 gallon of green water today to see if I had any fry in there still. I knew some had hatched, but after a water change, the water went green and I lost sight of them. I continued to feed the tank paramecium, vinegar eels and then BBS kind of hoping the fry were hanging out in there happy and healthy. After finally getting some time to see what was going on in this tank, I found a handful of fry and transferred them to a breeder box and acclimated them slowly to their parent's tank. A little bit of history on me and these fish . . . . These were an impulse buy. I saw pictures of them online and instantly thought I GOTTA HAVE THOSE!!! Then ordered a dozen without regards to (or even reading) the care instructions. I thought, rasboras, I've had rasboras before. However, I don't think these fish are rasboras. Sometimes you see them listed as 'Asian Rummy Nose Barbs", other times, 'Rummy Nose Rasbora", but from the reading I have done, it's still debated if they are either. To my surprise, these fish like HARD water with a neutral-ish Ph. I vowed never to keep fish that I had to mix water for, but here I was accidentally with some fish that require water params I don't have out of the tap. To make things worse, they supposedly like it cold. I've read they will spawn at temps in the 60s, but I have found they will spawn every single morning, laying a small number of eggs at 78F. I don't know if this is an ideal temp for their long-term health, so I am going to move them to a cooler part of my basement in the near future. These fish like to deposit eggs in floating plants, near the surface. So spawning mops work. But I found that it was easiest to have a few very large Anubias Barteri in their tank, plants whose broad leaves made a canopy near the surface. At around noon during the day, I would take out the plants, check for eggs, and, finding a few eggs attached here and there, I would move it toa ten gallon I had set aside for raising these fish. I did this for three days, with three different anubias plants, then stopped. So far my experience has been that these fish aren't prolific egg layers, but they are daily egg layers, so what they lack in number them make up for in frequency. Now my water has very little hardness and no Kh to speak of, so out came the Seachem Equlibrium. I have tried to hatch fish these at various water hardnesses, but just as the sparse information I found online suggested, the eggs will not hatch in a dGh under 20. My guess is that the amount of equilibrium added to a new tank is what contributed to the sudden green water. But, before I could no longer see into the tank, I did spot a few minuscule fry here and there, so I knew something successfully hatched! Then the tank went green a few weeks and I had to go on faith that there were in there, and kept feeding accordingly. (I do the same with the super blue tetras -- that is, I feed the tank on faith alone for a couple weeks, knowing that fry must be in there, but too well hidden for me to see). I only have a handful of fry right now, as my goal was to learn to how to successfully breed these. So I knew when I saw fry that I'd be lucky if a dozen hatched and survived. Anyway, very long story short . . . . these fish are very cool, and not hard to breed if you do a few things . . . get the water hardness up above 20dGh, and start out feeding infusoria and paramecium for the first week, slowly graduating to something like vinegar eels, then BBS. Yes, this was a looooong post, but figured I'd pass along what I've learned thus far. I don't have pictures of my adult fish, but I will attach a few pics stolen from the interwebs that represent what the males look like (the females are silver/gray). Adult size of this fish is similar to that of a neon tetra. If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Sorry no real advice on spray bars as I have never used one.

Ohhhh . . . . I just went through my phone and found some pics from last year that show some of the progress/process. As you can seen, I'm kind of building around some existing racks, shown on the right. The exterior cement basement walls got 2" thick pink foam insulation sheets and a lot of gaps-n-cracks expanding foam to hold back drafts and seal/insulate the sill plate. The foam is glued to the walls and then secured in place with cement anchors (Tapcon screws). The interior walls will get normal insulation bats. I'm not the world's best drywall taper, but I can get the job done decently. I sanded everything with a wet sponge to keep dust from getting into the air and into the tanks. The wall footers are pressure treated lumber, cause, well, you know, leaks and spills and stuff. I also raised the drywall up off the floor by a few inches, cause, well . . . . leaks and spills and stuff. The eventual moulding to go in along the floor is made of PVC not wood, cause, well . . . . you know why! This is how I framed in that asbestos laden pipe. The asbestos is contained by being wrapped in duct tape (done by someone long before I bought the house), but I felt better also containing it inside drywall, so I don't bump it, get moisture all over it, etc.

Sure. I had these professionally done. They cost a FORTUNE! Nah, no blue prints. I'm not much of a planner. I just kind of have an idea and roll with it. Plus its super simple. Just some walls and racks and insulation. I can elaborate on any aspect of it if needed.

Sorry that I'm only posting some documentarian photos at the final leg of this build, but . . . . life gets busy and things get skipped. Over the course of the past three years I've been transforming the dusty corner of my basement into a small fish room (it's approximately 10x12). I'm now in the final leg of this, finishing out the final wall. Over the course of those years I've framed, plumbed, insulated and electrified this little room (and bred some fish in it!). Probably about 90% of this room has been funded by the fish I've bred in it. So aside from needing to budget free time to work on it (I have a young kid, a day job, a dog, an old house that I'm also renovating), I also need to breed fish to cover the construction costs and the ongoing overhead of the already running half. A goal of mine was to make this project self-sustaining, and aside from some initial money out-of-pocket to get this off the ground, I feel I've mostly succeeded at that goal. When they say 'breeding for profit" really means "breeding to break even in your hobby" they ain't kidding! It will be nice to finally have all the major construction out of the way so I can focus more on the fish part than the building part. But honestly, I'm not 100% sure which part I enjoy more. 😉 Anyway, enough yacking! I thought I'd finally, and belatedly, share some pictures. View from the outside above. My basement ceiling is a tad low, so instead of modifying a door and jamb to fit the low ceiling, I opted for one of those warehouse vinyl slat doors that they use on walk in freezers. Works great and I like that I can see into the room from the outside and not have to leave the door open to move stuff in and out. Yes, that tank full of accidental green water above does have duct tape holding the cracked glass together! Somewhere in there is a small number of Asian Rummynose Barbs (Sawbwa Resplendens). I hope at least. I need to spend some time fishing them out and transferring them to a breeder box. This room is a little hot for them at this point so they all need to be relocated to a cooler part of the basement (along with my shrimp). This is the final wall to get insulated and sheet rocked. It will be the mirror-image of the finished wall. I also have to finishing boxing in that asbestos-and-duck-tape-wrapped pipe. Old houses are fun aren't they? Anyway, thanks for looking and reading thus far if you didn't TLDR this.

God that would be awesome to see. Instead, with my bad luck, I usually find the childless female snacking on the new mother's kids!

I see this from time to time. The females can become defensive of their own territories against other females. The aggression is never as extreme as when they are guarding fry, but I've seen them chase other rival females off, away from their cave. I agree with sticking with 2 females for now. I typically breed cacatuoides in pairs, and not in harems, but this is more a condition of the tank sizes I use. In a larger tank, multiple females are fine, but you don't want to overdo it. Also, I have found that sometimes you will have very large spawns, 100+. If this happens with multiple females at the same time, you suddenly have to scramble for tank space, scurry to save them from being gobbled up, and hurry to keep the females from killing each other, their shared husband and everyone else in the tank. Then you have to figure out to do with all those fish! However, if you just want to keep adults fish cause they are an attractive addition to any tank, and you are Ok letting the rainbows, etc. gobble up the fry, then problem solved! You can try out 2 males, but I would only do that if they are introduced at the same time. Once one male has established that the tank is his, it's harder to add a second male. I know I've related this story here before, but I had a single male that claimed an entire, well-planted 125G community tank and killed any other male I put in. He would literally lurk around looking for them and then would beat the heck out of them. Mostly they would cower, pale and stressed out, in the corner of the tank, behind an amazon sword. This is probably not typical, but it can happen.

You would need to isolate that shrimp from the rest if the colony. Pick 5 or so of the healthiest, best looking females and add those to the new tank with the male. The females wont have the same coloration as the male, so pick ones that exemplify some other characteristics you like and might want to carry forward-- size, shape, opacity of color, vibrance of color, leg coloration, etc. Let these breed. (Make sure none of these females are currently berried). Once you have offspring that are old enough to inspect, see if any of those carry the characteristics of the male you're most interested in. If so, hold onto the females of those and back-breed them to the original male. If none visually carry the males characteristic's, then just back-breed the 5 or so healthiest looking offspring. These should carry the males genetics and possibly those will express themselves in the next generation. Move all the other shrimp out of that tank except the ones you want to breed to the original male. Rinse and repeat until you finally begin to realize and stabilize the characteristics you are looking for. I've never done this with neocaradina, and have only started down this path myself with some of my higher quality crystal reds, but I think that's the basic method. Now, I could be 100% wrong about everything I just typed, but I believe this is the method. If I'm wrong . . . . someone please correct me! 🙂 I'm guessing this could take a long time, and/or never succeed. But nothing worth doing was ever easy, right? Good luck and hopefully I'm not leading you astray!

I can't state it any better than @anewbie already has.

I would start out feeding them either infusoria or paramecium for the first week or so. Peat works well for lowering Ph, but you have to start with water that has negligible mineral hardness or Kh, like rain or RO water. I've never bred neons, but the tetras I have bred have similar requirements. I feed paramecium exclusively during the first week, then switch to vinegar eels and paramecium for the next couple weeks. I keep up the paramecium because some fish are still smaller than others and hiding in the moss, plants, etc. I don't switch to BBS or anything larger until I can see the fry starting to emerge from the moss in larger numbers. Then I do a couple small sample pipettes of BBS and see if they are taking it or not before I start switching them over. The switch is gradual and I keep up the vinegar eels, and slowly ween off the paramecium. Then I slowly ween off the vinegar eels until it's just BBS. Then I do the same with crushed flake, etc. Ween off one food while graduating to the next. I'd say the whole process takes about a month or so. Be prepared to fail a couple times before you have it all dialed in.

Java moss is in the same category as endlers -- the help, how do I stop them category? I think what I mean by apistos not being square one, is that I would't classify any fish species is being square one (sure some are easier than others to get to spawn). What I meant was that 'spawning' is square one. That is, getting fish to reproduce. All of this is just a silly way of explaining where I think I am in terms of this hobby and what I'd like to learn/focus on next.

No, I don't feel that Apisto's are square one. My feeling is that purposefully and successfully getting fish to reproduce is square one. The harder challenge, to me at least, is going to be working with successive generations, fixing desired traits, eliminating undesirable ones, keeping the lines genetically sound, keeping notes and tracking lineage, etc.

What about Oscars? Has anyone experimented with them as dithers? 🤪

Well that's just semantics. You could argue that neither or both are chemicals. Let's just term them all 'additives' and say that what one uses is a personal preference. They all achieve the same goal in a safe way for fish.

True! If you like the params of your well water (you mentioned transitioning to it) . . . The simplest thing to do would be to perform a 10-25% water change every day or two until you've swapped the water out. Is there any reason to wait a month for that? If you have to wait, just leave the params exactly where they are right now for the next month, and focus on keeping nitrate, nitrite and ammonia down. One month in your current water params (gh/kh/ph) wont kill your fish (but ammonia and nitrite will).

Ok, one more post, sorry for so many in a row, but just seeing another aspect of your original question. Do you have a parameter reading on your well water?

For most of those fish, except maybe the guppies (about which I know very little so can't answer), I think a Ph of 6.4 is fine. If you want to add some Kh to avoid sudden Ph crashes, crushed aragonite or coral in a media bag in your filter or mixed in the substrate works well. I'd just introduce that slowly to get a feeling for how much Kh it adds. Both of these are much easier to use than the Seachem products and last a lot, lot, lot longer. You wont have to add more with each water change like you will the Seachem buffers. You just need 'some' Kh present to help stabilize the Ph and keep it from swinging. This is more important than a specific target number for many fish species. Tetras prefer low Ph. I had salt-and-pepper corys in a ph of 6.4 - 6.8 for years and they were fine and spawned quite frequently. I also had Kuhli loaches in that for a few years as well. Snails don't love acidic water, so maybe add some calcium to their diets if you see shell erosion. Betta should be fine, I think? Alas, never kept guppies.

Ok to add to this something more concrete . . . I would put water into a 5 gallon bucket and then dose it with alkaline buffer (keeping track of how much you put in) until you reach your desired Ph. Then for 10g, multiply that amount by 2. Now that you know the dosage of alkaline buffer needed to achieve your goals, use the chart to understand the ratio of alkaline to acid buffer to be used when dosing your tank directly. At least this is the method I use when using these products.

I agree with what other posters said here. Equilibrium is used to boost Gh only. It has no impact on Kh. It's good for remineralizing RO water, or boosting very soft tap water. The Alkaline/Acid buffer combination is used to target a specific Ph. I use these from time to time and they take some tinkering, experimenting and time to get used to and to dial in your ratios. What was explained to me by the folks at Seachem (I had to ask on their support forum cause I was flummoxed by its use as well) . . . . . the only reason you add acid buffer to alkaline buffer is to stabilize it and prevent it sudden swings in your tank. The combination of these two is meant to gradually change the Ph of existing tank water. The will neutralize one another to a degree over the course of the day after introduction to the tank and supposedly stabilize at the desired Ph. If you're mixing water in a bucket, I don't think you need the acid buffer (but I could be wrong). There is a dosage calculator on their website -- > https://www.seachem.com/alkaline-buffer.php Click the 'Directions' part and then click the tab for 'Dosage Calculator'.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but honestly, I still feel a bit in the noob zone with breeding and have a lot more to learn (a lot more!). I've only been doing this maybe 3 years now? Started breeding fish with the advent of COVID and my transition to working from home full time (my day job is IT infrastructure development and engineering and it looks like I'll probably be working from home now until retirement). Right now, I think I'm decent at getting fish to reproduce (well they do all the work there, I just make the introductions and set the newlyweds up in a new house!). I'd really like to get deeper (more knowledge and experience) with developing and stabilizing lines, etc. If I were to gage where I am at this part of the hobby, it's still the first stage.

I got two pairs of these fish (Apistogramma Abacaxis) a few weeks ago and figured I'd have as hard a time spawning them as I am the Zebra Acara (sadly still no fry from those). However, today, when I went to do the morning feeding rounds, to my surprise a very animated and overly protective female met me at the glass, flared out her fins and told me 'hey back off buster!' Here's to hoping the male doesn't go all Saturn on them and that the tank params are to their liking. In case anyone is interested in spawning this species, I have mine in the following params: Ph: 4.5 Kh: 0 Gh: 0 Temp: 76-80f There is a heavy layer of oak leaf litter in this tank, a box filter filled with peat pellets, and the water is RO. I don't have a picture of the males yet, but this is what they look like, more or less (below pic is not mine; I snagged it from the interwebs).