Brandy

@Chrisdis or blue poop?

@JettsPapa yes that! "racing stripe". I was thinking instead of culling to the acaras, I can cull to a store if most people consider them fine. They are really bright sometimes. Kinda a lousy pic but this is an opaque female with the stripe. EDIT: Here is more the look I want:

I think desirable is in the eye of the beholder.

So question for anyone who does know more about grading cherry shrimp. Some of my females are a nice even red, but a little translucent. I would grade them "fire". Some are solid red and opaque. I would call them "painted fire" Some have a very distinct lighter red opaque stripe down their back. I have seen this as a line in yellow shrimp, but to me it looks like a fault in red shrimp. Thoughts? I think I will cull them--some are very dark, some are very light, it seems like it's own pattern gene, not related to color intensity.

It will work, most of us use 10g because the meds are in 10gallon sachets. It is easier than dividing the dose. When I need to dose just 5g, I just dump the whole thing onto a folded paper and cut into 2 lines...like they do in the movies, lol.

Stick a small rock or two in the middle. Job done. It will stay down.

This will depend on your stocking levels and how many plants you have, but many people run a single sponge filter in a 20g. I think you will find that the biological filtration is more than adequate, you may need to change out the floss more often to avoid floaties in the water. That isn't going to hurt your fish, just maybe annoy you depending on your tolerance for maintenance and particulates.

Longer nerm version: The drops are added until they exhaust the buffering capacity of your water, which triggers a ph shift and a subsequent indicator color shift. The color is probably brighter in more buffered water, as there would have been more "blue" drops added before the color flipped.

The chemistry here is for the color flip, not the intensity.

I lost one of those a few months ago, maybe my portal is connected to yours!

Re: light dimming, I think I am a dork and was thinking of the amount of dimming I got relative to NO LID--which obviously would be brighter. Anyway, it bugs my old eyes, but not the plants, and the fish prefer it.

I don't see maracyn damage my cycle on established tanks either, but a full 5 day course on a brand new tank might mean you need to watch for an ammonia spike. However if you have had losses from one year old fish, I would be suspicous of a parasite load rather than a bacterial infection. Parasites can be silently present for a long time, and then with age or stress of any kind suddenly manifest.

😲I don't think either the strips or the master kit would work with that many tannins--well, it works, but reading it would be difficult. I could probably figure out how, using serial dilutions with a known value, you could make a tannin color corrected chart, but you would have to do it again with each test, because you would have different amounts of tannins each time. I never thought of this!

+1 for rabbit snail?

One time I set up a tank and added rocks and new plants, new substrate...3 days later I realized there was a guppy fry in there. I didn't do it. I think it was a case of spontaneous generation.