FishyThoughts

Yeah, I haven’t tried it and doubt it’s a great replacement for a regular sponge filter. But a well seasoned prefilter could be a quick way to jumpstart a temporary tank if needed. And I’m sure the shrimp wouldn’t have any problems with a dirty sponge.

Since your upgrading the light you may need to watch your anubias. They can tend to grow algae if there’s too much light on them which can cause problems for them getting nutrients. The Java fern will probably do a little better with the better light. As for my experience, the many issue with floating plants definitely seems to be flow. I had some for awhile that were doing good when I had the flow limited. But with the tank they were in the limited flow was causing other problems, so increased flow and they started dying. And it’s fairly hard water here, so I’d assume they should do well in hard water for you as well.

So recently for the first time my Madagascar lace sent up the spike to flower. It was grew quickly and I arranged the covers to allow for it to stick out of the water like it needs to be. But the spike has started wilting below the flower pod. Has anyone had their plant flower? And does it require anything special to get it to flower properly?

Keep in mind that best equipment doesn’t always mean best results. There’s people that can throw together a diy setup and get amazing results. Fish keeping can be a lot of trial and error, so it’s hard to expect perfect results. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard some say they hadn’t made some kind of mistake doing something. Mistakes are part of doing everything, unfortunately some end badly. And sometimes better results come from mistakes. But if your getting frustrated from struggling to get the results you desire, than this forum would likely be a good place to get advice. There’s some very knowledgeable people here, some may have done what your trying to do. So I would recommend explaining your goals, equipment/setup, water parameters, what’s failing/needing changed and ask if some one has advice on helping. Sometimes an outside perspective is what is needed.

Aging water was used a lot for off gassing chlorine and other gases in the water. It is not as useful anymore for the chlorine aspect at least. Many municipalities have started switching to chloramine instead of chlorine, which doesn’t off gas like chlorine. So if your area uses chloramine than a dechlorinator is needed to treat the water. But as mentioned, there’s still some uses for aging water; out gassing, ph stabilization and adjusting temperature. Like most things with fish keeping kind of comes down to feasibility for your situation and personal preference. Thanks for the info on water charge temp issues though. I don’t age my water and normally just made sure its not a huge temp difference. But maybe I’ll take some extra time during water changes to make sure the temps are closer though.

I’m not sure if your trying to keep all of your ramshorn snails as well. But if you get a small dish and put the food in it. Then when the ramshorns swarm the food you could pick up the dish to remove them from the tank. Which would make feeding your mystery snail easier. And you could feed less at the same time.

Mark’s fish tanks had a good tip for cleaning sand. Dump it in a 5 gal bucket, turn the hose on full, tilt the bucket a little, then as the water fills the bucket use your hand to stir the sand and let the water continue overflowing. The water is usually very cloudy at first and then starts clearing up. If you stir the sand well enough when rising in the bucket there won’t really be any clouding in the tank. I have used this method for my sand and it works great.

I don’t know a ton about dropsy, but I didn’t think it was one of those things that was contagious. But more of a symptom of another issue with the fish. Sorry I can’t be more helpful with this, but I don’t have experience with it. Nor do I know the effects of the salt with crustaceans for longer periods.

As for what I’d do on that setup... the rocks in the center would be pushed to the back. Willow hygro in the back right corner. Anubias nana petite/golden and/or mini bolbitis on top of the cave on the right. Anacharis in the back left corner behind that mangrove. A small bucephalandra on top of those two left stems of the mangrove and weeping moss going down the mangrove. Then kind of where that fake sword/crypto plant is, do a Homalomena insignis, cryptocoryne blassii or cryptocoryne hudoroi. And could do Riccia fluitans for carpeting. Anyway, hope that gives you some ideas. And there’s some great idea on YouTube or even just from searching aqua scapes.

As Lefty mentioned, don’t stress too much over internet comments. The main deal with bigger tanks and less stock is that it gives you more time to notice and correct things in the tank. That doesn’t mean thing can’t be done in smaller tanks, just a little easier in bigger ones. Keep testing regularly, watch for aggression and enjoy your fish.

Yep, it could definitely take up a lot of tanks depending on how you go about it. Fortunately you can get away with some relatively small containers for some shrimp as temporary containers. And if you have any extra sponges you could possibly stick those in the cover of an established tank. Then when you need to setup an additional container for shrimp you could move that sponge and some of the tank water over and more or less have a cycled setup. Haven’t tried it, but possibly shove an air stone in a pre filter for a quick diy sponge filter. Obviously wouldn’t work as good as an actual one. But maybe good enough to be a temporary option.

Nice looking tank, well done.

Yes, aquarium salt is safe for crustaceans. At least to an extent, salt baths/dips are very commonly used for treating parasites/diseases in them. I have done a salt dip on a shrimp, much higher concentration than you listed above. But that was a short period, few minutes. Is the salt for treating the crayfish, or something else in the tank? If for the crayfish I’d suggest just doing a salt bath.

I have only kept blue dream shrimp, so can’t speak toward the hardiness of them compared to reds. Like Pearl mentioned, my LFS stopped selling adults of all their shrimp because they adults struggle more with changes. So they only sell the young juvenile shrimp and have had better success of customers not calling about them dying. This problem could also be contributed to inbreeding. If the shrimp are breeding faster than the LFS sells them, they’re not likely ordering more and getting a healthy mix of that strain. You could try getting the young juveniles, or a buried female and see if they hatch before she dies and the new babies survive.

Yeah, I came across the same first time I had seen them in my tank. And the only negative does seem to be just the sight of them when they venture out of the substrate. Would be interested to hear if anyone knows of some true cons to them though.

It’s a numbers game for sure. And from my understanding about breeding shrimp, though I’ve never bred from wild, you want to encourage the desired trait as much as possible. So while those 18 shrimp are breeding look through from any shrimp that there’s any coloring on. Move them to a tank by themselves, no other shrimp, and breed those together. Continuing to add others with those colors and removing all without, less or different color. Allowing a colored shrimp to breed with a different colored, or wild, can cause that color trait to revert back to the wild shrimp appearance or mutations to another color. While you may want to do that with some of them to see what you get. If your specifically wanting red than I would suggest trying to only breed that trait with others of that trait whenever possible. And if you find a buried female with the trait you desire, it might be best to isolate her until they hatch. Then add her with the other of that trait. probably easier having the babies in a small isolated container to see what traits come up than trying to get them out of another tank. Definitely an interesting project no matter how you go about it. Mark’s shrimp tanks has some good info, has website and youtube. But think most is with regards to breeding an already established strains versus breeding for a strain.

Oh, missed where you mentioned having tried snails. Did your fertilizer have copper in it? Snails are usually pretty resilient and wouldn’t imagine them dying otherwise. You mentioned doing weekly water change, algae scrub and plant trimming. Have you done pre/post water test to see the effects the maintenance has on the tank? Post would need to be like a day later. Maybe all of that every week is too much which is why brown algae is always there. Maybe don’t trim plants every week. If not already, track your tank parameters (at least for awhile) to see how the changes end up effecting your tank.

Yeah, it’s a tough one. Brown algae isn’t one you normally hear everyone struggling with. I was setting my tank up for guppies and otocinclus, so the brown algae wasn’t an issue once they were added. Then there was some snail eggs that came on a plant. So dozens of snails later... not a speck of brown algae to be found. Though I’m not sure the otos needed the help. I’d probably look at adding 2 or 3 nerite snails, amano shrimp or another algae eating species that requires brackish water to breed. That would at least help you with maintaining that tank while trying to figure out the cause of the algae.

I definitely understand that, not sure anyone gets in this hobby to just spend time on tank maintenance. Unfortunately it takes awhile to see results from a change made to an aquarium, unless its a drastic change. You could add snails to help with the algae. Just make sure you decide if you like snails in the tank beforehand. If your not big on snails, get a couple that can’t reproduce in freshwater and they can be easily removed later. If you don’t mind snails, get ones that can reproduce in freshwater (wouldn’t have diatom algae problems, but could become snail problems for you). As previously mentioned Nerite snails could be a good option and could help decrease your maintenance time of scrubbing algae.

Sounds like your planting it properly. Only other thing I hear is a fairly common issue is anubias getting covered with algae and causing nutrient deficiencies. If the anubias starts looking dark green than it may be that algae is covering it, which makes it hard for the anubias to get nutrients out of the water column.

I will check if I can find the article about the manufactured substrates. (Better than trying to quote from memory) But since they have materials in them for promoting plant growth they do contribute to increases in ammonia, which results in higher nitrates. I did find an interesting article regarding the brown algae though. It discusses how diatoms are nutrient poor starting out and nothing really eats them, but as they age they increase nutrients and everything starts eating them. 16.8. Brown Algae AQUARIUMSCIENCE.ORG There’s more references to other aspects dealing with aquariums as well. Seems like an interesting site. As for the lighting, I still need to work on getting mine setup and tuned in correctly. I can’t say how much of a difference the lighting really is or not. I had some nitrates that I was dealing with at the same time, so when I solved that problem it could have been what was helping with the algae more than the lighting. My nitrates were due to excessive buildup in the corner behind a Java fern I had on some wood. I don’t gravel vac much normally and that area was covered so it didn’t get vac’d. Downside of changing multiple things is you can’t specify how much something effects another. I know algae isn’t always an appealing site for the aquarium. But as previously mentioned 40-80ppm nitrates is on the high side. I would say to focus on trying to get that lowered and stable. And correcting that could also end up fixing your algae problems as well. Even if lowering the nitrates doesn’t fix your algae, the algae won’t hurt the fish so there’s plenty of time to deal with that.

What substrate are you using? If it’s not an inert substrate such as gravel or sand, then that could be contributing to your elevated nitrates. And I couldn’t find the article I read awhile back, and hopefully I’m remembering it correctly... But I believe it mentioned that algae can use the blue light spectrum easier than other plants. So the 2 hrs of blue light at the end of your day could be contributing to algae growth. Also, algae is supposed to take longer to recover from dark periods than other plants. You could try cycling your lights, such as 4 on, 4 off, 4 on. The light cycling did help me with controlling the staghorn in my 20 cube. I having been using a 4/4/5 cycle for mine and my plants still grow like crazy.

Probably not overdoing it since you know not to bury the rhizomes... but are you using too much glue? Covering too much rhizome with glue can cause problems too. Could also just try fishing line, or plant weights, to hold it until it’s grabbed on itself.

Unfortunately there’s not a definitive answer for what species will eat what algae, most results are likely just situational. For example, I have some staghorn algae and string algae. During research I read Amano shrimp will eat stagehorn as well as other algae’s. But they don’t touch the algae at all, they found out that they like the sinking pellets and just go after the easy meal instead. But if I were to stop using foods they want to eat they may start eating the algae as others have reported. Unfortunately it’s a community tank and that food isn’t intended for them, so I’m not likely to find out what situation makes my amano shrimp eat the algae. Though with diatom algae the results are more consistent. Otocinclus and snails always seem to be near the top of the list. And I did have the consistent results with those to myself. From reading on diatom algae it requires silica to grow, so once the silica source (in sand substrates) is used up it no longer grows. From the what I’ve read, SAE do seem to be great algae eaters when young. But less as they grow bigger and start becoming more aggressive.