Martin

This is how I have always understood it: If you think about the transition from land to water in nature, let's say at the shoreline of a lake, the transition can be broken down into 3 zones: fully terrestrial, fully aquatic, and then the transition in between where there is some land and some water. If we "enclose" any of these areas we get: 1. Terrarium: An enclosure that houses an environment that is fully terrestrial 2. Aquarium: An enclosure that houses an environment that is fully aquatic 3. Paludarium and Riparium: An enclosure that houses and environment with both terrestrial and aquatic features with a paludarium being primarily terrestrial but includes some level of water feature, and a riparium being the opposite: a predominantly aquatic environment with some terrestrial components. Though, I am a little brain, so if one of our resident big brains has any corrections, I am open to education. You can also substitute "children" in place of "plumbing" and the analogy would be more accurate in my case. Martin

You sure can and it would be an explosion of colors! And babies... actually, the explosion of babies would likely be bigger than the explosion of colors.

Love the set up! My tanks have always been against a wall, thus missing that 2-sided visibility.

Sorry to hear of your issues. It's definitely a disheartening problem when you watch them drop one by one. I run 3x shrimp tanks, each housing a different color (red, orange, blue) and have been working through a similar issue. All three of my tanks are kept identical in setup, and, like you, only my orange ones seem to struggle. It's hard to tell on your test strip what the true story is as strips can be really inaccurate, but also because some items should be read right away, while others should be read after about 30 seconds have passed. At face value, it looks like your GH is a little low and your pH is high, which ironically, was the same exact issues I have been having. I usually use 50% RO/50% tap water to replenish my tanks and do water changes. I did minimal water changes in efforts to keep water parameters more stable, however I believe this was part of my issue as my pH steadily rose. I recently started doing more regular water changes with the RO portion of my water remineralized using SaltyShrimp GH/KH. Since that time, I haven't had any more die off (fingers crossed, it has only been a couple of weeks). This really didn't answer my question why it was only my orange shrimp that died however. There is no sign of disease in my tanks. Given you are struggling with your orange shrimp as well, there is the possibility of a weaker genetic line among orange neocaridina, though this is really just conjecture.

I just starting using Salty Shrimp GH/KH to remineralize my RO water for my shrimp tanks. Ran it through my test kits and it seems to work very well!

Thanks guys, @Sacah I'll have to take is slow, just like you said. I always get so tempted to correct problems quickly and I always have to control that urge. I had the same consideration regarding the genetics behind the orange shrimp as well, no way to know for sure at this point just yet, but I thought of that too. @Dacotua That's so strange regarding the leaf litter, I'm wondering if there is any other confounding factor involved. I haven't had any problems to that degree, just this one tank out of the three.

Good morning all, I have a friend who is wanting to create an outdoor, in-ground fish pond and was looking for suggestions on stock. The problem is we live in the Houston area and we can experience some pretty significant swings in temperature, especially in the summers where it can hit 100+ degrees. Winters are mostly mild but we still get the occasional, below-freezing temps for short stints. Do any of you out there have an experience in this sort of fish-keeping and climate? Any suggestions on hardy fish that would do okay or is this just a bad idea? Thank you in advance!! Martin

Thanks very much for the input everyone. @DallasCowboys16 Thanks for the advice regarding the parameters. Admittedly, I still consider myself a novice in the hobby and parameters always trip me up. When I cut my water 50/50 the pH is usually right at about 7.6, however I find that it always creeps up into the 8's over time. I had forgotten to mention, I had followed advice to minimize water changes in efforts to maintain stability of the tank. For the most part, I really only top off the tank when the water evaporates, which I assume is what leads to the pH creep? Additionally, wouldn't trying to correct for GH also raise pH further? Alternatively, I could try to start with 100% RO and remineralize with the SaltyShrimp mixture and give that a try. Any insight is much appreciated. @Sacah Thank you for asking, I feed the shrimp a varied diet from several sources including ACO Shrimp/Fry food, algae wafers, and another shrimp-specific wafer that is made up of protein and calcium (I can't remember the name and I'm not at home ATM). I feed them one of these sources in a rotating fashion about every other to every 3 days. This is in addition to any of the algae/biofilm that grows on the guppy grass. @TheBlueBeetle Thanks very much for sharing your experiences, sometimes it just nice to know that others have had the same issues. As far as botanicals are concerned, I have roughly a dozen Indian almond leaves in each tank (the small ones... ~1.5-2 inches long), though honestly, I never really knew how many I should be putting in). In addition, each tank has about 6 moss balls, and there is a healthy amount of guppy grass in each tank (floating and occupies roughly the top 4-5 inches of tank across the entire surface). The one thing I'm just really hung up on is why the orange ones are the only ones dying. The tank bottom mostly open, so it's hard to miss a dead body, so I don't think I'm missing anything when looking at the reds and blues. Thank you guys so very much for taking the time to help. Martin

Hey gang, I want to seek guidance regarding some neocaridina issues I simply cannot figure out. Roughly 3-4 months ago, I set up 3 separate 20 gallon tanks to breed neocaridina (red, orange, blue, each in their own tank). All three tanks were set up the EXACT same way with same gravel, same plants, same tech, all side-by-side in the same room. For whatever reason, the reds and blues are fine, but the orange shrimp are slowly dying off at a rate of roughly 1-2 a week and I have no leads on the cause of death. Additionally, I don't see ANY of the shrimp (red, orange, or blue) carrying eggs, which is odd given the number of females in the tanks. Parameters: pH: 8.6 GH: 50-100ppm (I know, more on this below) KH: 50-100ppm NH4/NO2/NO3: 0 In the tank: Guppy grass, moss balls, almond leaves, gravel. History: I originally started off with just red and orange shrimp, each in their own 10 gallon tank (roughly 8 months ago). The start was rough as a number from each population died off daily in the two weeks following their introduction. The water from my area is very hard with TDS levels of roughly 480-500. In efforts to improve water quality, I opted to start using a mixture of 50/50% RO and tap water for the tanks. Both populations improved after the change. Despite the relatively low GH of the new water, the shrimp were reproducing and were molting without any white ring issues. I didn't question it. It wasn't broke, so I didn't fix it. Several months in, my orange shrimp population started to look more sparse than before, though I did not see any bodies or clear signs of disease. By that time, I had already decided to upgrade the tanks and also start breeding blues as well, so the new 20g tanks were already up and cycling/seasoning. When time came to move them over, I discovered ~4x damselfly larvae in the tank. I assumed this was the issue as the reds were doing just fine. "Okay, that sucks, but I'm moving them anyway," was my mentality. I fished out the reds and oranges and moved them to their respective tanks. Apart from the shrimp, the moss balls are the only things that came over from the previous tanks. At this point, I have no clue what is causing the orange shrimp to die off, nor do I have a clue why the shrimp are not breeding. The 20g tanks have much better visibility due to less hardscape, and I see no damselfly larvae. I recognize the GH is lower than recommended, but would this be the cause of death in only one tank and not the other two? I can only assume no. Does GH affect fertility/breeding habits? I only know of GHs role in the molting process, so I could just be naive on this point. The only thing (I think) left to consider are potential disease processes that afflicted the orange tank that carried over into the new tank, though all of the shrimp look healthy and active. I check on them multiple times a day and they do not give me the appearance of illness nor any reduced activity. I only know something is wrong when I come home to a dead shrimp. I did purchase a jar of Salty Shrimp GH/KH mixture to help correct GH/KH if that is the issue, but I haven't used it yet in fear that I go creating instability because of panic. Your thoughts are very much appreciated. Martin

Thanks GS! Not sure I'm reading it right but it looks like those two types are from two separate lines and might get messy. I'll just keep my fingers crossed that the shells get brighter.

Hey gang, Just started up a 3rd neo tank, this time with blue velvet shrimp. The shrimp are a little lighter in color than I had expected (I was a sucker and trusted the pictures!). I know that over time, cross breeding colors can lead to them reverting back to a wild-type phenotype, usually brown, however I was curious if any of you had any experience keeping like colors together. I had avoided the blue dreams because they seemed too dark and was wondering what would happen if I kept blue velvets and blue dreams together. Would I end up with a mess in the end or a nice "middle blue"?

Thanks for the replies all, Welp, seems I was too late but I may have gotten off easy. By the time the mosquito netting arrived, I had already found larvae in 2 of the 3 shrimp tanks. I quickly grabbed a turkey baster and sucked them out and fed them to the other tanks. The tanks are all 20g longs with a lot of guppy grass and creeping jennies so I don't know how many I missed. I only saw about 5-6 in each tank, which I thought was odd. Regardless the mosquito situation has calmed down in the house, so I'm cautiously watching for pupal stages. We shall see. I had this EXACT issue soaking wood myself! I threw the lid on and gave it a good shake to stun/drown any adults then quickly poured a cup of bleach in the bucket and closed it off. Left it in the Texas heat for a few days and everything was dead.

Thanks for the input guys. Unfortunately, all of my shrimp tanks were just started not long ago, so all of the colonies are not well-established/stable yet. I'm concerned that the addition of any fish will end up with significant casualties, especially since I float guppy grass in them and they love to play near the surface of the water because of it. In the interim, I bought a large cut of mosquito netting off Amazon. Fortunately all 3 of my tanks are side by side, so I plan to just drape the netting over the top of them all until the risk dies down. The other tanks have fish in them, so I somewhat welcome the live feeding if any mosquitoes dare.

Hey gang! I live down in the Houston area and we always have a huge mosquito problem every year. Unfortunately, due to the ever increasingly hot summers, more and more insects are driven into our garages and homes trying to escape the heat. I'm a bit concerned as all of my tanks are open (no lid) as I usually grow plants out the top riparium-style. This raises the risk mosquitos trying to lay eggs in my tanks. Of particular concern are my shrimp tanks as there are no fish that could serve as predators to the mosquitos and/or larva. Have any of you had to deal with such an issue, and what did you do? Martin

Welp. pH is 8.8 on my test kit, but that's the maximum range so it could be higher. I had read up on the possibility of high TDS (which I didn't really know much about), so I just got a TDS meter that arrived about 30 minutes ago. The meter reads a TDS of 490-500 and additionally, it has a pH meter on it as well that is reading 9.7 😯 Now knowing about TDS, I suspect that has been a part of my chronic problems in fishkeeping all along. Have always had tanks that start off fine, but animal life slowly perish as time moved on. Never had a clear answer despite all other parameters looking good. Any advice with this new information? I don't want to overreact and just start dumping acid buffer, plus I don't know if that will even address the TDS issue.