Oakenstein

I'm going to go with longer photoperiod, and perhaps even over feeding a bit--since usually people recommend shorter photoperiods and under feeding to help control algae. It may be that some extra plant fertilizer might help get some algae going. API Quick Start (is that what you used?) won't help start algae growth, I believe. It contains nitrifying bacteria, which will produce nitrates, but there will only be "extra" nitrates for algae if there's more load being turned into nitrates than your tank can handle. I'd gladly give some of my algae if I could!

My penny-pinching self tells me probably not super cost-effective. But, I'm still off to try it for myself now 😁. My peppers are also looking really sad right now.

All I can say is I wish. I got a batch of 8 from LFS who turned out to be all female. They were too young to sex definitively when I got them, but they were all carrying saddles by month 2. Fingers crossed for@lefty osuggestion! Otherwise, I wonder if it was an early molt because of the move that shed the eggs, and then they happened to be somewhere with enough aeration that some of them survived. If the eggs were too small to be noticed when you and the LFS inspected the shrimp, though, the timeline doesn't seem right either.

I think it might be vorticella, which I'm not had any experience with myself but appears like white fuzz like in your pic. How far along are the eggs? If near, and the rest of her behavior really is normal, then maybe just wait it out and then give her a salt bath afterwards and remove her molt.

Hello! Should I use salt baths or starve out holtodrilus worms? This article from aquariumbreeder says that they are potentially harmful and affected shrimp should be treated with salt. This article from garnelenhaus says that they are mostly harmless and will starve to death on their own in the "comparatively sterile environment of an aquarium". Four days ago I spotted one shrimp with a worm on its head. I had success with a heavy salt bath and making the worm release (1 tbsp/cup, and the worm released within 20 seconds or so). The shrimp seems to have survived the bath just fine. But, today, I've spotted another one. As the baths are probably still stressful for the shrimp, I'm inclined to just wait it out if advisable to do so. These are on a new batch of red cherry shrimp. Everyone seems to be doing just fine otherwise so far (almost 3 weeks now). They have been squatting in a spare tank before introduction into my main tank. Phew--glad I didn't skip it this time. Thanks in advance!

Not sure if I'm seeing it right, but is that a tangle of moss in the back corner? If not, yes to moss (also known as the shrimp-berry bush in my tank). Otherwise, I'd also try some ferts. You can always undose at first, to see what does happen to your water. Unless you are very heavily feeding, there's not much going into your tank bioload-wise. My shrimp only tank always wants nitrates, whereas my fish/shrimp tank always has about 30ppm. More feeding/more poo, right?

Yes to the zip tie thing! I have one of those giant barbeque skewers zipped tied top and bottom to airline tubing. I can scoot the skewer up and down a bit to change how much the skewer sticks out past the end of the tube. Longer for when I'm trying to gravel vac, shorter for when I'm vacuuming leaves or hardscape.

Phinny me too! Just commiserating, really. Everything else does just fine, across two tanks. But my water sprite looks awful. I gave it more root tabs, or rather, a different location for the root tabs (maybe the roots aren't finding the tabs I put in before?). I'm not sure from your post, are you using root tabs? Even though it can live as a floater, I think it doesn't get enough nutrients from the water column if planted.

I'm here because I throw eggshells in with my neos, but I really don't know. I don't take them out on purpose. They just sort of turn into part of my substrate/tank bottom litter. As for adding calcium to the water, I suspect that they don't very much, only because my eggshells aren't really breaking down or are doing so very slowly. And I know that when adding them to tomatoes beds, e.g., the calcium, phosphorus, etc., is basically for next year's plants, not this year's. Maybe if you were grinding them up, like I've seen other people recommend? I'm too lazy for that.

Yes very informative--more reading is what I did too! Now, I'm off to probably cause an algae bloom by experimenting with a longer photoperiod, but with with a light break for CO2 regeneration.

Plants, at least the faster growing healthy ones, are more efficient at taking up nutrients than algae. They'll eat first, so to say?