KittenFishMom

@nabokovfan87 and everyone else. I bought 30 blue dream shrimp locally, 5 days ago. I have them in a tank with a lot of snails, and no fish or scuds. I have been doing some "By guess and by golly" feeding, while I wait for shrimp food and supplies to arrive. Some fish fry food and algae powder and sinking wafers. I added some wondershells to raise the pH and calcium. I will want to do a water change soon. What is the best way to syphon out water without syphoning out shrimp. The shrimp are all over the tank, on the substrate, hardscape, duckweed, IALs, hornwort, watersprite, and swimming from here to there. I have a sponge filter and an air stone. They seem happy. I haven't seen any dead ones, but there might be a few. I have heard that frequent small water changes are good. I also heard that the new water should be added slowly, the same way you drip acclimate the shrimp so it is less stressful for the shrimp. I haven't found anything about removing the water without removing the shrimp. Any ideas are welcome.

@nabokovfan87 I've had my shrimp 5 days. This was a very interesting useful video. I'll have to watch more from this channel.

It is a Petco brand sand "Imagitarium" larger pieces than a lot of other sand.

@Miranda Marie I didn't soak the driftwood. It washed ashore last spring and sat in the sun out front all summer. I looked like it had been in the lake a very long time. I don't have anything anywhere big enough to soak the wood in, short of the bathtub. I would really miss showering for 4 weeks. I changed 20 gallons last night and the water looks better today. I will clean the filter again tonight and see how they are doing.

@Cinnebuns I just started a shrimp tank with about 30 shrimp. it is a 10 gallon tank tall half cylinder with a sponge filter and and air stone. The substrate in organic potting soil capped with black sand. I was doing reverse respiration on a bunch of hornwort, and forgot it for well over 24 hours. It pretty much all melted in the tank after I added it, so the floor of the tank has a lot of bio-film sort of stuff. Do you think I can just put corry eggs in this tank and let the shrimp care for them? I put some in an HOB breeder box with 4 shrimp. they have not hatched, but the shrimp have not eaten them either. The shrimp are the blue dream Neocaridina. Davidi. I would like to try some of these new eggs, but I want to keep them separate from the older eggs. With the shrimp tank not being bare bottomed, I don't know if the shrimp will find and care for the eggs. Should I try to stick them on the wall of the tank, or drop them to the bottom. I need to decide soon, before the flagfish eat the eggs. The corys have been spawning off and on since Wednesday, and the flagfish are growing very fast.

My corys are enjoying New Years Eve. When I did the water change this time, I carefully heated and aerated 20 gallons of RO water with Seachem Equilibrium to make sure it wouldn't trigger a spawning the way the last water change did. As I was wiping down the drops on the outside of the tank, what should I spy? Fresh Cory eggs! I was hoping some of my eggs from the last spawn on Wednesday might be hatching today, but no such luck. I did collect more on Thursday, so I won't give up all hope yet. I don't know if they look like they will hatch. They all look the same to me, not fuzzy, darker than they were, but not showing movement. I bought 30 Ultra Blue Dream shrimp to start a shrimp tank, and put 4 in the HOB breeder box with some java moss with cory eggs attached. The 4 shrimp are tending the eggs and rolling them around a bit, except for the eggs attached to the moss or leaves. Either way, Happy New Year !

I know what he wants.... Get a friend to help. Put some pretty females in a net and suspend it into the tank an inch out 2, or maybe use a breeder box with a lot of water flowing through it. He is lonely and scared and has no one to warn him when that net is hovering over the tank. He wants the safety of other guppies and if they are female, so much the better. He will be looking at the new fish in the tank, not at some boring old net sneaking up on him. Try it, he'll like it.

Happy New Year's Eve to all ! My 55 gallon semi Walstad tank has been up and running for a month or so. I put organic potting soil in under a black sand cap. I planted it and let it run, then added fish and then added 2 "Unsinkable Molly Brown" of driftwood. The Ammonia has been steadily 0. The nitrite has been steadily 0. The nitrates have worked their way up to around 10. The pH is about 7.5. After I added the wood, the water got darker and cloudy. Which seemed reasonable. I had a 10-20 gallon HOB to encourage water circulation and a sponge filter. I added a 35-45 gallon HOB on the left end, away from the other HOB and near the sponge filter. I also have 2 extra air stones. The fish seem very happy and the corys are spawning. I know I was over feeding some because the snail population got larger, so I have cut back on the food some. The strange thing is I am cleaning a lot of crud out of the HOBs mechanical media (no charcoal, just reusable filter sponge) every night. I didn't expect this with all the plants. I've increased and decreased the flow of the HOBs a few times, but it didn't seem to change the way the water or filters looked. I did a water change, being careful not to disturb the sand. The water stayed dark and cloudy. I keep cleaning the filters and will do another water change tonight when the RO water has warmed up to tank temp (about 75). According to Aqadvisor.com, I'm at about 85% of capacity. It assume all the fish are adults. I have an adult male plakat betta, 9 adult neon tetras, 2 adult female corys and 7 young corys, 6 kuhli loach who might be adults, and 2 young female flagfish, and a bunch of snails. I'm sure the water has tannins from the wood and the IALs. The water doesn't look green. I used turbo 700 when I started the tank and a added few dashes as it was getting settled. I'm not seeing any spiking in any of the water parms. I can't figure out where the cloudiness and the amount of crud in the mechanical filter media is coming from. (I'm waiting for the new lights from ACO, so I cobbled together the current lighting. The red dwarf aquarium lily has put up a lot of floating leaves on the left, so I added three plant light bulbs below the water line in front of and at the end of the tank. There are 2 large twisted branched pieces of driftwood in the tank.) 3 photos below. What do you think is going on in my tank?

Current update, tank date 1230/2022 11:47 am east coast time: Yesterday I bought some blue dream shrimp and added four to the HOB breeder box, along with more eggs I found on the glass and some java moss. There is an almond leaf held between the lid and the back. There are 2 bits of live leaf with eggs attached floating in the HOB. Yesterday I fed the tank bbs and some of them were sucked into the HOB. I used a dropper to remove the debris on the bottom on the HOB. and use some gentle puffs of water from the dropper to move the eggs on the bottom around a bit. The shrimp were swimming all over the HOB last night. This morning the had settled down on the java moss and were looking like happy busy shrimp. I added a bit of powder Spirulina for the shrimp. I wasn't sure what to fed the shrimp that would not foul the water for the eggs in the HOB.

@nabokovfan87 I am setting up the shrimp in a seperate tank without any fish, except possibly the cory fry, if they hatch. I think the fry can find a good bit to eat in that tank. I'm thinking the shrimp would clean up anything the fry don't eat.

@nabokovfan87 The HOB breeder box I have has an air up lift that runs water in steadily. it the flows out at the same rate the the water level is not adjustable. I don't have any dividers in my breeder box.

@Pepere and @nabokovfan87 For repashy, I have spawn & grow, Community Plus, and grub pie. I also have first bites and the ACO fry food. Do you think I should add a shrimp or 2 to the HOB breeder? After I got the first 6 eggs, I saw the young hi-fin female spawn and grabbed some of her eggs too. Both were breeding to hi-fin and regular fin males. What is a normal success rate for eggs to hatch and fry to live? Thanks

@Pepere IAL is Indian Almond Leaf. Which kind of Repashy? There are so many flavors.

My corys were spawning tonight. I think I collected 6 eggs, and put them in one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005QRDDJ2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I took the divider out. It has an air lift to draw water in non-stop, and an overflow to let it flow back into the tank. The fish are still laying eggs, but I don't want more than 1 or 2 new corys, so I stopped at 6 eggs. Two were on a piece of java moss, 2 more were on the underside of one leaf and 2 or 3 more on the underside another leaf. I put the strands of moss and both leaves in the breeder box. The leaves are floating with the egg side down. The flagfish and male corys seemed to be eating the eggs as fast as she was laying them, so I watched her deposit the eggs and picked the leaves before anything could get near them. 5 to 6 males were chasing her, so I feed the tank bbbs fresh from the hatcher. That distracted the flagfish completely. All the corys were trying to eat bbs and spawn at the same time. It got confusing. Since this HOB breeder box has a steady flow or water, do I need to do anything besides add IALs?

I have a bunch of duckweed/frogbit floating plants I want to treat. Any advice on how to submerge them?

I am looking into getting some dream blue shrimp several questions, They are home grown about 20 minutes from here. 1) Will my betta, neon tetras, peppered corys, kuhli fish, flagfish, scuds, or snails eat them? and the other way around? 2) Do you quarantine shrimp? Is it the same as a fish quarantine? 3) I have a lot of java moss and plants in my tank. Will they need hardscape to hide in too? 4) What is a good number to get for a 55 gallon tank? I was thinking 30, but may be way off. Can I quarantine 30 in a 10 gallon tank? Anything else I should know or will wish I had known before I get the shrimp?

If you want to see if you already have these guys in your tank, you can try some of these. They don't catch all the leeches or planaria, but they catch enough to let you know if they are already active in your tank from other batches of black worms of snails or whatever. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09L6HH6BF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B093CCV6TK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You could also try the traps in your bag, but might end up catching black worms as well. I don't much about black worms other than you can not get them in the stores here.

To me, the ones with marking look like leeches and the white ones with arrow heads look like planaria. Put the bag in a wide bowl, try putting a bit of raw meat or high protein fish food a corner of the bag where that are not life forms and see if they head that way. Leeches walk like inchworms, or swim They also use the sucker on their big end to hold on, and stretch the other end out into the water to sniff for food. Planaria slither like snails on a mucus trail. If you cut up a planaria, each piece grows replacement parts and becomes a whole new adult. Science is studying them.

@Pepere Thank, I put them in 2 areas on alternate days because the snails go for them as well. I will try putting them in both areas and work at thinning the snails out. I have a basil spice bottle with sinking wafers in it to catch the snails. but the snails are having a hard time finding their way into the bottle.

I was planning on having only the 55 gallon tank over the winter. I ordered 6 female flagfish but asked them not to ship until after the holidays so they would travel quickly. I think I should cancel the fish because now one of the 2 flagfish I have seems to be bothering the corys everytime they feed on sinking food. If I do get and quarantine the 6 new fish, I don't think I could catch them in the planted tank, if they upset the corys even more. Also, My peppered corys were light with dark splotches when I picked black sand to cap the soil in the 55 gallon tank. It was a nice contrast. Now the corys are turning very dark to match the substrate. I have trouble spotting them if they are not moving. I somehow missed that corys could darken their color this much when I researched them. I was planning to replace the dark/black kuhli loaches with striped ones when I found a good source. Again, I don't think I can catch the dark loaches if I wanted to because the plants are growing fast. Should I postpone / cancel the flagfish? Anything I can do to get the corys to contrast with the substrate again? Is there a way to catch dark kuhli loaches in a well planted tank? Or should I stop looking for striped kuhli loaches? I want striped, but I don't want to over stock. I could use some help before I make things worse. I look forward to any and all ideas.

@nabokovfan87They are sweet peppered corys. The males are young and small and might not have mature ammunition to fertilize the eggs. Between the 2 tiny female flagfish cleaning the eggs off the glass, and the neon tetras hovering around the tank looking for fry and the big male betta looking for snack, the cards were stacked against the cory's eggs. I wanted to see if I could trigger a spawning and hope the flagfish might miss a few. There is a lot of java moss on the bottom of the tank, so it might have worked on paper, but I wasn't really expecting it to work in real life. And who knows, maybe one of the cory females hide a few eggs where the flagfish didn't find them. The tank is 21 inches deep, so the fry might not have been able to get to the surface without being gobbled. It was a long shot all the way around. The hifin/long fins are really cool. I might try triggering a spawn and collecting eggs in the future, if I can line up a few homes for the fry ahead of time. Some of the little males have side fins reaching to their start of the tail. The flagfish seem to enjoy startling the big corys. The flagfish appear suddenly and the corys jump and swim a way for a few moments while the flagfish check out what the corys were trying to get out from under the snails. That reminds me, I will need to thin the snail sometime soon. The snails like the RO water with Equilibrium and the big wondershell.. Normally to thin the snails in the guppy tanks I put in a ladle with lots of small holes holding a single algae wafer. the snail would climb in to eat and I would lift them out. The problem is the corys are apt to eat the wafer before the snails get there. I was looking at using an empty spice bottle, but worry the silly kuhli loaches would get their head stuck in the holes. a clutch of snails hatched recently, and there are a bunch of tiny snail in the tank.

@nabokovfan87 I also think baby brine shrimp and other high quality food help gets the eggs ready so they can spawn. "9 women + 1 month = 1 baby" only works in a manager's mind when the manager wants to throw extra people at a project that is behind schedule. Prepping for spawning takes time to feed them to grow the eggs to the right stage for spawning. I stop hatching bbs when I was seeing hydra, and got out of the habit.

@nabokovfan87 Thanks. I did it this morning and the corys spawned, but the flagfish enjoyed the eggs. I sort figured they would. I hoped it was worth a try.

@Katherine I didn't explain myself well. No need to say your sorry.

@Katherine I never learned to read upside down or sideways. Letters spin around on me all the time. It was not any different for me to read sideways or upside down as it was to read right side up. Learning to read was very hard for me. I was reading first grade level in 4th grade. It didn't matter which way I held the book, it was all the same to me. I never read textbooks in college. I memorized everything the first time I heard it in lecture. I still read slowly compared to other adults. You develop compansating skills. When you can't do one thing, you figure out how to do something else. I often misspell words, or leave one out or use the wrong word. I know I need to carefully proofread everything I type. You can tell from my posts I often miss mistakes. I often tell people "English was my second language, I never had a first." Luckily I married a wonderful man who learned to speaks, reads and writes 5 languages. He proofreads anything of mine that matters. I don't make him proofread my posts.