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nabokovfan87

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nabokovfan87 last won the day on January 29

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  1. This vid explains how to avoid contamination.
  2. My water is KH of ~4, GH of 2x KH (8-10). My water used to be KH of about 8-10 and GH of anywhere from 15-25 (~450+ ppm) I would encourage you to use liquid GH/KH test kits and to basically ignore TDS and only rely on your KH and GH numbers. Things like liquid farts, dechlorinator, and anything that is dissolved in the water would affect your TDS. This is likely causing major issues. Think of it as contamination and unknown things in your water that you cannot really test for. Your best bet is to have access to water from the tap or to use RODI and a standard GH+KH buffer available for shrimp keeping. I would start there in terms of your research for issues. The numbers, KH you're showing vs. the pH you're testing seems odd to me. I would love to run a test for comparison sake using a few buckets of water, airstones, and varying levels of KH. My setups are usually cooler, higher surface movement/aeration and my PH is never above say... 7.2 KH is 3-4 now, but it was maybe 8 once upon a time. This tank with the mass of driftwood, I would look into how often and how much you're changing water if the pH is consistently low.
  3. 1000% If you ever go down the RODI list there's a ton of shrimp or saltwater channels that have mixing station setups. Marks Shrimp Tanks has a lot of videos on how to prep water and saltwater aquariums has the "newbie reefer" series which is helpful, easy, and a bit of fun. Sidenote, it may be true that salt can throw off test results as this is a freshwater kit.
  4. Yeah, she said she had to sacrifice a fish and send it to a fish scientist or doctor, and they did a necropsy to find the issue which is otherwise undiagnosable. But she knew it was genetic and she had been breeding those fish, so she just took care to not sell the offspring. Instead she kept them. Ah.... When I watched it I noted two things. First, her betta had some nutrient deficiencies because she was using one food over and over. This was the basis for me for my shrimp to feed multiple brands and rotate them in/out. I do this with the fish as well. The "black area" on the head was tested by the vet to be some form of external protozoan parasite causing damage. She mentions treating it with ich-x + salt with some success and some of it having no impact. She does have follow-up videos, but I haven't had the chance to sit and watch through all of the related content. This video mentions bacteria as well, similar to what Colu mentioned. It basically, similar to what Dan's Fish is going through with their in-house vet, taught me that there is so much that we don't understand as a hobbyist about diseases. It's extremely tough.
  5. It is a benefit, but it may or may not be strong enough to have an impact. The best thing is going to be using a tumbler, colony breeding, or having a very clean setup (not a ton of muck in the tank rotting). On my corydoras eggs I get these little gnat looking things. I can't imagine they are beneficial. Some people also use neocaridina shrimp to keep them clean. Amano shrimp will seek out and eat the eggs like caviar.
  6. 1 - Yeah, fish only you would opt for no softener or softener --> RODI setup. The softener is supposed to extend the life of the RODI unit, but I wouldn't be the right person to verify that. Basically... fish only, as long as fish fit the range of the tap (which you can test once you have access to pull just tap water and run an off-gas test) then you would be able to determine how much water you can change, how quickly, etc. Shrimp or snails in the tank, you'll want to take a much slower approach like you mentioned, absolutely. 2 - yes, I wouldn't be adding salt to any freshwater tank unless you're doing treatment. I understand the use for brackish, which is what Zenzo (Tazawa Tanks) has shown on his channel with his amano shrimp. Generally speaking, different lines of amano shrimp will have varying levels of salt tolerance and there are some studies out there on this. My tanks have no salt in them, but they handle salt during treatment at any dose up to 1 tbsp per gallon. 3 - No, using iron is fine. 4. One big water change up front is a great idea, ~90% if you can to try to really, seriously reduce those nitrate levels. Secondarily, take a water sample and dilute it by 50% and re-test to verify the number you're seeing on the liquid test. Being a 20L tank, hopefully we can get this thing sorted pretty quickly!
  7. Sounds good @jkh772. Be sure to check out the videos and let us know if you need anything!
  8. I am not extremely worried about it. The white clouds I did have never left the top of the tank and this is the tank with floating plants too. If they do eat some shrimp, it'll be ok because the colony is extremely well established. The baby shrimp will also have the moss wall to hide behind (and they definitely do) as well as just the dragon stone that blocks fish from getting in there. Something to keep an eye on for certain, but I feel great to have these fish in there.
  9. I've been feeding a metric ton.... 😞 Might explain the deaths too? IDK. I ordered some white clouds for now which will live with the shrimp long term. I'll move out one of the plecos. SAE for the big tank for BBA control. We'll see if they like wriggly food.
  10. Yep! I got a "green" tube cleaning kit for the 407 tubes, it lasted 2 uses and the python tubing killed it. It was also blue, so there's that. It came with two little brushes for straws, I just used that, worked fine. It was working at... 95% capacity? never been cleaned before. Might've reduced some sort of back pressure, but it wasn't restricting flow in any way. I need to find a new tube cleaner, but yeah... project for another day! I will let them know! 🙂
  11. I can *absolutely* relate to these photos. So... Step 1 for the "let's get the tank doing it's own thing" method and have a situation where the plants are actively working hard to filter things for you. Pull that piece of PSO on the far left (dark corner) and move it towards the center back of the tank. Take all of your PSO stems and trim off 12" sections, plant those ~4" deep in the substrate if you can. You want to have enough in there that they don't get pulled up by the fish. You're dealing with BBA it looks like as well as some green dust algae. Your anubias is rooted to that rock, but that rock is right under the middle of the tank which is the brightest part. you have some java ferns in the front of the tank, also low demand plants. Take that rock that has the anubias, or just the anubias itself and relocate it to one of the ends of the tank (left or right) and that will give you lower light and help to shade out that plant. That should help to let it recover. Pull about half of the dying/dead leaves with the worse algae and you can even cut off that section of rhizome to allow it to use maximum energy on new, algae-free growth. With your sword, drop some root tabs around it in the substrate and then go ahead and pull off the worst couple of leaves. Finally, push your light towards the rear 1/2 of the aquarium to focus the light on the PSO stems and to avoid having it centered above the rocks, ferns, anubias. Your anubias on the right is a sight to behold. Well done! Pull off the dying leaves and let it focus on repairing itself with healthy, new growth. In terms of algae fighting crew, some amano shrimp would love the rocks. Otos would be great in this tank as well as ~1-3 SAEs. They would actually enjoy the setup you have and just do their thing eating on surfaces. Hillstreams or borneo loaches might be a fun add too. There's always something, but it's just about finding the "right things". Focus your energy on cleaning filtration. Do your water changes when you can. If you're doing less of them, then do 50% or larger. Preferably 75% if you're only doing it once every couple of months. Once a month, that's a typical schedule a lot of people have. Keep on focusing on the good things, find something to enjoy about the tank and dwell on that. Find a reason to smile when you look at the tank and go from there. That's how you get through those difficult times.
  12. The salt is definitely causing some form of an issue and legitimately using tap water (unsoftened) might increase your success, even if the KH is higher. I would try to get a line to bypass the softener. There is a lot of smarter people than myself that could break down the chemistry of what is going on, but the big picture here is that the water itself is pretty unstable. This means things are unstable and that leads to issues with the amanos reacting to stress. Immediate deaths like you're experiencing are almost always going to be a sign of water issues or a contaminant. Something like copper is what is often pointed to, but any excess heavy metals could be a major issue for shrimp. 2 - I use iron in my tanks, it's not going to cause any issues. 3 - nitrate levels that high is absolutely a risk. Let's dive into maintenance schedules, water volume that is being changes, filtration that you're using and how it's setup. You have plants in the tank, but you don't have a massive plant load. Hopefully that makes sense.
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