nabokovfan87

That's even better.... this is the "patient" corydoras..... 🙂 You have to let them grow, reach maturity, then you'll be so amazed at how awesome their pattern is.

This is the stuff hyggar sells, but be warned:

Yes you can. Most of the time BBQ rock is untreated and just lava rock crushed to a specific size. As always, look for the "100% lava rock" and check all labels to verify it isn't treated with anything. Secondarily you can also use pumice and do the same thing. This is very likely what ADA powersand uses.

I broke mine the first time I tried to clean it. I much prefer the newer models they put out to replace it. It's easier to work with. But yes, to your point... very good to have these and the ease of maintenance is awesome.

I used an algae scraper type of thing for algae on mine. You can also use sponges and then use the siphon. I would get yourself a python branded siphon when you can. They work well and are designed to make the job easy. There are also 3d printed things you can add to the end of a siphon tube which will act like a vacuum attachment.

I ended up cutting mine. Getting full flow across the length of the tank is what you want for something like CO2 dosing. If you're just using it for general movement, I wouldn't bother cutting it.

Yeah, mine sit on or near the spraybar. At night they go and do their thing. I'm always fascinated by them.

So... pause on the water changes and let's check 2 things. 1. Test your tap water to see what's in it. 2. Filtration, setup, etc. (is there a need to add or expand the hardscape)

Yeah. I need an amazon sword in their tank. I've been trying to find one locally. Last time I went all the plants looked dead in the shop. I heard they like stuff like hygrophila, some species which have those types of leaves as well. S. Repens was the one I heard initially for an oto only breeding setup. Your setup looks perfect for them. I can see why you have success! Working on getting the ferns going. The one I added in there is probably the size of a dime right now.

I just wanted to chime in because I remembered.... there is a few studies on what live foods shrimp like to eat and how that impacts growth and health for them. I have them saved and can try to locate links (I can't upload PDFs here) if you wish. I wanted to ask about the coolest little shrimp colony buddy, you're feeding them worms and you mentioned a few other things? How do you feed the shrimp and these guys, is there any chance you can feed them both a powder food?

Just a heads up, we have two threads going on @Odd Duck

Upload it to youtube, then link it here if you can! As a cautionary tale there are studies on sound, shadows, lights.... especially for major aquariums and their engineering challenges and the stress on the fish. If you think back to what "spooked" the fish I would try to cover the side of the tank or something to give the fish a bit of comfort. Tanks with a doorway and a lot of traffic can cause fish to jump too, especially with lights and stuff being turned on when the tank lights are off. Just things to consider moving forward and try to think about. @Guppysnail is there a way to merge these two threads?

I really hope I'm able to get mine to spawn. Anubias, ferns, hopefully all of those plants I'm working on help to give them places and the comfort to lay.

Just beautiful. One of my favorites. I hope they do well for you. It speaks volumes why these ones and the pandas are in just about every single fish shop you walk into.

Alright.... Day 1 over with in terms of the treatment. (Phase 2 - Day 6) The shrimp looks like they are doing ok. I pulled about 20 or so molts and I am sure there will be more here shortly. You can see the vibrant colors on some of the shrimp, which is very common for new molts. The others that look a bit darker, that's the ones that still need to. There is also in the video above right at the end I tried to focus on, what looks like a blue shrimp? It's a rili of some kind I think, but it's got a bit of a blue tinge. One other factor for expediting treatment here, exhausting all methods, is simply put so that I can split off the rili types and culls into a second colony that is already set to go. I am not decided if they go in with the 75G or if they go in the plant tank as of yet. Maybe certain ones end up in the 75G. Undecided.

Very cool. Hopefully he talks about it! I asked him about cleaning sand / substrate. 🙂 Reading those studies, dirty substrate makes it a home for those parasites to show up in some instances. Mark's website: https://aquariumshrimpkeeping.com/how-to-treat-scutariella-japonica/

They definitely do have something like acrylic or lexan hinges you can use. I've even seen people use stainless steel ones in a pinch.

Oooooh. That's a fun tank. I try to keep my stocking at about 80% or so using that tool. Just meaning, if in at 100% I usually have a pretty dirty tank. Maybe you have some room in there for some corydoras? Barbs can get feisty but I think you're doing it right. The main barb, gold barb will be the feisty crew, and then they will chase around the danio and the Cherry's. Having more plants, tall plants helps them to have things to swim around and keep them busy. Consider moving that sword to the right a little, basically, and then we'll see how things grow in. Bacopa caroliniana is a fun one too.

I'll try to find one. He uses a lot of pumps to try to move water and he also uses cameras to view shrimp. (just meaning that he tends to discuss it with those two topics) He also talks about stuff in a series like this one where he calls it "in to the shrimp room" and at the first part of the video he talks about his back.

Will do, good point! Yeah. Details are vague as well. I don't like being the "test case" but having clear methods on what to do when it comes to treating shrimp disease is pretty critical to helping anyone who ends up with shrimp that I come into contact with. Ultimately, salt seems to be the best thing we have to treat these guys, but there's basically zero documentation on how to treat a shrimp tank with salt directly.

It's been a day and the theme of this journal in particular continues.... we're in seemingly uncharted waters here. Yesterday I cleaned the big tank and my plant tank. Today marks 5 days of the prazipro treatment and so I am going ahead and planning that water change. Optimally, I would've prefer to have done a few water changes to remove as much of the meds as possible. Ultimately I opted against that choice this time around. The goal was to get the tank with a dose of salt and to try to treat the Scutariella Japonica and salt is seemingly the single best thing we have to do so. Given everything we know there is 3 main techniques that we have written about for neocaridina shrimp when it comes to this parasite: 1. A very high salt dose (1T per cup of water) and a 30 second dip with the shrimp. This removes the parasite and you continually repeat this process to remove them. 2. A 1T per 5G of aquarium water tank dose, which is mentioned almost in tandem with the above recommendation. 3. A hybrid method of the above where you drain the tank and start with a very high dose of salt, then add in freshwater to dilute the tank down to that smaller dosage longer term. Usually this is 5-7 days or so. There are some caveats for the above video before you decide to proceed down this avenue is that the setup and use case is very specific. This method is done following exhausting other methods prior to it's attempt and was nearly done as a last result of sorts to try to fight this parasite back. The tank in question also had a lot of young shrimp where netting them all really isn't feasible. Salt dose per this video is 35G per 1 L of water. This amount of salt is added to the tank when there is 1 cm of water remaining in the tank until the volume of the tank has doubled to 2 cm. (converted this is just under 10 tbsp of salt per 1 gallon of water) I tried to compare the math on my tank and it was seemingly an astronomical value. I thought long and hard about the process of this and ultimately I opted to try the hybrid method. My goal was to end with the typical "level 2" dosage of salt per the aquarium co-op article. I spent a bit of time asking around on what salt dose is recommended and what salt dose has been proven reliable before. I'm dealing with a 29G tank, the amount of salt in question was ~1 cup of salt that I used. I drained the tank to just above the sponge filters, dissolved the salt into solution and then proceeded to pour this into the tank. I ran into a few issues, but the key here being that I was using a lot less salt compared to the recommendation per the video and I was diluting this into much more water volume! The tank was about ~30% full by the time I added the salt in. I used a specimen container to dissolve the salt. I was able to get a good portion of it dissolved, but not all of it entirely. I went ahead and poured in the water that was dissolved spread across the tank as best I could and then added more tank water to the container to continue dissolving the rest. After that was done I waited the appropriate time and observed the shrimp. Right away there was a small number of shrimp that were on their side and in a bit of shock. I checked on them, watched them and observed. Eventually all of the shrimp were up and active and crawling around like they normally would be. After adding in all of the fresh water to the tank I had a bit of a quandary. Again, some of the shrimp were in shock. This isn't an abnormal volume of water change for this tank, but I absolutely understand the shrimp were really stressed out. I kept watching them and just feel like I had nuked the tank. 😕 I waited 20 minutes and the shrimp that were on their sides, seemingly dead were walking around the tank. Just like you'd expect with salt baths there is some recovery time! As time went on there were some shrimp that were not transitioning well. Saltwater is heavier than freshwater and this seriously comes into play. Meaning, make sure you are pushing a ton of air to get the water solution fully mixed. I scooped the shrimp that were struggling into a specimen container to observe them. If they passed, then they were removed from the tank and I didn't have to worry about other shrimp eating them. Of the 5-6 that I pulled there was 1 adolescent and the rest were very small baby shrimp. One of them might make a recovery, but the others unfortunately didn't make it. It's been about.... 6 or more hours at this point and I just spend another 30 minutes or so with the tank. I drained out 5G of the tank water in the case that the salt dose was just too much. I replaced that with 5G of freshwater and I'll keep an eye on things. So far this is the first time I'm seeing a good amount of molting from the shrimp since treating for the disease, which is good in my view. As with all shrimp, it's all about that next molt. I have to keep in mind how they do over time and so it's going to be a waiting game before I feel good about things. I was talking with @Chick-In-Of-TheSea about this and all of the things going on. I mentioned that based on what I am seeing, I would only go high as the recommended, mentioned shrimp dose during treatment. 1T per 5G. (my dose is 1T per 3G, which I did end up diluting just in case I added too much salt for the volume) If I see more issues and signs of struggle tomorrow morning then I will end up changing out more water to dilute things even further. I'll spend some time looking for molts, looking for parasites, and observing exactly how they are doing, but for tonight I am going to try to let them recover. A lot of the shrimp are hanging out near the airstones trying to sit in the flow. Just something to note as well.

Just a heads up, it looks like we have two threads going on:

This one is a blue jelly / blue rili type from what I can see. White shrimp are variations on the wild type. The snowball shrimp is a different species of neocaridina shrimp, not part of the neocaridina davidi color tree.

cc @Cory @Odd Duck @Colu Please help us out with the above.

water parameters? Dosing schedule?