nabokovfan87

@modified lung anything you recognize? I thought it was an easy ID at first, but zooming in and trying to see the detail it was more of a mite shape than what I thought it was. If you can at all @Davidg try to get a macro shot or something with slightly more detail. Welcome to the forums! Glad to have you here.

I would guess that there is a few things going on. How shaded or seculuded is the pond? Is it easy for the fish to feel safe and secure without constant checking for eggs and fry? I imagine that if a person walks up, direct sunlight to the back (or a light or some kind behind them) it would spook the fish pretty easily. Floating plants, cover, even having something in the midwater for the fish to hide or swim through. I found this article, it might shed some light on something you're seeing in the pond or speak to feeding a certain food at a certain cadence. https://www.tfhmagazine.com/articles/freshwater/the-ricefish-an-odd-and-interesting-group-full-article I would get another color, have the confidence that you'll eventually get some fry and just enjoy the process of trying to get them going. Based on this I would think everything is good in your setup. Give it time.

That's a wonderful surprise. Congratulations! @xXInkedPhoenixX also is known for the Oto breeding. A really fun journal if you're interested in seeing it. You could try powdered repashy soilent (or super) green. Algae wafers as well would work too. (check the ingredients for ones with spirulina as your first ingredient) Now that you know they are there you can keep an eye out. what else is in the tank right now?

Well it's Wednesday. Time for the clean on the tank. I did a water change this week due to needing to siphon a bit. @Lennie Loves to poke fun that I enjoy cleaning the tanks, but let's have some fun and break down a method for How to siphon in a shrimp tank. I figured something out this time around and I think it might be helpful for some people. First, a tangent of sorts. I think a lot of us first saw Cory in his old vlogs or the video below teach us how to clean our tanks. One of his techniques works well for the exact issue I had today. If you have a jungle tank, this isn't going to be as easy, but generally speaking the method of "spot treatment" is going to be key to keep shrimp out of your siphon and give you the ability to clean the substrate without concern. How to "Spot Treat" the substrate A. Start your siphon B. Pinch the tube of the siphon to stop the flow of water and pause it from sucking up anything C. Use the end of the siphon gently to find a place in the substrate itself. You want to have the end of the siphon submerged 1/4" or so in the sand (or other substrate) so that the shrimp have a low change of ending up in the siphon flow. D. Gently release the siphon and you will see the gravel lift and the debris enter the siphon tube. Pinch quickly and examine for shrimp. E. Repeat that method of gently releasing the siphon flow and then with the siphon in the sand you can gently move across the substrate with the baby shrimp on the outside of the tube. They will move out of the way, just keep your movements slow and intentional. This is a photo from @Chick-In-Of-TheSea 's journal showing the state of my tank before any maintenance today. Once I moved everything out of the way we have the following section of sand to clean: To my shock and surprise there was a lot of waste in the sand. We can see the color change on the surface, but when you vac the debris you can see that bright white color shift pretty easily. This was the end of the first bucket There was no real way to see shrimplets in this bucket. It was dense with dirt and it was not easy. I let things settle and dumped out half of the water so I could better see if there were any baby shrimp. Pour slowly, watch for shrimp, and you should be able to lower the water level a little bit. This was the substrate after 1 bucket worth of siphoning. There was a lot of space still needed to be cleaned. Especially the left, back wall, and entire right wall. I did not touch the filter this week because the water was brown and very difficult to see the bottom. Even in a few inches of water. If I were to clean the filter I would fill the bucket with a little bit of water and then do it with clear water as opposed to siphon water. Baby shrimp will be in that filter sponge. Now.... This is how I personally do my water changes. No drip, no aged water. I put in a piece of styrafoam on the surface of the water. Following that I get my water. Water in = water out. That is the goal! I match temperature, add in my dechlorinator, and then dump in the water. One hand holds the bucket and the other hand holds the styrafoam in place. After cleaning, this is what the sand looks like. a slight change, but a lot of waste removed. ......and the shrimp are back to their meal for the day. Hopefully that helps. If I had a third hand I'd record a video for everyone, but hopefully the photos and the words give a good bit of detail on the method. I'll run some water tests here shortly and edit the results. I needed to take a break before doing so. The Easy Green, Iron, and buffers are dosed in (small amounts) and my hope is that the GH and KH ratio is a bit better now. Water Test Results: 5/31/2023 Temp: 69.1 Phosphate: 0.75-1.25 ppm (this was hard for me to read, color was blueish, but very light) KH: 5 deg (89 ppm) GH: 9 deg (161 ppm)

That's perfect. I would love to have a few of these!

It's great to see the positive results from the dip. In the video she discusses molts and how long to observe. Heartbreak avoided, and thankfully it's ok. I do know people who have added aquarium salt to their shrimp tanks for similar issues. Definitely not as large of a dose of course. Your question earlier.... Paraguard: Paracleanse: Active ingredient: Metronidazole and Praziquantel Ich-X: Dosage produces concentration of 0.5 mg/L of malachite green and 15 mg/L of formalia ~5.55 mg/L of Formaldehyde. if you have the third one on the list there it should be equivalent.

I watched the product video for your tank and it looks like the lid itself is a really nice part of the setup. If you wanted to mount the aquasky you'd probably need to cut into that lid. I can't find any videos on someone who has done that. I don't know if there is a replacement lid option available online either that would allow you to use a traditional light. There are some places on sites like etsy that do make lexan lids. There may be a route to get one made using that option.

@TeeJay I think your tank has floating plants? Do you always see your shrimp hanging around them? I was re-skimming the thread and realize no one had commented. It's very normal for shrimp to spend time on the floating plants and to clean the roots.

Here is the ACO blog article on the parameters related to crushed coral. It does explain things a little better. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh Crushed coral will be helpful for KH stability. It can mix in with the sand and won't look too out of place. The usual recommendation is 1 lb per 10G. Given that shrimp are involved you do want to adjust slowly over a few weeks and not right away. The easiest way to handle that normally is to jut add a little bit at a time and to let the KH slowly rise. The substrate is a lower flow region, so you'd have that slower release over time. To go from a very low KH into a "safe range" of 60-80 ppm I would pull some tank water into a 5G bucket and add an airstone. Monitor that change over a few days (or weeks) and then you can slowly add that buffered water and coral into the tank once you're happy with the levels in the bucket. If your KH from the tap is good, the GH looks like it's perfect also, then you would want to simply review your maintenance schedule, water change schedule and how you're doing those things. If KH is crashing it's usually due to a few reasons. The main two being bioload (or organics in the water) and something called old-tank syndrome that can set in. Ammonia would likely come from the snails. You may have more in there than you realize. The 30 shrimp are going to be extremely low bioload by comparison. Adding in easy green will show nitrates in your water testing, but the excess nitrites tells us that it's ammonia and filtration related. New stuff is on the way, but for now water changes can be helpful while you wait for those things to arrive and to build up the bacteria colonies. While the stems and floaters should be your best friend at stopping nitrates from building up, you do want to see them growing a bit more before you can rely on them as a main part of your filtration. It's relatively new plants along with sand substrate. It just means it may take time for them to settle in.

I know 😞 You need a shrimp cleaner for a day. Sit there and clean it up then have em spend all day checking periodically for baby shrimps. Honestly though, some sand is just easier to clean. The stuff in Riddick's tank is the extra extra fine sand and it's a major hassle. It's like glue. Every time I try to clean it I take a bunch of sand with me. Silt, heck, I can't even call it sand it's so fine. Riddick's stuff is on the right.

It's totallllllly dirty. do you see that layer of messy mess? It might be hard to see because I'm currently arguing with my camera app. I'll siphon stuff today. No Corydoras in that tank, just the clown pleco.

That's wonderful! I am glad I was able to help out. Keep us posted 🙂

Yeah. Even shrimp don't want to be that cold.

Here's mine. Cleaning day. Look at all that dirt after 2 weeks! Time for a clean. 🙂 His show must be on.

What temperature? My rubberlip plecos and otos did great and do well in the upper 60-low 70s

https://www.amazonasmagazine.com/category/amazonas-oleary/

The hungriest in line. 😂 Blurry a bit. I can't get this thing to focus. 😞

You're getting ammonia from somewhere. Hm... Cut feeding to every other day or just verify it's the correct amount for shrimp and not over feeding. The PH swing could explain the death, but explaining the KH swing is another puzzle. Some sort of bioload used the KH. That crashed the PH. Having a minimum of around 60-80 ppm has done ok with stability for me. Check for dead fish or any other common reasons for ammonia to spike. Move hardscape and remove food debris, clean filters, etc. Hopefully we can figure it out! Yeah. That is something where the shell can change color due to stress. On my amanos they get reddish color.

Hopefully it's not a major thing. Definitely something to keep in mind and ABSOLUTELY something to keep an eye out to pull molts for. As mentioned that article is basically the go-to for us here. In the EU they have shrimp books, but I don't have anything I can reference. She mentions a very quick salt bath. ^^ You can measure the specific water height to get a better idea but to the brim it's 87 oz. 7.25 x 6 x 3.5 https://www.sensorsone.com/length-width-and-height-to-volume-calculator/?lval=7.25&lunit=inches+(in)&lfctr=in&wval=6&wunit=inches+(in)&wfctr=in&hval=3.5&hunit=inches+(in)&hfctr=in&vunit=fluid+ounces+(fl+oz%2C+imp)&vfctr=flozimp

For clarity, I believe this is the video being referenced: I believe the mindset behind the methodology is to ensure you don't have fertilizer as a limiting factor. Here's one of the relevant statements from the video: I apologize if the punctuation is wonky, it's from the auto-generated transcript.

First, it is wonderful to have another shrimpkeeper on the forums! Welcome. Hopefully we can get things going on the right track. I would start by asking you to purchase a GH/KH liquid test kit to verify what is going on. There is always 2 things we need to keep in mind with our shrimp tanks. What are the parameters of the water we are putting into the tank and what are the parameters of the tank itself? There is also a lot of questions surrounding water changes, how often, specifically the method of adding water back into the shrimp tanks, and ensuring we don't cause stress molting. Testing the tapwater (or whatever you're using for water changes) we'd want to run an off-gas test. Take a sample of water and aerate it with an airstone for 24 hours. Test it at that point. Compare that to your aquarium water results. Once you have those tests, we can dive into the GH/KH side of things a bit further. I recently had an experience where my strip was telling me one value, but my shrimp were dying on me. I lost ~4 shrimp in a matter of days. My GH was right at where it should be, my KH was where it need be, my PH was fine, everything was great. Visually with my eyes I was seeing issues. My advice for anyone with shrimp is to just make absolutely certain you can verify those two parameters with liquid tests. Alright... let's dive into it. Stratum is an active substrate. This will pull minerals over time from the water. This is the most common reason why you see it recommended to keep Neos on inert substrate like sand or gravel. In no way does this mean that is the reason for issues, but it does mean that it's a concern and is something you want to monitor over time. Having something like Seachem Equilibrium or another Neocaridina specific shrimp buffer might be beneficial to have on hand in the case you do need to add a little bit of minerals back into the water. The other thing that stratum does is it makes it incredibly difficult for shrimp to graze. This is what my gut instinct tells me could be leading to issues for you. It might not be the full reason, it could be a mix of things, but it is something to note. Check this out: The other thing stratum can do is add excess nutrients to the water causing a lot of algae. I see the time when the shrimp were added, but if both tanks are relatively new, then a series of water changes would help to get excess nutrients out of the system. I'll mention a bit more on how I would handle the algae later on. It is really nice that you keep a log of everything. I would be feeding Shrimp King every 2 days for my tanks. It's a PERFECT food and it's great as a staple diet for your shrimp. Making sure they have access to it might be the key. You can actually feed less it seem than you are feeding, especially if we focus on a few techniques to make sure the shrimp have access to that food! Step one is the feeding dish. Step 2 might be feeding them when the lights are out. This gives the shrimp the ability to graze all day long and then while the fish are sleeping they can get their specific shrimp food and eat it all night long. This will also really help out the baby shrimp to have access to the calcium and other nutrients in the food. Something like BacterAE is often discussed and used for shrimp. I think MST has a few videos and he does caution overuse of that particular product. The main thing is to make sure the shrimp have total nutrition and to make sure that you're not overfeeding or polluting the tank. I'll attach the video below, but here is a quote from his website: https://aquariumshrimpkeeping.com/bacter-ae-micro-powder/ In my methodology, I use a bit of a non-conventional method where I don't have access to some of the nicer shrimp foods. I am using what I have on hand. I'll feed powdered food 1-2x a week, but my main diet is going to be shrimp specific food (with minerals) every other day. I'll see the adults eat, then I'll feed powder the following day for the baby shrimp. If you don't have baby shrimp, then you really don't need to feed powder food. It is easy, very easy, to overfeed shrimp. Excess nitrates means you're overfeeding and that does stress out the shrimp. I try hard to minimize that. Given the community setup, I know that isn't going to be an easy task. Mineral junkie (or in my case even equilibrium) can be used as a powdered calcium food for the shrimp too. I'll attach a video below that is applicable to neo and caridina shrimp. It's a thoroughly tested technique and it works well! One of the other things that causes issues with shrimp and certainly caused me some stress was the question of how well can the shrimp hide in the tank. Both of these tanks do seem relatively open. The top tank has a large flat area, which is great for grazing, and it has two large flat rocks. In my case, I had 3-4 pieces of wood, rocks, and plants, but the shrimp were so stressed out from the amount of corydoras in the tank and the swordtails I had were definitely not conducive to a stress free environment. Ever since that point and through a variety of other tests to get fish in with my shrimp, I've accepted the theory that the "best method" is always going to be to have a shrimp only setup and to eventually add in fish or to add culls to your community tank. The second tank shown does have a good amount of plant cover. That is wonderful! I would hope that the shrimp have an easier time in that tank and aren't on the back glass or exposed nearly as much as in the top tank. Both tanks have some pretty intense algae and I do feel the stress of trying to combat that stuff. There is a variety of ways to try to eradicate the algae and it's a very complex issue because you're dealing with pretty much every type of algae. Using a phosphate test kit to monitor excess organics in the water is a good place to start. Running carbon, running purigen is also likely to help out combat some excess nutrient issues in the water. I would be scraping the glass every week, all 4 sides, given how densely packed the algae is on the glass. You do want algae on the back (and potentially sides) of the glass for the fish and shrimp to graze on, but you also don't want it to get this dense on you. If I don't scrape my tank for 6+ months it might be that bad on the back glass. Putting things like the green diatoms from the glass into the water lets the filter remove it mechanically and then you can scrape it out. Both tanks likely need a heavy siphon on the substrate to remove as much excess food, organics, and algae off of the substrate as possible. You can also try doing a dip on all of your plants. The popular recommendation on the forums is to use something called "Reverse Respiration" which is a technique of submerging the plants in algae. For BBA specifically I also recommend this technique with an airstone: Ultimately, controlling the light and nutrients is your friend here. After you complete the above steps to manually remove the algae as much as possible, you can do a blackout on the tank for 7 days. It was recently revealed to me that for BBA, which is spread via algae spores, you would want to perform a water change every day to help remove as much of those spores as possible during the blackout. Those water changes will be stressful for the shrimp, so it's best to remove them from the tanks while you do these deep clean measures and keep them in a tub of 5g bucket. They will absolutely be fine with this and should do well. There are a variety of ways to setup a "shrimp tub" and given the low bioload you won't see issues with something like ammonia. Limit your light to 4 hours a day and run that setup for a few weeks. This limits your algae growth and gives your plants a chance to catch up. Once you see growth and you see the algae dye off, then you can steadily increase the duration of the light to the normal 8-10 hours per day. I did this and it worked really well to keep things in check. It was recommended to me as a last ditch technique to fight BBA from Bentley Pascoe. I highly recommend it if you're at a loss of what to do! I hope the above helps to get things on the right track and leads to thinking about what is causing the issues you're seeing. I am sorry for your losses and the struggles. I wish for success for you and hopefully you see little baby shrimp thriving soon!

For caridina, no. You'd use the shrimp GH buffers. (no KH or low KH to keep the PH low)

It literally doesn't look real. It's like a green screen background for a photoshoot! 😂 I'd spend so much time outside.

No. They would absorb minerals and lower the PH. Here's one of Mark's videos. I highly recommend his stuff. It helped me a lot to get my tanks going and set me on the right path for my neo tank.

Yep, go ahead and bring that thing right on over. I got some tests for your secret weapon. 😂