nabokovfan87

Congratulations! Sometimes you just need to have some patience to get something amazing.

@Lennie SEE you want Dragonstone 🙂 Beautiful pieces of hardscape! Nice tank.

It was one of Cory's vlogs when he was doing fishroom updates, essentially trying to keep up with the KH in the tank by doing enough water changes and for the sake of stability he added CC to the substrate. Entirely up to you and how you want to handle it, but we have pretty much exactly the same water it looks like. I use 3*1/8 tsp of seachem alkalinity buffer per 5gallons during a water change. Sometimes it's 2.5 scoops, usually it's a bit more like 3.5 scoops. In that range should get you to stable as long as you're doing everything else to your advantage. The new tank I'm setting up is going to have some active soil, but no neo shrimp in it as of now. It might eventually be a cull tank if need be. Here's my results for comparison. GH is lower because of the rain and snow last 2-3 months

It's definitely on the low side of stable. (About 20 ppm KH) What does your tap look like? I can test mine if you want as well, it's extremely similar. I've got one tank with seiryu stone and the other with a lot of organics (wood). But overall they both have inactive substrate and are pretty similar with the buffers I use. Knee lives close to me, has evenower KH water but again, very similar. As far as OTS goes, based on using water changes to keep KH to match your tap... Do you think you're changing enough water often enough in both tanks?

Could also have been residue in the test tube that caused the PH test to give a higher result.

Then you'd go by KH. Whichever makes sense with a particular KH value is the one seemingly giving you the correct value. If KH is 0 and PH is 7.5+ then clearly something isn't right. Water might not have off gassed or there's other things going on. ..... alright, looking at your test results what I see is: High GH, 0 KH, very low PH (around 6.0, but off the bottom of the scale) On the API test, it's difficult to tell, could be 6.8 or could be 7.0. Is there CO2 being dosed into the tank that would cause the low PH value? You're probably looking at 1.5-2 lbs per 10G for this tank in question. It might be easier to use alkalinity buffer, but that is entirely up to your setup. I would opt for 60-80 KH in a tank with invertebrates or heavy feeding of calcium based foods for them. When you say shrimp are dying and with these results, my gut tells me that you're basically looking at molting issues due to deficiency. Stratum would buffer the tank down and is really only recommended for Caridina shrimp, not neocaridina shrimp. Marks shrimp tank's has a video on stratum specifically compared to the substrate he uses. Depending on the volume of substrate in question I think ultimately you'd want to opt for a substrate swap and then adding something like crushed coral (start small and increase as need be) until you're happy with the values. A. Take a small tub and some fresh tap water. B. Take an ACO strip and cut it in half so you get two tests if you don't want to use two. C. Add a cup of substrate to that sample of tap water. Draining as much of the tank water off as you can. Retest and compare. D. Leave it for 24-48 hours, preferably with an air stone, and then retest. This will give you an idea specifically of how the substrate is altering your water. In terms of Neos you're usually trying to target 6.8-7.5 for PH and 0-10 for dKH. @kneeo has very similar water. Can you chime in with your view here on what's causing issues? Inert vs. active substrate being the cause for the change in parameters is likely what's going on.

I just clean it like it's a potato. Basically. Nothing crazy, nothing harsh.

Difficult to say. "dirty" is a subjective term and what I say is dirty you might think is find. Neocaridina and Caridina shrimp generally have issues when parameters get out of wack. A lot of the "get a shrimp tank, you don't have to do as much work" mantra is because they have low waste and nitrates tend to stay lower for longer. This doesn't mean that I think dirty is ok. A dirty substrate leads to other issues. If the tank is dirty you'll have higher organics in the water and potentially algae issues in general. I like to have my tanks siphoned (not easy with small shrimp) and I like to keep up with water changes. I want the shrimp to be eating fresh/healthy algae and food to reduce risk of something like rotting food causing a bacterial issue. The only time I don't do a good job of siphoning is when there is very small fry. You can use a turkey baster and siphon things that way. Some people tape the siphon and baster together for planted tanks to get the "right amount" of debris off the substrate. Maybe that is the method that works well for you! The first picture is my neo tank and the second is my amano tank. As you know, amanos do well in a lot of setups and get bigger. It's a lot easier to clean the tank with them avoiding the siphon. This is from one feeding and one clown pleco (and shrimp) in a few days. Maintenance day is tomorrow for this tank. I usually need to clean the prefilters midweek. I do feed pretty heavily and I do have the tank overstocked right now waiting for the larger one to be available. Again, dirty is a subjective thing. This is just my method and I can't say it's the right or wrong way. This is what works for me and how I try to maintain things due to some of the issues I have in my tank (algae spores from BBA).

I just use a ratio of the alkaline buffer. If you don't want the coral to be a part of the substrate, my use has been that I didn't have enough room / qty in a filter to keep kh where I wanted with coral. In the filter is a great option, just not in my equipment setup. I use the buffer because I run black substrate as well.

I put a small rock in the end and let the "tails" float up. I also tend to try shorter or longer ones to see what's easiest for them. This past week I took some moss that was about 3-4" long and buried that in the substrate on one end so it can start to grow. Fish enjoyed it, I'm assuming it would eventually house eggs but also be very easy to "uproot". The method I generally prefer is to use a rock with moss as well as other plants that make sense. Have cover for the fry, they tend to then see enough food, then spawn (in that order) for me. Sometimes it's quick, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort. @TeeJay has some peppered corydoras and might be of some help as well for this species. Here is another fun thread to check out as well.

Yeah. Seachem's stuff is a bit weird. there is PH up/down and then there is a planted tank version and a non-planted tank version. I think you'd either need alkalinity buffer or acid buffer (depending if you're trying to bring KH up or down). Equilibrium would be the planted tank version to adjust GH. I would try to use phosphate remover (seachem has phosguard) and their is also phosphate pads you can use. It didn't have a crazy quick impact when I was trying to get my phosphates down from 3 ppm, but perhaps I just wasn't using enough or something. As Lennie mentioned, water changes help, just don't do too much too often. The BBA tends to have a 7-10 day cycle for me. If I miss a water change it blooms, sends out the spores, and then progresses incrementally. In the photos I see GDA (green diatom algae) and other algaes. The green I generally don't worry about, balance the tank and it will just become fish food. I would tend to do a 30-50% water change every day or every other day to get the phosphates down. It shouldn't bother the stocking and your amanos will be very active after each one. 🙂 Some of your plants I'm just not familiar with what they should look like so I think @Seattle_Aquarist is a great person who can help us all understand a bit about any deficiencies or next steps for this situation. Getting the right buffer is going to be helpful to keep phosphates in check. Running carbon / phosguard might be the way to get the number down and sort of "reset" everything that you need to.

That giant cylinder tank at the end is really cool. I enjoy the way they used the plants and how it all works.

The biggest difference is going to be how much you get per purchase. Prices vary, so you'd want to verify that on your side. April Aquatics is a partner store and ships ACO products. (as you're aware, I see the logo in the photo 🙂 )

Yes, It does look like cyano to me as well. I would opt for maracyn/erythromycin in the tank to treat it as well. Salt would be something I'd add as well as additional air. Avoid the salt for snails of course.

Add this one to the store page / review if you haven't! Really beautiful work.

I feel very blind for missing this, my apologies. OK.... Neocaridina Shrimp. Here is the relevant video / playlist that would fit what you're doing. He has quite a few videos on this topic and there might be another one that has further detail. Playlists specific to neocaridina shrimp tank setup is also there for your viewing enjoyment. This is also pretty important. Stability is the key. Get your method down, be consistent in how you apply any buffer, and monitor them for how they behave during water changes.

Depends on the rocks. Some you want to have a really strong water pressure to clean out the interior mud (dragon stone) and stuff like seiryu just scrub off and rinse off. If you want to you can acid wash certain rocks as well (seiryu is great for this) to decrease some of the marbling and buffer affects. You don't want to dump hot / boiling water on the rocks, it can cause them to fracture or explode. I just use water from a hose. I don't use pretty much anything besides that. If you're using the rock from a tank previously, I get a bit more aggressive with cleaning / scrubbing. Dish sponge and other things mentioned above.

Lighting is fine 🙂 Sub dominant just means it's not the brightest fish in the herd. They tend to be more muted to reduce their stress and visibility. It takes energy to color as well. Some will be very bright / intense, others might not be. It's normal and that could be what you're seeing. sub-dominant just meaning it's not the male fighting for dominance in the group and has given up that role and trying to blend in.

Which species of shrimp are you working on so I can grab the right video reference.

It could just be that they are subdominant? does the setup have lights+timer for them?

Endlers (from ACO blog)

terra cotta is fine. any issues, use fine grain or extra fine sandpaper. Looks more like a gentle ben to me (yes, SW reference, if you know you know)

Maybe go to a second opinion? Feel better. I'm sorry you're dealing with all that pain. I've got neck pain and it just isn't ever fun. You use your neck for a lot of things and sometimes sitting just is intolerable. Very interesting! I've never seen guppy grass in person. I'd recommend Christmas moss if you need something in a pinch. Really good to hear that you're noticing such a difference.

Or a wall mounted shelf 🙂 Yeah, it just isn't feasible. The ceiling of my room (of the entire first story) isn't robust enough for basically anything. The people that were here before us did a lot of poor quality work. 2 walls in my room aren't walls and I'm fairly certain most of what should be external walls with normal stud spacing and insulation isn't. As a result of all of that we are at the mercy of the elements a bit more than I'd like and that's just talking about temperature. The closet in my room which is adjacent to another room and a hall closet has 0.5 walls (including ceiling) and the issue is really that they tried to be cheap and sneaky. It's a real headache, but I am making due with what I can as best I can. In the time of setting up the tank and getting it resolved.... 3 times I've moved the tank and had issues with the floor level (or traffic around said tank in two locations), 1 ceiling water leak, 2 floods, 2 stopped sinks, 1 stopped shower, and now electrical issues. Yeah, I saw the worms the afternoon I did this for the first time. 😞 Very small amount, but it is something I do consider as a feeding option. Good to know about the pellets. I am used to the amano world of running off with the food like it's a cookie and never too big for them. It's in there, forgot to mention it! Working on moss bushes now as a new method. Trying it out in the bigger tank to propagate out moss and have an easy way to trim. When I can find some, suss as well will be mandatory.

It would be in there long term. As you change water out week to week that is how you would modify the PH. The coral should generally keep it stable. You might already have buffered the water to the level per the amount of CC you have in the tank.