nabokovfan87

Yes you can. Over time it will likely mix together, but to start out with I plan to do the same thing with my tank.

Alright.... Let's reboot this thread and get things going in the correct direction! *Rewind a few issues* All of the shrimp are now in the tank and the colony is OFFICIALLY alive and kicking now. One of the females I got today does have eggs / berried, but the key factor here is that I have the raw shrimp in there and now we are down to my own ability to keep these things going. Briefly, I will mention I did find a worm in the tank that was pretty mature in its lifecycle. this isn't something I want to see, but it's not uncommon given that I had them in another tank. I will likely attempt a method to get rid of them, but right now the key is going to be adding a feeding dish and controlling how much food goes into the tank. One day, some swordtail fry will likely make it in there to go ahead and hunt some worms for me. Quality definitely matters. Something I've seen in other tanks, online videos, and just from shrimp sellers in general is that they either don't cull enough or they don't have enough genetic variation resulting in weak lines. Meaning, the shrimp you might have might not be 3-4 generations deep in that color pattern. One of the most interesting things I learned when researching this project, care, and other topics was that any color Neo shrimp is a version of a cherry shrimp. Call me silly, but I seriously thought that cherry shrimp was it's own species, Neocaridina Davidi was it's own species, Caridina was it's own group, and then Saluwesi was another grouping. We do have a few different species in the Neocaridina family as well now, but you can understand thee question when we go from a genetics chart of "grades of cherry shrimp" into a world where you have painted fire reds, sakura red, black rose, and all of these other variations on the theme. Once I understood that aspect, it became a lot more clear how critical it is to start with the genetic variation and the coloration that I needed for a long term, successful colony. This is where I am very, very curious to see exactly what happens with shrimplets in the tank and their development. I do need to move this tank one more time, but right now things are on hold due to electrical risk. (There's always something) I am not dripping water back into the tank. I simply cannot do this and won't have the setup to achieve this any time soon. the tank is absolutely setup to receive water in this fashion, but unless I can hook a 5G bucket to the ceiling it just isn't possible. I do not have any way to match temp easily apart from my own hand and skill doing so. I don't have RO water and I am at the mercy of whatever the water company does to the water. I will have Alkalinity buffer, neutral regulator, equilibrium on hand if I need to dose anything. The goal is to have a stable environment and I perform weekly 25-50% water changes. This week I've done two 25% water changes. My focus for care is on oxygenated, cool, clean water. In my experience with the Amanos I think this is a recipe for success and I hope that it results in a pretty strong colony with low stress. I plan to have a ton of wood in the tank at all times, lots of hardscape, and I would like to add a lot more botanicals into the tank. Wood works very well for this setup given that I am changing water pretty often, and that I have been running this tank (and this wood) for a very long time. I am looking for one more piece to add, but I am not rushed at all to do so. I do think that wood is one of the most important surfaces for this species. My other goal is to have low demand plants and to let those plants do their thing. I don't plan to have some form of an aquascape, but I do plan to attach them to look aesthetically pleasing. My hope is that the plants will attach to the hardscape, grow, and propagate. I also plan to add some floating plants to this tank, a first for me. the goal is to get varieties of anubias, el nino fern, and some hygrophilia plants in this tank. I plan to feed every other day. One thing I am learning is that I need to get used to how small these shrimp are and what they can physically eat each time I do feed them. One pellet for 5 shrimp is probably fine, but I do need to crush it up as well in some situations. These ones are a lot smaller than amano shrimp and we will have some more on that later once I know these shrimp are fully grown. I have ~3 batches of shrimp (2 different genetic strains) and I do have a little bit of variation in size. The female that was berried is ~1 inch big and I would say the majority of the shrimp are .75-1" long right now. I also think there is a slightly higher amount of females in the tank compared to males. Keeping both genders alive is a critical task for me. I have already watched the male (or one of) mate with two of the females and I fully expect to have a lot of shrimplets pretty soon. Both the females were saddled and will likely have eggs soon. Overall everything seems to be doing good so far. Once the fish were removed and enough shrimp were added to the tank, it's definitely changed the dynamic and their behavior. I woke up today to 5-6 shrimp on the front piece of wood without any fear, 3 of which were saddled females grazing. I need to see them molt and to see them go through their stages that they do.

5G moss growout tank?

I planted some moss in the substrate, watched one of the adults today just do a full nosedive for a minute or two today. I guess they like the choice. They've been bonkers! So many plants getting tossed up. Looking forward to it.

Beautiful shrimp. I am so happy. I know @Minanorahhas some amazing ones as well, but I had to get these! Finally heard back from the shipper. The replacements should be arriving today. Returning home to the house now to go handle that.

I would cull them so you have two lines. Wild type (spots) eventually go to a rili type. (Blue rili) You don't want that mixing with the blue because then you'll end up with blue rili or just black mixing in there. Control it better now before things get out of hand. 🙂 Temp at there is fine. Will encourage breeding. Lowering it by a few degrees helps with oxygenation and development. (Lower temp, not too cold showed in a study larger size in the end, but a lower ramp up time to get to that size. Slow start, but better overall development in the end of the study.)

Emailed them twice this week. Still wondering what on earth is going on and if/when something will ship out as replacement. Anyways.... Morning shrimp photos.

Only if something controls their population. 😉 Yes I know it should be me. Just going to have fry in there eventually. Pups love this one.

Something is buffering things that high. Usual culprits are rock, coral, or a water softener. Botanicals aren't a great way to go from that high of a PH and maintain it at a much lower one. Soil substrate is the usual method and would be used to do the same thing as crushed coral (long term stability) but would of course buffer down instead of up.

Cory has a video talking about it on Murphy's tank and shows that the fish will eventually just eat it off. (Some fish)

Apparently I just feed worms now. 😞

I've seen them on glass. Might be a different species or something? Tank full of corydoras, they go on the glass. Yep......

@Lennie has a vid of his sterbais doing this or doing something different. If you ever get a chance record the lasers doing there thing, I would love to see it. Here's mine doing it at night or early morning. Same week:

Salt will do a lot of the work for you. I would start with normal aquarium salt before you do anything and just let it run for a week with all the equipment to sanitize stuff. This also gives you the chance to test and run everything you'd like to add, verify your setup, then do your water changes and rinse the tank and fill it up to start cycling. I once emailed caribsea asking if I could take sand from my freshwater tank and use it for salt. Of course they said no, probably a bit of confusion on what I was trying to ask, but yeah.... Dry things out, the nice the is that stuff that lives in. Freshwater usually can't handle salinity. Are you going to use the BRS talk (see video/talk on cycling a tank that he did) which basically is about conditioning the rock and such in a trashcan for a while as a method to let it cycle in a very controlled way and encourage specific things?

What about on top of the bookcase and move the PC tower behind the monitor? Moving that somewhere if you can would really help. As someone with asthma, the litterbox was never my friend and I was always forced to be around it much more than I'd like to have been. (Was in my bathroom in the house)

Me too!

They are omnivores 🙂 . Sometimes it has it's benefits!

The big leaves you might want to remove to encourage new growth. Maybe @knee or @Mmiller2001 or @gjcarew can comment on that specifically. I do see some small, bright red, new growth which means to me the plant is still there and still kicking.

Almost all of them look fertile to me. This is the only one I see that isn't.

I would try to place the tank so it isn't over the grate. You can use bricks / wood to make a flat surface or put a sheet of plastic on top of the carpet too. this is common for computers due to static. I would recommend lexan if you can find some. If you get some off cuts, you can just place one under each leg and level the stand as you normally would.

Review them, make sure they look normal. Only remove it if the shrimp is diseased.

Yes.

From top to bottom: Nitrate: 0 Nitrite: 0 PH: 6.5 KH: 40 GH: 60-80 Let us know how the results of the sniff test go.

It was a day of silence for the Clown Plecos losing out. 😞