nabokovfan87

For sure. I had a red rili that got stuck in there and I'm still dealing with the ramifications from that. It was a bloody Mary, shadow red rili. That led to the culls. When I made this colony the goal was to cross 2-3 sources for strong genetics and to get things off on the right start. I would say it's less than you'd think that I do cull. This was probably the second or third cull in about a year, speaking in terms of a major cull effort. I also do cull ones that don't develop color as fast as their siblings. So it's not just that im culling for a good BM shrimp, but also ones that are very vibrant red..... I'm talking weeks old, sometimes days old. Yep! I've read a bit into a few studies on color development and I do some things to really give these shrimp the best chance of developing color quickly, deep color, and to give them the best chance at having full color / s-grade. There's a few threads out there and some posts earlier in this journal when I was in research mode for this tank. 🙂

After cleaning: I found a tank of a female. She looks healthy, content, and she just is the boss in the tank right now. She has really intense color and it's good to see one of the older shrimp around, especially with everything going on. I did a cull today. I pulled about 20-25 or so shrimp that were pretty good size. Adolescent adults. There was one yellow and all of them were starting to look a bit like zebra pattern. I don't know if this is a BM male trait, but a lot of the ones I pulled were indeed male. I do have some males that look really good. I am curious about what the baby shrimp in the tank develop as given all the adjustments I've been making the past couple of months with their food. I wanted to go ahead and point out something like this cull below. I have had a few people ask me when you should cull, what is the right size when you can tell good vs. bad. It's definitely a range over time and it's a bit like tasting for cooking or coffee, comparison is your friend here. This is the youngest cull I pulled from the tank. It's one of those... once in every 3-4 spawns you'll get a weird color. I pulled one that was actually yellow-red! This one looks to be, fingers crossed, another one of those shadow blue-red rili crosses. Update on corydoras watch, we definitely have more than one. 🙂 Before I realized I had the wrong color balance on: So yeah... I apologize that the "before" photos are that stark grey/dark color. It's just because of the color settings with this light. I am always flipping back and forth testing things and balancing it out to the right tone. It might seem fake/blown up, but I can guarantee you with some pretty clear certainty the more yellow/brown hue is 100% the right look to what my eye sees in person! (Tangent topic: A ton of people will get stuck on photos being edited and colors manipulated or blown up for the sake of showing a good quality fish. The goal for me is to always replicate what your eye sees in person. Photos, cameras, video, and software all play a role in that balance. I can take the same photo with the same hardware using different apps or software and it's a bit different. I can even take the same photo and edit that photo using different software and it'll come out slightly different based on a variety of factors. How accurate the screen your viewing the photo is plays a role as well! It's all a bit irrelevant for some people, but one of the things I pay attention to for myself and wanted to learn about growing up was audio/video editing and accuracy.... fun stuff!)

Tough to see what's going on without a video. As the fine holes clog, then the larger pathways are used. That bubble looks pretty big though.

Double dose is pretty common. Used for when tap has chloramines. That being said it's often stated on the bottle that up to 5x does is safe. The main thing is to just have oxygenation because the chemical does remove some oxygen from the water. Not any sort of major issue. Dose it for the tank, add back in your water. Bobs your uncle.

I spent a bit of the night before last looking for baby corydoras and just examining the tank. I see bba on the glass being a bit of nuisance and algae setting in on the swords. I am trying to keep that stuff in check, move plants around right now, and plan for propagating things out. The SRep has been hit pretty hard and I need to get something that grows fast to choke out the bba a little bit. I've gone ahead and put in the request via the bank for the refund on my plants order. 3 months, 3-4 emails, I'm just done waiting. I'll report back when that stuff is resolved, but fingers crossed it's a smooth resolution. Once that stuff is done... I am thinking it's going to seriously be time to add some fish into the tank that aren't bottom dwellers. I'm worried about what might get stuck behind the mesh on the back wall, but we will cross that bridge when need be. It's been a week. I need to dive into the tank(s) and just get work done.

Today was one of the bigger cleaning days of the tank. I tried seriously hard to limit the amount of water I removed, but I can only do that so much. I pulled all the rocks to one side as gently as I could and I removed all of the wood as well. I did end up scraping off the glue on the wood, so that should be cleared up now and looking normal. I cleaned one of the filters and boy that was a mess. Troubling news of the cleanout was that there was ~6 dead adult shrimp and my gut tells me all females again. I don't know if this is old age or what, but I've lost a lot more shrimp than I'd like in the past couple of weeks. I have been keeping the GH in check, I will test again. I absolutely need to get the plant load up. I think it's between food/surfaces and there just not being enough. This is the colony crash starting to set in, or we are going to end up having something in my water from the water company causing some issues. I was able to finally fix the water movement issue by removing the taller pipe on the filter. The cone of bubbles leaving the chimney is about 3-4x larger than it used to be and the movement in that sense really helps. I do see a few corydoras fry in there and I'm not quite sure how many. Time will tell! It's a good place for them to grow up because the sand is filthy right now. (in both tanks) I am going to try to feed a lot more powdered food, potentially order in some bacteria food to feed once a week. I also am lacking bee pollen (out of stock when I ordered) and that is playing a factor here too. I am going to ramp up the repashy feeding, but I probably should get something dedicated for shrimp or limit myself to repashy super green only. Before photos:

Fish only, no dwarf shrimp, then I will often just do a 50% water change. The max ammonia I ever want to see is 0.25 at most. By the time you do the water change, that's cut to about 0.15 and after 24 hours you're back up. Ammonia --> Nitrite happens pretty fast, but nitrite --> nitrate takes a little bit longer to get done. 1.0 is a pretty high amount of ammonia, in my experience. The goal of water changes at this point is to keep ammonia from climbing too high, but it's also about getting the dechlorinator in there when you end up with any ammonia or nitrite. Once you see nitrite, you'll likely never see ammonia anymore because it can so quickly be converted to nitrite. Then you're doing that same thing with nitrite.

It would help, but it won't be as helpful as other things. That's good, lower is best!

Cycling for me has been with food to generate ammonia, not necessarily fish in there. Test for all stages of the nitrogen cycle as mentioned. Preferably every 12 hours. If you see any ammonia or nitrite, then you'd do your water change and dose in dechlorinator. (No more than once per 24 hours) If you have chloramines or very high levels, do a double dose of dechlorinator. Make sure you're running an extra air stone and that your filtration is working properly. If you see ammonia high (let's say above 0.5) or nitrite high (above 0.5) then you'd do that water change. If you run into issues with levels, use a bacteria starter like seachem stability or fritz zyme 7 for about a week.

Graeme uses something for his that I believe is exactly what you're talking about. It's just a multi-stage filtration thing that results in a water similar to RO filtration. It's a great little way to guarantee the quality of the water.

Heaters. Nope. We have a generator, but not a whole house one and I can run some heaters in a pinch. I would need something like a solar panel to charge a battery longer term. I have a single air stone that can run for a week. Media goes in the tank, clean the filter, and just run air. For my other tank, I would have to run it with batteries. I do have enough pumps and batteries to keep them happy. Just those heaters.

Definitely great decor for around the tank, just not in it. 🙂

You can try painting the pieces if you are unable to find a replacement. Especially having them above the water as oppose to in the water it might give you a better chance of alleviating any concerns or issues. Simply betta has a ton of videos on painting things for her tanks. As far as what those things are and where you would find them, I think your best bet might be mcmaster-carr or home depot / lowes. They look like a generic "channel" and you would use them in various industries with glass. The specific dimensions or spec sheet would be helpful to give you a part number to track down, maybe there is one stamped on the parts themselves? That being said I'll try to link below the closest I could find. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Thermoclear-1-4-in-x-96-in-x-1-4-in-6mm-Thermoclear-Polycarbonate-Multi-Wall-U-Channel-PCTWU-6MM/205202529 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Thermoclear-2-in-x-96-in-x-1-4-in-6mm-Polycarbonate-Multi-Wall-H-Channel-PCTWH-6MM/205202532

Amazing signs! 😁 That's awesome.

I'm very sorry for your loss @ShineOn75 Please feel free to send me a DM if you run into issues with them in future.

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea recently used it as well to success.

Hydrogen peroxide will attack anything on the filter, good or bad. It's an oxidizer. That being said, if you have a secondary filtration or other methods to keep the tank cycled, it should be safe to pull the sponge, treat it, and then add it back to the tank.

With acrylic you can only polish out so many scratches before it gets too thin. Just something to keep in mind. There are likely a ton of videos or articles out there with people who have done it a few times and would be able to determine where that line is. 55G tank on sale wouldn't be that expensive, but I hear you. You can also look into the 60B or 75G if the stand situation makes sense. They have lids out of polycarbonate as well as mesh / net lids. You can always just clean it and let it sit until you're ready to take up the repair tasks or other things with the stand.

On the last day of treatment (day 6 I think) you dose the meds and then give it 24 hours. You would want to go ahead and then do a water change. I normally do 30-50% and then that will cut the salt level back as well as the med removal. Once you're done with that, 24 hours later you'll be doing another water change and then dose in meds again. You can also add in more salt at this point. That gets you through to the two rounds of treatment. And then you'd clear things out with carbon and water changes (doing both is absolutely fine). You can add in stability or another bacterial starter. Fritz Zyme 7 is another one. I've use the aqueon and tetra ones as well. There is ammo is ammonia going on, but the salt in there also helps to counter that. Adding in (or having on hand when the salt goes away) that Bacteria would be a good idea to boost back up the filtration. Yep! So hopefully we see the fish perk up and the colors come back as well. The body turning black like that can be a sign of an external protozoan parasite and so that's the next hurdle if if doesn't recover with salt alone.

Happy to help! Seriously. If you know how to get rid of BBA... I'm all ears. 😂

You can use pinsettes and hand feed too! Fish for thought on YouTube has some videos on doing this, but it's a pretty common technique. Glad to hear about the improvement! 💪

A lot of barbs tend to need long tanks because of the activeness and swimming back and forth a lot, just a note. I wouldn't put anything bigger than a cherry barb in a 20g/29g aquarium. If possible, in the future try to get a 4' long aquarium and you'll see some really awesome barb behavior. What goes well with barbs is going to be Rasbora or danio species.

I had some of that moonlight / very fine sand and I felt so bad for Riddick. It was the sand the store had in a small bag so it was what I used. Swear that fish had a sand beard for a few months until I was sure it wasn't ich. I still, to this day, need to go get a bag of sand from the shop, but yeah. Is the fist still being vertical or just sort of hanging around near the top? Secondarily, if need be, do you have a breeder box or something if you need to use that and keep the fish towards the surface of the water? (I don't think you do, but just trying to cover all the bases.

Right alongside there, check out the book walden as well as the book wild. There is also a movie with Reese Witherspoon for the latter, wild. It's so well done. Into the wild is a great film, absolutely.