nabokovfan87

It would be beneficial to reduce stress and remove the fish from the tank while you're performing a lot of water changes and treating for the underlying issues as well as the cyanobacteria itself. It's your call. you can always move the betta to a container for a small amount of time, clean the tank, perform your removal the cyano, siphon, water change, and then go ahead and fill it back up. Add the dechlorinator, bacteria, and then give it a few minutes prior to adding the fish back in. That also is a method I've used with bettas to reduce stress.

usually 12 in a group is a really good size for behaviors. I would say 12-15 is about perfect.. You should have breeding though. Just meaning, 8-10 is usually where I recommend people start out and let them breed / grow as a colony.

The first picture I see fin rot on the tail. The third picture you have a wound on the barb that looks like a fungal infection. It looks like you'd want to treat with a few medications at this point. cc @Colu @Odd Duck can you help us out here with full recommendations. The most urgent issue is going to likely be fin rot, which you would tread with a medication called kanaplex. You can also use salt and botanicals (Indian almond leaves) for this situation. The salt will help the fish with osmoregulation, reduce stress, and help the fix with gill function. You will need to make sure you add an air stone to the tank if you add any medications or salt. The botanicals have antifungal properties. All of those would be helpful right away for the sake of treating the external issues. Barbs like cooler waters. If you only have barbs in the tank you can safely drop the temps to 72-74 degrees without issue. This helps to increase oxygenation and reduce stress as well. This shows what looks like some nitrite in the water. Because of that I would suggest doing an immediate 50% water change followed by the dechlorination and salt added to the tank. For the salt, you can do 1 TBSP per 2 Gallons of water and that should be sufficient for what you're treating. In terms of monitoring things we need to figure out why you're having nitrite spiking and keep a very close eye on it. Sale helps with nitrite and ammonia burns. Water changes are your best friend and you can repeat those every 24 hours as you need to. There's a lot going on here, but let's take it step by step and get things going in the right direction.

I imagine this is just from the store page or manufacturer image. So..... the irony that they don't show the airline tubing routed through the hole in the cap on the uplift tube is pretty funny. It happens, but still a little funny. Pecktec has some videos making plenums using these. If you're curious about how they work. I would say that if you're interested in trying UGF, I would try out something like an UGF box style filter which is a bit of a blend of the two. It accomplishes the strengths of both styles of filtration and is very flexible with setup. It even gives you what amounts to a planter box.

4 foot tank sounds like a fun test case to really see the difference in circulation.

This is another very highly debated topic in shrimp keeping and it breaks down to a few very key caveats as well as really understanding what is going on. First, some people won't change water because when they did the shrimp died. It's purely out of fear and then going to the Internet and seeing "no water change shrimp tank" being so prevalent. This isn't a situation where someone understands fully what is happening with their water and what this is doing to the shrimp. (Basically, old tank syndrome and acclimation to that situation) Both the invertebrates and the plants will pull nutrients from the water and release other things into the water. Water changes would be how you keep that water, chemically clean and balanced in terms of the mineral content those things need. Second reason for this is usually that they believe plants or a deep substrate acts as the full cycle and you have no need to use any filtration. "No filter" vs. "no water changes" are two very different things and often used in the same breath or intended to mean the same thing. Specifically when talking about water changes is leads to a mineral issue long term, which means that you need to add those back in for the plants and shrimp, or it means that you add them back via water changes. It is much less stress on the shrimp to do this via water changes, preconditioning the water for those water changes, and doing that normal routine. This gets the shrimp into a schedule for molting and breeding. Third reason I see this is because of literally just cost to change water or the concern of too many water changes being destructive to the environment. Some people will use recycled water from a very lightly stocked tank for other tanks in this case as well. I get it, but being very aware of something like mineral issues with shrimp and invertebrates is key.

Are you doing anything to condition the water for the shrimp when adding it to the tank? This would be something like salty shrimp or another GH/KH buffer. Both caridina and neocaridina need this. If possible, when you keep shrimp, try to keep that to every two weeks when you do your main water change. This is how I run it to reduce stress: End of week 1: 1. Turn off equipment, pull the tidal sponges, siphon to "check" the substrate and fill a bucket to clean the sponges and rinse media. Especially the prefilter. 2. Clean all the sponges, replace the media and fill the tank back up (very small amount, you can do this with RO water, if you do this on the 10G then you'd likely want to add buffers and stir the water. 3. Turn the equipment back on, add in plant fertilizer. Check plants End of week 2: 1. Turn off equipment, move all sponges and filtration gunk to the buckets. 2. Let debris settle, check under wood for mulm (I keep clown pleco) and remove shrimp feeding dishes. Starting with half of the tank cleared, gently move the shrimp away and siphon the substrate (VERY VERY easy for amano shrimp). When you're done with one section, move hardscape so you can go to the next section. 3. Siphon the tank, pinching the hose to reduce water being removed and allow shrimp to escape if they end up in the tube. 4. Check very carefully for baby shrimp (or set bucket aside to check later). I use multiple buckets and this allows me to do this. 5. Siphon out the water until the desired % is removed. 6. Get your water matching to the tank prior to adding it back into the tank. Verify that GH and KH is close, within 0.5-1 degree, and match temperature as best you can. Add back in the water using your own methods. 7. Check on everything for stress signs, move all the hardscape back, add in ferts. Essentially, water in Should be like water out. Think of it as a river and you're just seeing water flow from one region to the next. That water is also well oxygenated. Equilibrium is your GH buffer, but you'd be shocking them with 0 KH water. There's no real way around this using just crushed coral and using RO water with very low minerals in that water. One other thing to verify is that you DON'T have a water softener or something that is adding salts and other things to the tank water.

For caridina you're looking at some pretty specific needs. 1. Active substrate. 2. RO water (especially for top-offs) 3. Very careful TDS control in comparison to neocaridina which means it is even moreso of a risk. I will say it again, you seriously should focus on just amano shrimp for now and go from there. Once you get amano shrimp going and thriving, then you can basically go either way in terms of caridina vs. neocaridina shrimp. If you go caridina, I urge you to have a shrimp only tank for them because it's very specific and low PH. (sometimes below 6.0). All of these look like stress deaths which are either attributed to some sort of a water issue, acclimation issue, or lack of being able to get food. Amano shrimp show very little fear when it comes to getting food when they need it. When they need it they are fiesty and will go grab food then run off to eat it. Because you're losing amano shrimp I can pretty much pinpoint things towards a water parameter, water quality, or oxygenation type of issue. Let's try to break down what is going on here. Deaths within the first month or so is usually a result of stress. This could be due to a handful of reasons: acclimation, care, water quality, etc. Much like plants the shrimp can try to hold on and survive and they are very good at doing this, but they do need certain things to be able to do so. Based on your other responses with how you acclimated or plop and dropped them I would lead towards very high stress up front and then they weren't able to relax in the new environment and thrive. Shipping can cause things like cracked shells or can cause stress molts. So that first 1-2 months is seriously critical for dwarf shrimp and it's important to make sure they are able to get calcium based foods in order to molt on schedule and molt fully. Oxygenation helps to reduce stress during that time. Plants give them cover. Moss gives them surfaces to graze on. wood gives them very easy surfaces to graze on. It's not to say you need to tick all of those boxes, but just to mention the advantage of certain things in the tank and what it means for the shrimp. Very good to hear. I've been running my tidals and testing them a lot when it comes to my own tanks. I would not recommend them for shrimp because it will kill baby shrimp and ultimately you'll never grow new shrimp. For amano shrimp, this is much less of an issue, but for neocaridina and for caridina shrimp you can't run a tidal without having some very critical modifications or blocking off the intakes (there are 3 of them) and making sure shrimp can't get in there. The shrimp will normally gravitate where there is the most water movement. Something like a piece of wood near the intake or output on the HoB is likely where you see them. A 55G tank, being 4 foot long, it means that you have very narrow circulation. If the HoB is mounted on the end and the output runs across the length of the tank, that would improve things. As for air powered filtration to support the tank, you have 1 sponge filter and one air stone. The most I ran in my 55G tank.... just for comparison.... was 5-7 air driven filters. That is obviously excessive. But, what I am trying to get across is the stocking in the tank and just how much oxygen can really be used by a tank with that many fish. I would encourage you to add another air stone if possible. If not, I understand. Push the tidal 55G to as close to the middle of the tank as you can, airstone to the left and sponge filter to the right. just because the air stone will take slightly less room it can fit to the left of the HoB). In your 10G. I would be running 2 air stones, personally speaking, for a shrimp setup, but I understand that might seem like overkill. You can run one filter and just push more air to increase that oxygenation. I think your gauge really should be the amano shrimp for this. If you see them running around sitting near the highest flow parts of the tank and not moving at all from those locations, then you really need to increase oxygenation. If you see them normally searching around the tank without any issues at all, then you should take that as a sign that your circulation and oxygenation is sufficient. OK..... last thing on the list was simply the water quality. I cannot speak to stability of your tank, but one thing to note is going to be monitoring nitrates very closely with shrimp. Try to keep it lower (ignoring your fertilizer number) due to the higher bioload in the tank. This normally means higher volume water changes, which directly goes towards stress and that molting schedule of the shrimp. Thankfully, amano shrimp can be very resilient towards water changes and they generally don't stress during big water volume fluctuations. If you see them trying to leave the tank or get into the filter, that means you have temperature, PH, or something that is causing very high stress. They can even jump out of the tank at that point as well. Watch there behavior and note that. sometimes water being too hot or too cold can instantly shock and ultimately kill a lot of shrimp. It's just something to note and try to match temperature. (as mentioned, this is less critical with amano shrimp, but something to keep in mind). KH I would try to shoot for is 60-80 ppm GH I would try to shoot for is 100-150 ppm. Keeping the tank at those levels as well as water you're adding into the tank is going to be critical. If you don't that gives the shock factor and high stress and pretty much is a no-go situation for neocaridina shrimp. For amano shrimp, they can handle swings. but if you're just topping off and not changing water, then the fish suffer. It's not really an easy situation here. That's where you're likely running into these stress deaths. For the 55G in particular, how often are you cleaning the filter? How often are you siphoning the substrate? How often are you changing water, how are you doing that, and what volume of water are you changing? I hope this makes sense and if you need further clarification or don't quite understand the reasoning behind some of the care factors here, please feel free to ask and I will try to make it more clear.

I would definitely avoid this until you give that tank (just like the main tank) 45-60 days to pop and grow at least one generation.

He has a video regarding his blue shrimp, quite a few honestly as that's his main neocaridina line... But I wanted to find the video where he talks about resetting. This one is specifically tied to culling and so I wanted to share. I've seen it time and time again where someone "resets" as mentioned above. Basically you choose 2-5 males and choose 4-8 females and then let it do it's thing from zero again. You may end up back to culling a wide margin to get that selective color you're looking for. Essentially, say what you're wanting is a 15-25% of your shrimp hatch. Let's say you have 4 females. That's around 120 shrimp or so per first spawn and you're keeping ~20-30. Yeah it seems like a ton of work but you'll end up with the genetics filtering down the line to what you want. Maybe it takes 2 of these big culls until you really see things where you want. Same thing that happened with your guppy line you were working on, but I think this is much easier for you to enjoy, if that's something you want to do.

No idea but be sure to point that flow at the heater! 😉

I saw this too. I wonder what it visually looks like and so on. He mentioned that if you order now it should have the better one. Definitely adds a layer of interest to purge your bottles if this is the fix.

This week has been eventful, but nothing finished up. Sometimes progress is slow, intentional, and it's all about setting yourself up for that future success. First, I finally got zip ties so I can make that moss wall for the shrimp! Second, I got the pipes in / on sale so I can swap out the tubing for my canister filter and check everything as a test fit before changing anything out on the tank. I think I can use suction cups, but we'll see. Finally, I got a few odds and ends so I can spruce things up. I got some cords to secure CO2 canisters to things in the event of shakey shakes. I got some of those adhesive back things so I can hook stuff up on the wall for nets and other random bits. I also got clamps for the hoses whenever I do swap over the tubing. (pricing on that is a bit excessive for what it is) I have to decide where things move around to or how to place things going forward. I would love to swap a lid on my tank, but I think I lost (or used) all of the trim pieces. I'll need to start selling / gifting some of my old equipment to make room and I listed the corydoras for sale. Personally that last one is a huge step for me. I really admire those fish!

There is a lot of alien hybrids being sold. Think... f1 of an alien, then they cross it with something to get coloration and patterns into that type. So yeah, I doubt it's a pure alien betta, but there's likely some alien DNA in there.

she can eat. At least once every 3-4 days would be my recommendation. If you can feed every other day, keep strength up, it should help.

Very awesome that the Co-Op does things like this and has the mindset to do such things. Thank you Cory and everyone involved.

And definitely don't get distracted by the shrimp and watching the fish and forget to turn it on. 😂

If you can photos would help. A lot of time we never plant stems deep enough and so maybe just trust them to grow and be ok. It should be very accepting of being planted and then grow out of the substrate accordingly!

Is the 29G empty or? I would move that reef to that tank if available. 🙂 The 7g and 3G I would maybe do plants or shrimp and the 10 I would just use for QT. But!!!!! Reef tank, so I have to ask if you've seen Chasing Coral.

When you say "dead shrimps" can you clarify or do you have any photos as to what they looked like? Did you see molting issues or anything out of the ordinary? Did you ever try to QT some prior to adding them to the tank?

The first thing I will suggest is to get yourself a liquid GH/kh test kit. Just to verify what you need from the tap and from the test strips. It's very affordable and ultimately for anyone keeping invertebrates it is a valuable tool. KH is ok. GH is ok. I would do some water changes to drop it slightly, but that's not a big deal. Let's use this as a baseline and only focus on the amano shrimp and the snails before we dive into something more complex like the neocaridina. First hurdle is always acclimation. They need to be done slowly dripped over time and that helps a lot with acclimation stress. If need be I can attach a video on how to do this. The second hurdle is going to be stability. Once they are acclimated, that leads to the necessary step of trying to get them to a consistent environment and a situation where there is enough oxygenation, circulation, and plants. The last hurdle is feeding and there's a variety of things that can compound this. One of the main things you'll deal with is predation, the other is stress. If the shrimp don't feel like they can be out in the open easily, you need to have a good cover for them and treat them as nocturnal. A feeding dish is one of the most important tools for smaller shrimp and snails, but less so for amano shrimp. Snails will graze on the wall and the other surfaces in the tank, as well as the shrimp, but the feeding dish is your visual for how you feed calcium based foods (i.e. "complete" foods for invertebrates) and you can track that they eat those foods to get that nutrition. In terms of your care in the tank, how often are you changing water and how much? Are you able to add air stones of need be? Especially given the bioload in some of those tanks. Very normal behavior. You can use something like moss ledges or even a moss wall to give the shrimp their own real estate. Having a pile of wood or rock also really helps them to have a "hive". One of my favorites being a very big chunk of dragon stone. It has holes built on and looks like a beehive a bit. Dripping for that long could be doing more harm than good. They may have gotten too cold over that time. Essentially, 30-90 minutes should really be all it takes. In my own methodology I tend to double the water volume 2-3 times and then that is what I call as "good". I try to have an air stone in there too during that time on very low in addition to adding 1-2 drops of dechlorinator. 1. Open the bag, add 1-2 drops of dechlorinator immediately and then move that water and shrimp to something like a specimen container. 2. Add air, set up slow drip, and drip them until the container is mostly full. Add some moss also if need be. 3. Pour out as much water as possible and continue the drip process until it fills up again. 4. Using a shrimp net or just letting them swim out of the container, release them into the tank and keep the lights out. I can tell you from first glance that things are pretty well stocked. The 10G might be ok, but both tanks I think you need to have a feeding dish for shrimp. Here's why..... This also applies to snails and fish like corydoras if you have any. I would definitely add in some air. 1 drop in the 10G and 2 drops in the 55G.

I have. It's best to "soak" them in hot water. Clean the glass and then clean the cup so there's no reason for it not to stick. Much like tubing it sort of resets the material and it can be a bit more pliable. That being said, some materials turn to a rock and it's extremely difficult to bring those back. Eheim Jager heater cups sort of invert themselves and have their own issues, but I've seen and experienced some of the other clear ones that will cure and lose all flexibility. Soak those, 5-15 minutes and then you might be able to get them to stick once or twice.

Cc @Odd Duck Basically the way I handle things is that I use a timer and turn the filter off to feed. After 20-30 minutes, then the filter comes back on and no big deal. The fish get used to it, but it gives the food a chance to get "stuck" on the bottom for the fish to graze on.

The slime is just bacteria usually. Spiderwood is notorious for this. You can gently brush it off and siphon it out or just pull the wood and give it a clean. In terms of fingers itching, I assume this is figuratively spoken? If so, no worries at all and this is entirely normal. Fish like corydoras, otocinclus or shrimp will eat on "aufwuchs" which is that film as well as the small critters that also eat off that biofilm like copepods.

Very very true. It'll be interesting to see what everyone thinks and how people notice the change in flow.