nabokovfan87

Yeah, just depends on the setup. Until recently I didn't have a lot of cover in the middle of the tank / substrate level. I am improving that. CO2 during lighting hours plays a role too. During the night, they are "out in the open" so to speak on the wood and playing around with where the amanos graze at night.

Correct. it's not that big of a deal if it's a few hours. (Ref Cory's power outage methods) Even at 70. The main concern is to just get the fish / livestock to be comfortable and then to let them relax peacefully while you get the work done.

4' is the standard for a lot of glass tanks. I've seen 4, 5, and 6 foot tanks too. If you want to look at 5' or longer I think you might have success finding a used acrylic tank as an option. I believe those lengths and that style of tank is much more prevalent in the saltwater or acrylic side of things. @Bentley Pascoe has a few nice longer tanks, but none are setup as room dividers right now.

Shoot... I think we got at least a month before we see actual cloud cover regularly here. I'm not going to be excited when it's time to drop in some heaters, that's for sure.

@a date with nature so here's an example of what we have going on. This is an aquascaper, George Farmer, working on his tank and trying to do some maintenance. A lot of times when you see an aquascaper Doing this type of work they are adding water in as fast as they are removing it. No dripping back in for the shrimp. They aren't using buffers. It might be RO. The goal is that water in matches water out, but by removing the cloudy/dirty water from the plant maintenance and hardscspe scrubbing, that you can do so without worry that all the shrimp will die immediately. This is one of many instances where I ask myself what's going on, why is there so much confusion and difference in technique for shrimp care. Especially neos. When I first got them I thought it would be about as easy as caring for amano shrimp. It wasn't, and I definitely learned a lot. However, the goal is to try to understand the differences in care a bit better and to see how the shrimp handle what is a normal mode of care, but just not one associated with their care as often. Maybe it's a breeder vs. Home hobbyist thing. Maybe it all goes back to "low maintenance" mindsets. It's very hard to know for sure. Because of all this I started with trying to understand where they come from and how they actually live in nature. "Be the shrimp" so to speak. Second WC of the video. He also mentioned he's not using RO, has hard water.

Reminds me of a mangrove a bit. I think the style is just called a biotope aquascape.

Checking in @TeeJay How goes the things?

The 20 is really, really heavy and I don't recommend trying to move it with the water in there. I think the 5G can be moved as mentioned above if you drain it as much as possible. Essentially.... 1. Remove the hard scape or anything that could fall while moving. 2. Consider removing plants, they will likely get a bit beat up either way. 3. Drain the tank to the height of your net and move any fish to a bucket or tub with an air stone. For shrimp, you'd want to use tankwater and reserve as much of that as possible. Hardscape usually stays wet too if need be. Cover that bucket with a lid or heavy towel and set out of the way so the fish don't get scared and jump. 4. Move your filter media to the bottom of the bucket with the fish, clean out your sponges and anything like that you would need to maintenance. 5. Go ahead and make a divot/hole to give the siphon access to drain as much water as possible from the tank. You will have a difficult time getting the siphon going once you hit the substrate so having help, drain water and having something where you can keep draining as long as possible is very helpful. Angle the substrate so water drains down into that hole as it drains. 6. Drain the water as much as you can and then move the tank to the floor/somewhere safe. 7. Move your stand, then level it. 8. Add the 5G back, then the bigger tank, be sure to check level as the tanks fill with water. Weight can make things shift. 9. Add back in your hard scape and get the filtration going. 10. Add the fish back once the filter has had a chance to remove any major debris. Usually an hour.

What is that thing in the top left of the tank? Looks like a pink moon rock or something?

Same issue for me. I think mine is mostly food related at this point. What foods are you using?

I think the use of driftwood to lower PH can be a bit misleading. This all goes down to organics and yo those organics being in the water. Most of the driftwood we use breaks down relatively slowly compared to something like leaf litter and other things. Those organics break down but the PH is often most affected by fish waste. I can't put a % on it but I think it all ends up going to how ions are used up, KH drops, and it's not replenished often enough. There are plenty of species that use the 6.0-7.0 range. There are a lot of species that use the 6.8-7.4 range and there are a lot of species that use the 7.0+ range. I explain this simply to say that there is always going to be stocking for whatever your water is doing. I think matching KH isn't intuitive at all, but it's the right approach. PH issues do happen and it can cause disease on fish. One of the most common being skin burns, fin issues, and similar things. As Tolstoy mentioned, regular water changes does a lot of work. Being diligent with siphons and cleaning, moving hardscape to clean, and having proper circulation all plays a role to make the parameters stable. Ultimately, water in should be similar to water out. On some aquascaping videos you can see them doing many large water changes just to make sure to clean the tank effectively.

It could be due to stress from being pregnant. It's difficult to say. Seeing the fungal issues previously, I would look into something like salt or Ich-X as a starting point and just let it soak the tank for a week or so. If you're actively treating for a fungal issue, then I would recommend 3 doses a week of something like Ich-X with 30-50% water changes prior to treatment.

Yep! that's a flower. 🙂 Nicely done.

I've given up trying to fix mine.

Yeah. I'm not sure there is a good way to accomplish that. 😞

😂 The default is $500! someone needs to rework the default for sure..... I haven't seen it yet. I will add one which is sponsored by the co-op as a secondary option simply for anyone who isn't able to pay the fee. For those who have been able to see it, what is the minimum cost to be able to view that movie? Is there a simple rental fee or....? @Fish Folk @AquaHobbyist123

Alright alright you two! Let's have it. Give us the name and the details. 😂 What an amazing photo. I recently learned some new details about some NANF. I'll have to send you some questions and stuff. I saw a tank that went real..... Real bad. But I absolutely love so many of the nanf species.

Right.... I mentioned it simply as a question about, I wonder if the fact that it's on the tube encourages them to congregate around the tube. The current prefilter I have now baby shrimp can definitely get through if they wanted to. Stick a dragon stone near the filter, similar, but I love the idea and use of space.

Hopefully soon! You can always try other woods too.

As long as they don't end up in the filter, it'll be fine. Not really a need to do it that way, but there's no reason it won't work well. Shrimp will like being up there right by the flow too.

That chart above.... KH and PH can be used to calculate your CO2. Or KH and CO2 levels can be used to calculate your PH. The way to interpret this is to understand that you have your KH value, then you have your PH value based on how oxygen rich your water is, how much surface agitation is there, etc.

Looks pretty good! Aqueon has the newer nutrinsect line of foods. Similar to bug bites, but no fish in the recipe (fish meal or fish oil) and it's got slightly more bugs in the mix. It's cheap, might be worth a try! In terms of plecos, I think the repashy is the way to go. You can supplement the foods with something like krill flake, freeze dried foods, or something else and just mix it into the repashy gel. That's been my favorite out of the foods to feed them. Second to that, you have all the big brands with their own algae wafers. Northfin wafers I was not a fan of. Xtreme wafers mine wouldn't touch (others have had great success with them!), hikari mine loved, and then the older sera ones I enjoyed a lot as well. I haven't tried the sera ones you have, but I would imagine it's very similar and works well for the plecos. Something like carnivore pellets would work too. They can get their mouths onto the larger size pellets and then treat it like any other form of algae pellet.

I did! They are in the facebook group as well. 🙂 Just so funny. I swear each youtuber that has shrimp has a different set of parameters. It's becoming much more common these days to take the extra step when asking for help (or helping someone) to understand the water differences. I vote flip aquatics to be the head of the shrimp police. He's very kind in his advice and that's what you need! Who will work on the uniform?

They have them on amazon and stuff. They are more popular in the EU than they are in the US. They are normally labelled as "pond foams". If I had to choose where to get some fancy foam there is a guy who gets poret foams from Germany and sells them in the US. There's all kinds of options out there.

The goal is just to understand neos a little better. We hear two sides.... 1. You have to keep them in a species only tank and they need RO with buffers and slow drip water changes once in a while. 2. You can add them to a community tank. Care in those two situations is very, very different. I have both situations running (using tap, not RO water). The goal is to replicate my shrimp colony, but using a different source. My shrimp are well acclimated to my care and to my regiment. My hypothesis is that the neocaridina shrimp especially will be more or less able to acclimate to your care methods. Meaning that, if you dramatically change care methods it can lead to issues, but let's say you take the same line.... you care for them in different ways. After ~6 months, then both can be thriving in very different situations and setups. One line might be more adaptable as a result of that care than others. Thus, you have one situation which creates a more "hardy" shrimp and one creates a more sensitive shrimp. The ultimate measurement, just to seriously verify that the care I give my shrimp works for someone besides myself and my shrimp in my tank. After a certain amount of time, see how many shrimp are in the colony and if it's higher or lower than expected.