TheSwissAquarist Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 How’s the tank doing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted February 21, 2023 Author Share Posted February 21, 2023 The tank is doing great! It’s being overrun by cherry shrimp at the moment along with pest snails. Still have 4 very large Amanos cleaning their hearts out. My albino cat is chunky as ever and his lone Julii Cory friend keeps him company. A couple cherry barbs dwelling in the shadows. Down to two guppies. Had 5 that were born from a group I had. All but these two didn’t make it😞. I want to make the garage tank a QT so I can either add more guppies or endlers or something else. Guppies don’t seem to like my conditions or I just need to blast them with meds real good before they are introduced. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 On 2/20/2023 at 7:43 PM, jasper5150 said: The tank is doing great! It’s being overrun by cherry shrimp at the moment along with pest snails. Still have 4 very large Amanos cleaning their hearts out. My albino cat is chunky as ever and his lone Julii Cory friend keeps him company. A couple cherry barbs dwelling in the shadows. Down to two guppies. Had 5 that were born from a group I had. All but these two didn’t make it😞. I want to make the garage tank a QT so I can either add more guppies or endlers or something else. Guppies don’t seem to like my conditions or I just need to blast them with meds real good before they are introduced. i wish i had that many cherry shrimp. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted February 21, 2023 Author Share Posted February 21, 2023 I totally didn’t expect this. I started with 10 in August and now it’s a metropolis. At least 150 have gone to new homes. They are definitely well fed and I think my water has a high mineral content. Our neighborhood is on a well. I have never checked the water for kh? Is that for mineral content? 🤷♂️ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nabokovfan87 Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 On 2/20/2023 at 4:55 PM, jasper5150 said: They are definitely well fed and I think my water has a high mineral content. Our neighborhood is on a well. I have never checked the water for kh? Is that for mineral content? 🤷♂️ You'd want to check GH and KH. Both indicate hardness and what minerals are in the water. Most shrimpkeepers use TDS, but testing both GH+KH is a better idea. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 Thank @nabokovfan87 I have a test kit coming today. Let’s see what it tells me! Also a couple bags of Activ Betta Bio-Activ Gravel for the garage tank. Just realized I should have purchased a bag of crushed coral as well. Gives me an excuse to place another order. I did modify my sponge filter yesterday. I had a spare medium sponge that I cut in half. One half is in my project garage tank and the other I planned for my 20 gallon. I think it’s great that the sponge filters ACO sells can be modified to fit where you need them. The center tube being sectioned is excellent. All I had to do was snap the new section to my existing sponge filter and reattach the top with the air stone and Viola! My sponge filter is 33% larger and I have a sponge I can use for a QT or an additional tank! I’ll attach a photo. There is another sponge in here. It’s able to catch the much smaller particles so there’s less “floaties” in the water. I also took my light from hanging to sitting directly on the lid. Trying to look at my tank with lights gleaming in my eyes was rough. The light does have the ability to turn down the brightness, which I did. Don’t want to cause an algae spike. Probably wouldn’t notice considering the hoard of cherry shrimp in here along with my beastie Amanos. Also shows the snail infestation 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted February 23, 2023 Share Posted February 23, 2023 On 2/23/2023 at 7:58 AM, jasper5150 said: Thank @nabokovfan87 I have a test kit coming today. Let’s see what it tells me! Also a couple bags of Activ Betta Bio-Activ Gravel for the garage tank. Just realized I should have purchased a bag of crushed coral as well. Gives me an excuse to place another order. I did modify my sponge filter yesterday. I had a spare medium sponge that I cut in half. One half is in my project garage tank and the other I planned for my 20 gallon. I think it’s great that the sponge filters ACO sells can be modified to fit where you need them. The center tube being sectioned is excellent. All I had to do was snap the new section to my existing sponge filter and reattach the top with the air stone and Viola! My sponge filter is 33% larger and I have a sponge I can use for a QT or an additional tank! I’ll attach a photo. There is another sponge in here. It’s able to catch the much smaller particles so there’s less “floaties” in the water. I also took my light from hanging to sitting directly on the lid. Trying to look at my tank with lights gleaming in my eyes was rough. The light does have the ability to turn down the brightness, which I did. Don’t want to cause an algae spike. Probably wouldn’t notice considering the hoard of cherry shrimp in here along with my beastie Amanos. Also shows the snail infestation that is an AWESOME amount of shrimp in one tank! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 @Theplatymaster right! I must be doing something right Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted February 23, 2023 Share Posted February 23, 2023 On 2/23/2023 at 8:36 AM, jasper5150 said: @Theplatymaster right! I must be doing something right how many did you start with? and how long has it been since you got them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 I started with 10 back in August. I didn’t think they were going to make it because I kept seeing less and less of them. After a few weeks, I noticed the first little shrimplets on the sponge filter. Now I have to be careful cleaning the sponge filter because a lot of the shrimplets hang out inside of it! This last time I just cleaned out the air stone inside and that brought back the good flow. Going to just keep doing that instead of squeezing the sponge. The shrimp seem to do a great job of “cleaning” the filter anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 1, 2023 Author Share Posted March 1, 2023 (edited) Has been over a week since the last post and a few things have changed. I no longer have any guppies in the tank. All have died. Thought it was a parasite and had run two rounds of Paracleanse for the whole tank. Guess that didn't help. Checked all my parameters and they were checking out at 0/0/5 (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). They seemed fine on day but the next they were hiding and not eating. At this point, makes me feel like I'm not destined to raise guppies. All my other finned friends are doing well. I have lost about a half dozen shrimp. Age? Bad water quality? Food? No idea. They get fed pretty much on the daily since the barbs and cories need to be fed. The rest seem to be doing great. Lots of molts on the substrate. I did get the test kit for Gh and Kh. A little time consuming but does give me an idea of what is happening. As I assumed, I do have hard water. Good for the tank! Here are the parameters as of today: Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 5 PH 7.8 Gh 160 ppm Kh 100 ppm The nitrate is weird because I added 4 shots of Easy Green 3 days ago. Thought it would have been higher. Guess that means the plants are sucking down the goods. The water was getting a bit cloudy with floaty bits. Pulled both sponge filters and gave them a good squeeze. The water looked like swamp water. That was 3 days ago. Water is still having some floaty bits so I pulled the fine sponge filter and gave it a few more squeezes. WOW!! Amazing how much gunk that thing can hold. Did this until the water ran clean. Hopefully, the water will look better tomorrow. Going to see what happens over the next few days. I added 6 squirts of Easy Green after all this. See how the tank responds. Edited March 1, 2023 by jasper5150 Added photos and information 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nabokovfan87 Posted March 1, 2023 Share Posted March 1, 2023 Very sorry for your loss and your struggles with the guppies. Nothing stands out. Check the heater for stray current, see that everything is working as it should. Double check temp using a second thermometer. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 1, 2023 Author Share Posted March 1, 2023 I’ll do that. My heater is behind my Amazon sword but close to the small sponge. Thought was that would create a good flow to move the heated water around. I have the heater set at 76, it’s the ACO heater. Did have a thermometer opposite the heater but it broke awhile back. Not in the tank, thank goodness. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 2, 2023 Author Share Posted March 2, 2023 Still need to get that additional thermometer. Came home from work yesterday and found one of my cherry barbs had died. They have been in the tank for quite some time, at least a year and a half. Now I’m down to one cherry barb, one albino cory, one julii cory, 3 nerite snails, 4 massive Amano shrimp and a “million” cherry shrimp. All this death is not sitting well 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted March 2, 2023 Share Posted March 2, 2023 On 3/2/2023 at 8:11 AM, jasper5150 said: Still need to get that additional thermometer. Came home from work yesterday and found one of my cherry barbs had died. They have been in the tank for quite some time, at least a year and a half. Now I’m down to one cherry barb, one albino cory, one julii cory, 3 nerite snails, 4 massive Amano shrimp and a “million” cherry shrimp. All this death is not sitting well any symtoms of disease? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 5, 2023 Author Share Posted March 5, 2023 @Theplatymaster No symptoms of disease. All the other fish are eating and swimming normally. Did another water test yesterday along with another squeeze of the small filter. That thing fills up fast! Also, did a gravel vac, removing about 3+ gallons of water. Noticed when the cories are searching for food they kick up a lot of mulm. to finish the cleaning off, ran the Mag Float over the glass. That cleared things up. After all this, the water looks much cleaner. Finally purchased another thermometer. Water is sitting at 76 degrees. Tested the water before doing all this maintenance. Here are the results: Ammonia 0 Nitrate 5ish Kh 100ppm Gh 160ppm Ph 7.8 The nitrates being low is crazy. On Feb 28 I added 6 squirts of Easy Green. Guessing the plants are super hungry and sucking down the goods or maybe the bottle is losing potency. Have had it for about a year. After todays maintenance, I did shake the bottle and gave the tank another 6 squirts and added two root tabs to the Amazon sword. Lets see how the water test looks after a few days. Here is a shot a couple of hours after... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 10, 2023 Author Share Posted March 10, 2023 On Wednesday, I noticed a couple of my Amano shrimp with fuzz. Vorticella decided to make its appearance. Was going to use Ich-X but I didn't want to have the silicone stained purple. Went out and purchased API PimaFix. A couple of doses in and things seem to be ok. Doesn't look any worse so guess that is a good sign. Hopefully, after the next few days they clear up. Did notice a spot on the back glass with some growing. That is kind of my gauge on the treatment. When it starts to disappear then the meds are working. Going to do a good gravel vac after this round of treatment is done to get rid of any potential medium for another outbreak. Will keep you posted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted March 10, 2023 Share Posted March 10, 2023 On 3/10/2023 at 9:05 AM, jasper5150 said: Was going to use Ich-X but I didn't want to have the silicone stained purple. i havent had this issue. the one thing that ive had dyed with ich-x was a suction cup airline holder, ive had no issues with silicone being dyed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 10, 2023 Author Share Posted March 10, 2023 @Theplatymaster that’s good to know. Just didn’t want to risk it with my main tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 17, 2023 Author Share Posted March 17, 2023 Enjoying some green beans 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted March 17, 2023 Share Posted March 17, 2023 On 3/17/2023 at 3:19 PM, jasper5150 said: Enjoying some green beans im still jealous that you have so many shrimp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 17, 2023 Author Share Posted March 17, 2023 @Theplatymaster I’m thankful to have them! Have tried several times to start a colony and this time around was a breakthrough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 @jasper5150 what are your water parameters that your shrimp are doing so well? im having trouble with shrimp myself right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 22, 2023 Author Share Posted March 22, 2023 On 3/4/2023 at 5:57 PM, jasper5150 said: Ammonia 0 Nitrate 5ish Kh 100ppm Gh 160ppm Ph 7.8 These were the readings from a couple weeks ago. We have well water which has a lot of minerals so that helps. Periodically, I will drop in a Wonder Shell to help with molting and water quality. Lots of surface area for bio film and they go after the food I put in for the other fish. Water is at 76 degrees. I’ll do another water test today and post the results. Just purchased Test strips so I’ll have to compare to the API master test kit. Stay tuned! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper5150 Posted March 23, 2023 Author Share Posted March 23, 2023 Here are the results of the water test with each testing tools. Pretty much spot on! Only thing of concern is the Kh is high, 180-200 ppm. I’ll do a water change and then test it the next day. Added a couple squirts of Easy Green and topped off the water with a gallon the day before this. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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