Blackwater Bloody Mary Neo Setup

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/1/2023 at 7:40 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I’d think hobbyists would want to always see inside the tubing just in case a critter gets stuck in there (ie: pleco etc)

Very good point!  add a chimney cover to it. 🙂

They have these ones I've seen from seachem that are pretty cool.  If that's a concern.

Edited November 2, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[nabokovfan87]

It must be Wednesday because I spent a bit of time with the shrimp.  I took a bunch of photos, then I realized I should just do a video.  I got that done and just sat to monitor for culling and check on the shrimplets and how the tank was really doing.  I also wanted to show the moss wall and the shrimp being a bit nuts on it already.  I think apart from a feeding dish, might be the one thing I really recommend for shrimp in a community tank setup.  They get some cover and places to graze where fish just don't really interact with.

 Also some fun watching Riddick go a bit nuts this morning and just cruising around. 

Music will get there when youtube decides to hit the go button.

 

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Those colors are really great. I’m thinking that the backwater enhances them??

[nabokovfan87]

Posting this mostly for posterity more than anything.

It's been slightly cold this week.  Temps for the tank are well within range.  I have also had a metric TON of baby shrimp.  I lost 1 female shrimp yesterday (overnight) as well as one last night.

The one from this morning was something where she did appear to have the white ring, but I also saw baby shrimp that were just hatched.  I really tend to lean towards food, lack of, or general issues with stress from releasing shrimp as being the main concern.  There's going to be more cover, but right now, maybe there isn't quite enough.

I'll test GH and KH for the sake of clarity.  This also could be due to just having Riddick in the tank and that causing some stress.  It's tough to really say for certain the root cause here.  I am not overly concerned, but I did want to record that for future notes.

The water change today was fine, one stubborn baby shrimp, but the only real thing of note was that the water change water was slightly colder than I would like. I will use water from the sink where I can control the temp in future.  Mentally drained, no sleep, and no coffee, so let's just reset and move on! 🙂

Sidenote:  New filters are slightly easy to clean and work immensely well for a shrimp tank.  They hold the gunk in well and I can just siphon the sand as need be.  The baby shrimp I can just dip the sponge and they generally try to get away from the sponge.  It feels hefty and very heavy, which is just the sign for me that it is doing a good job of the mechanical filtration.

[nabokovfan87]

Day 3, another lost female.

KH was fine.

GH dropped to 5.5-6 degrees on me. For some shrimp keepers that is "optimal," but as you can see it's showing some sort of stress signs and issues in my experience. I added in a little bit of GH powder which I'll likely end up needing to do following big water changes.  Not a major issue or concern, but it's something to note.

When you run into a thing, test, try to understand what's going on. Even if nothing did change, maybe your liquid water rock isn't anymore.

[Guppysnail]

On 11/16/2023 at 11:48 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

and no coffee

This is a crime against sanity. I would injure myself. 
 

Im sorry for your shrimp. Hopefully it was just their time and you experience no other loses. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/17/2023 at 11:06 AM, Guppysnail said:

This is a crime against sanity. I would injure myself. 

Reminds me I seriously need to clean my grinder and box it up. (needs new burrs, which are the cost of a new grinder) 

The one I gave is for espresso, Italian mazzer burrs that seem to be unavailable now... Which is frustrating. So cost went up from $45-65 to about 5-8x that price.

Getting a drip coffee grinder is anywhere from $80-250. So.... Time to retire it for now.

Lots of cold brew these days!

On 11/17/2023 at 11:06 AM, Guppysnail said:

Im sorry for your shrimp. Hopefully it was just their time and you experience no other loses. 

I appreciate it. Hopefully a simple GH fix and I just need to be better about keeping an eye on that.

Sundays were bee pollen day. They will end up being GH+Pollen day now.

[nabokovfan87]

Running into issues with Equilibrium dosing.... Detailed that in my 75G journal, but I need to keep monitoring this tank as well for how the parameters change over the news few days/weeks.

11/21 Water Testing Parameters:
-Temp: 70.8 degrees (Heater is set to 74)
-Nitrite: 0 ppm
-Nitrate: 10 ppm
-TDS: 393 ppm
-GH: 13 degrees
-KH: 4 degrees
-Phosphate: 2.0 ppm

[nabokovfan87]

I cleaned the tank today.   It's a bit of a frustration to clean it with the taller pipes and the elbow on the top.  I pulled out the sponge and got all that going.  I was checking the feeding dish, moving botanicals that got stuck in the back of the tank, and just watching the shrimp.  I used my hand to gently move the shrimp out of the way to be able to clean up the debris in the sand and around the food.... then I saw it.

One female with a really bad white ring where it's a certainty that she'll die from not being able to molt.  A male was bugging her and just causing stress.  I tried to gently move her to a quiet spot without the male and he just kept mauling her.  Then I saw another female, same situation and she'd already passed.  I pulled that body.  Trying to find the first female, then I found a male that had passed. 

I assume this is all related to the GH swings, the crash and things swinging in the other direction.  It's really tough to see it happen and I've lost 8 shrimp so far, 7 females (all white rings after releasing baby shrimp) and 1 male.

I need to really get a grasp on this and keep an eye out.  Tomorrow I'll spend some time watching them and repeating the testing again.  When I added the ~4g of water back into the tank I added back in a heaping 1/8 tsp of GH buffer and I hope that's the right amount to add to get things where I need them to be.

I have a new food coming, so I am extremely excited to test that out! Waiting for things to arrive and happen and just hoping for the best going forward.

 

[nabokovfan87]

TLDR: Found a cull



I think this series of photos speaks a few hundred words, if not a thousand.  There is good and bad coloration in shrimp and even the best genetics will end up with something like this.  As always, of course.... referring to my first question in this journal, the best thing to do is to set yourself up for success if that is specifically a goal. 

What is really interesting is the techniques I'm using to try to push coloration and seeing the discrepancy this early on in the shrimp lifecycle.  This could be a week old even.  Normally, per studies you'd only really want to cull after about 60 or 90 days because sometimes it does take that long for the coloration to fully form.  Do I really want to wait and see what happens?  Do I risk losing the shrimp if this is a trait that is being passed on, meaning the slow starter to color up?  I have shrimp that are literally days old and colored up like those in the first photo.  There is a hue and a redness as oppose to just the normal clear coloration.  If I had the lens I would love to share those photos!  That being said, we'll see how the shrimp does in the 75G tank and we will have to try to keep tabs on these culls over time.  Some of them did color up.  Others definitely didn't!  I don't know if this is another shadow blue-red rili shrimp or what exactly we're looking at, but you can see the way the pattern is coming in that it's not quite optimal.

Mulberry leaves, birch cones, and food arrived today.  I am not adding any botanicals, but the new food seems to be doing really good so far.  I will check in tonight and see if it's all gone. 

[nabokovfan87]

I really feel like I should boil some cones or something tonight. I did a good size water change today and just cleaned the main feeding area.

I tried to be extra careful adding water back in with the delicate baby shrimp in there. Almost busted out the ladder and dripped some water back in, but it's colder and I wanted to just do it manually, scoop by scoop, and get the tank up to temp.

I messed with the air and try to adjust and balance that aspect. I added some heaping scoops of the GH buffer to cover that and hoping I have the dose dialed in. Testing tomorrow to verify. I dissolved it prior to adding the tank and in trying to be a lot better about the method to reduce stress on the shrimp.

So far the total is 8 females, 1 male.

1 male and 1 female had no molt issues showing while 7 females did have molt issues.

I could be missing one, but I believe that's where things are at. The last one I found was in the feeding dish the day before yesterday and it was a younger female, no sort of molt issues. I'm leaning towards food as the result of that one or she did molt fine, but still was overstressed.  It's a big two weeks for the tank.

[nabokovfan87]

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:

 

[TOtrees]

On 12/21/2023 at 12:54 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

I tried seriously hard to limit the amount of water I removed, but I can only do that so much.

When I have this issue, I run the removed water from one bucket to another through a sieve with a few layers of filter floss, then gently return it to the tank and start over. So you could conceivably remove 40 gallons from a 20 gallon tank, if you did it enough times. It's definitely not something you want to be part of your normal maintenance routine due to the time involved, but it's a good tool to have when necessary. 

[nabokovfan87]

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!)

Edited December 21, 2023 by nabokovfan87
added note about culls.

[TOtrees]

On 12/21/2023 at 2:10 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

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 get VERY few culls from my bloody mary tanks (I have them in 3-4 tanks now). Like maybe 1-2 culls per hundred sold. Most of the culls I do remove are actually blue, some brownish. This relates to the origins of the bloody mary line. Most folks will have seen this before, note that bloody mary has different lineage than all the other red forms. 

[pasted from https://www.shrimpspot.com/topic/8521-shrimp-genetics-neocaridina/]

A few of my culls are lighter red than desired, but I generally don't actively cull for overall brightness, but rather utilize the collect-sell-reset process to start fresh with the best breeders from previous generations.

Another hot tip: diet and environment appear to play significant roles in individual and colony brightness/intensity of color. I always include some food containing krill for my bloody mary's every few days and it shows in their color (Xtreme community crave, anyone?). Also, I put some in a tub outside one summer and the ones that came back in (adults survived well but babies all eaten by fish) were STUNNING! Those tubs got very little supplemental food, but a decent amount of sunlight. My theory is that the sunlight powered algae growth and zooplankton, which the shrimps did very well on. And no water changes. 😛

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:59 AM, TOtrees said:

I get VERY few culls from my bloody mary tanks (I have them in 3-4 tanks now). Like maybe 1-2 culls per hundred sold. Most of the culls I do remove are actually blue, some brownish. This relates to the origins of the bloody mary line. Most folks will have seen this before, note that bloody mary has different lineage than all the other red forms. 

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.

On 12/21/2023 at 11:59 AM, TOtrees said:

Another hot tip: diet and environment appear to play significant roles in individual and colony brightness/intensity of color. I always include some food containing krill for my bloody mary's every few days and it shows in their color (Xtreme community crave, anyone?). Also, I put some in a tub outside one summer and the ones that came back in (adults survived well but babies all eaten by fish) were STUNNING! Those tubs got very little supplemental food, but a decent amount of sunlight. My theory is that the sunlight powered algae growth and zooplankton, which the shrimps did very well on. And no water changes. 😛

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. 🙂

[nabokovfan87]

Botanicals round 2 added to the tank. I'll have to keep an eye on things to make sure that I don't crash the tank.  I can't get the lotus pod to sink, but it's pretty cool. It's just floating around like some cloud in the tank waiting to crash somewhere.

When I dumped in all the cones and stuff I definitely was not gentle. I laid them up in the front of the tank with the ohko wall behind it. All of the baby shrimp can graze there and all of the female shrimp can use it as a source of food away from the stress of the dishes.

I do need to get Riddick out of there. It's just not a massive tank where she has a lot of room. I don't think she'll eat any of the baby corydoras, but that's the other thought.

Lastly, I kind of need to figure out why I am seeing some shrimp with backbone patterns on them. I can't tell if it's just molt patterns or if it's a trait from something that shouldn't be in there. I will need to do another cull just to make sure that I don't have issues moving forward, it's a process. Hopefully having the botanicals in there makes it easier to see certain things.... Similar to having a white net as the background.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 12/23/2023 at 10:46 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I can't get the lotus pod to sink, but it's pretty cool.

Even when I’ve boiled them they take many days to sink. Once they finally do they look awesome. 
 

On 12/23/2023 at 10:46 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

When I dumped in all the cones and stuff I definitely was not gentle.

I’m not gentle when I huck in my botanicals either. Literally just throw them in and scatter them around. If they end up on top of plants, I’ll take my tweezers and knock them off. Other than that, where they end up is where they end up. Mother Nature doesn’t have tweezers placing botanicals perfectly around!

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/23/2023 at 11:36 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

I’m not gentle when I huck in my botanicals either. Literally just throw them in and scatter them around. If they end up on top of plants, I’ll take my tweezers and knock them off. Other than that, where they end up is where they end up. Mother Nature doesn’t have tweezers placing botanicals perfectly around!

😂

Yeah I really should've been more gentle but shrimp are stubborn and don't move sometimes. I checked today and didn't see any of them crushed or anything that I could tell.

The lotus pod thing has such a funky texture. Hard to explain, but it feels like a crunchy sponge. Air keeps coming out of it. I can only imagine it being a wonderful hide for a dozen baby pleco or otos.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 12/24/2023 at 1:48 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

The lotus pod thing has such a funky texture. Hard to explain, but it feels like a crunchy sponge. Air keeps coming out of it. I can only imagine it being a wonderful hide for a dozen baby pleco or otos.

Straight up my dude. I’ve just boiled them, and then let them float around until they become water logged. From there, I’ve tried to place them in a spot that I can enjoy them when I look at the tank. I know that goes directly against what I said about just chucking botanicals in, but there’s exceptions to every rule. They just look so rad that I wanna enjoy seeing it when I look in the tank. They do in fact make great hides. 

Edited December 24, 2023 by AllFishNoBrakes

[nabokovfan87]

Well.... there's about 60+ MPH winds out tonight.  Very gusty.  Tomorrow there is also a chance of snow and it would all be perfectly fine and lovely if I didn't have stuff expected to arrive that doesn't like the cold!

Plants for shrimp are on day 3-5 in the mail and they will likely spend the freeze in a warehouse somewhere, hopefully warm enough to make it to me.  Local hobbyist, their first time trying to ship plants, so we'll see how things arrive.  There will be some floaters for the shrimp as well as some pearlweed.  I made a trip to the store to try to find some tiny pots for the shrimp tank.  I've also put a goal on myself to actually ensure that I love the tank by the end of the year.  We'll dive more into it in future posts, but the point right now is simple.... get some plants growing to help keep the shrimp thriving.

I forget if the pots need to have the hole in the bottom or they specifically don't need to have the whole in the base.  These don't.  My hope is that I can get some stems or something growing and just have a bit more of some easy plants thriving that grow a little faster than the anubias.  I am going to get some buce kedegang going in here as well and it's one I am impatiently waiting for.

[Creedmoor Aquatics]

On 11/30/2023 at 6:16 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

TLDR: Found a cull

 Do I really want to wait and see what happens?

I've been growing a colony of Bloody Marys this year and so far I've only seen a few of these culls, but not one of them has colored up to full color in maturity. As you say, all the other early juveniles are showing color.

I'm going to catch them out this week, if I can! I'm thinking I'll try sticking a cube of freeze dried food to the side of the glass to bring them in where I can see them and hopefully net them out!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

You can maybe put a net into the tank and a boiled veggie with a plant weight on it inside the net. @Creedmoor Aquatics

Edited January 8 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

A quick one...

Floaters added. Anacharis and pearlweed are put into their pots.  I might have to get another one (if I can find one) for the bulb plant, but I think it's happy.  It would be happier with soil!

The baby corydoras are about the right age to move, but we can all imagine how fun that will be to corral them.  I want to get Riddick moved to the 20L when that's free and I may be adding a BNP into this tank.  We'll see how it all goes and what makes sense when the time comes.  I'll get photos when the plants look a bit more adjusted.

[Flipper]

On 1/9/2024 at 6:28 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Riddick

I've been wondering:  what's a Riddick?