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On 3/19/2023 at 10:44 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

It's a bit darker and gives me an idea of what to look for when it comes to timing out their molting.

Well, ask and you shall receive. I see about half the tank is either started, about to, or having issues molting. I'll attach some photos here. There's quite a few, which makes me think it's just stress, but something I do need to monitor.  Similar to @Chick-In-Of-TheSeasseeing white ring on her shrimp and the concern of what that could indicate. I see it on at least 4-5 shrimp this morning.

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You can see a lot of shrimp out today. At least 9 probably more, which is just about everyone in the tank!

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I dropped some food in to see how they responded and they did well. Very active towards the food which is a great sign.

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Some shrimp are a bit dense.

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Others are a bit smarter.

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Saw 4-5 feeding, fighting for the same piece of food like it was gladiator even though I had dropped plenty of food in.

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I'll check in a few times today and see what I see. Ultimately this is a the most critical stage of the tank so far and a necessary step towards eventual success.  Good things witnessed, some concerning, but I'm just sitting here fascinated this morning with these little creatures doing what they do.

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On 3/20/2023 at 11:09 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

@nabokovfan87 I haven't seen that shrimp in a few days but I know she hides in some of the dense plants.  Hard to say if she's ok or not, with 8 mysteries in there.  I just have to keep an eye out for her.

Rick directly ate dead shrimp in a couple seconds. I've witnessed it with my eyes. 

So it would be impossible to find a dead body I bet with 8 I bet :')

Edited by Lennie
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On 3/20/2023 at 4:12 PM, Lennie said:

Rick directly ate dead shrimp in a couple seconds. I've witnessed it with my eyes. 

So it would be impossible to find a dead body I bet with 8 I bet :')

Yeah I saw that happen when I had two mysteries in the shrimp tank. I moved them out once a female was berried so they wouldn’t steamroll shrimplets. 🤣

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I'm seeing 11 out, I think that's basically everyone. The one with the worst "white ring" looks to be a small female from the first batch. It's probably from shipping or something, some of them were really beat up. I'm just waiting to see a molt any second now from someone.

Feeding dish is here, but for today they are fine without it. Seems small, but it was biggest one I could find within reason (80mm).

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On 3/20/2023 at 10:22 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea IDK if you saw it but you can make those with that bag of "junk media" and some silicone.  MST's takes those and makes pyramids.  I am planning to stack 4-6 pleco caves in there eventually. 

Sort of lost on how to scape it and right now I just want it to do it's thing and be stable for a month. 

Oh yeah, that's right!

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Shrimp feeding dish added.  They are exploring it a little bit, but so far they are enjoying it.  I checked in on them this morning and the main female with the white mark... I just hope she molts soon.  Seems perfectly healthy, just has that bit of wonky shell going on.  (I don't think she's holding eggs, but I'm basically bracing for the worst. 

I revisited a video, might've posted earlier, but it's of a shrimp molting.  It does look like a bloody mary and it does have a pretty wide white mark.  Molted just fine.  Heck, maybe the amanos had them and I just can't see because it's clear. Hard to say.   Molts come off in a pretty specific pattern/shape so once I see them I'll feel a lot better about it all.

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Difficult to know for certain but this one looks like a new shell / fresh molted female to me.

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This could be the female that I posted the clip with earlier with the white ring, but unsure.

Sitting here this morning trying to watch all the shrimp and seeing what I can. I chased a female around that looks berried with eggs (one or two do, hard to tell!)

Let me know what you think 🙂

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Behind her in that last photo there was 4-5 on the glass, 3 swimming to the right of the tank, and a few in the feeding dish.  I tried to get a decent photo, but how many do you see!

It's fun to wake up and watch these things. Very active in the morning doing their hunting for food.

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Edited by nabokovfan87
added photo
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Late night research....

Looks like a similar setup. I need to put the smaller pump on the tank, but they were definitely enjoying the flow today.  Hard for them to swim with the bubbles so intense. Very over powered air pump right now.


Water Test Results 3/23/2023
Temp: 73
PH: 6.8-7.0
GH: 80
KH: 80
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10

Edited by nabokovfan87
Added test results.
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First molt (I've been able to see and photograph)!

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I think I've decided to have at minimum 2 feeding dishes. Based on first few uses.

This looks like the one that molted. Very bright and glossy.

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Just saw this "cave" be used by the shrimp. They are definitely going inside and using it as a cover/hotel after molting. I can only imagine how useful this will be in the future! This one looks a bit hidden and shaded.  20230324_100345.JPG.48983418a811b31a69e53df724663f1d.JPG

Edited by nabokovfan87
added cave photo
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On 3/24/2023 at 10:15 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

This is awesome! Shrimp color looks epic and their little condominiums are cute.

It's a relief for sure. Glad I went with my gut and did the full WC yesterday.  Been watching them eat. There's one in concerned about maybe two. Just hoping to see them get in on the food. (One is a male that's very timid and looks malnourished).

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I've seen that little white ring on a number of my shrimp and haven't noticed it necessarily meaning certain death.  I don't think it's too big of a concern, at least in my experience.  I've found that the coarse AC sponges are basically shrimplet hotels.  I thought I had no shrimplets at one point, moved a sponge filter and like 40 of them were blasting around the tank.

Additionally, that means you should be careful when cleaning those sponges in a tank with shrimp.  Forgot to mention that.  I've got young kids who think it's fun to net stuff out of a bucket, so usually rinse the sponge in there and then they get to catch all the baby shrimp once everything settles down a bit.  Though I'll confess to not rinsing sponges out too often in most tanks.

Edited by jwcarlson
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  • 2 weeks later...

This morning I watched one of the females deposit eggs and berry herself.

This afternoon I started to break things down and move the tank to it's final position.

Shortly after that, I removed the heater which revealed a decent amount of shrimplets. I was able to find and net a good amount as well as the adults and finish moving the tank.

I am dripping the shrimp right now waiting for them to acclimate. I'll double check everything, but I should be able to get them in here shortly.

Exciting, good, still want to see better molting behavior, but I do have a good feeling now that I am seeing the things I need to see for success with the shrimp.

I ended up removing a bulky chunk of wood, treating the BBA in two pieces of wood with hydrogen peroxide to try to help while I broke everything down.

We'll see how they do. I have a room again, the tanks are setup, and it's going to be nice to wake up and have that view again of the tanks and waking up as all the lights tick on in sequence.

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Well the "deep clean" when moving the tank definitely didn't help to rid the tank of worms. Feels like Riddick is about to be a permanent resident to the shrimp tank.

I checked on things tonight, I was going to plant in the epiphytes to the hardscape (they are floating) and then I saw the mass of worms all over the tank.

I've got 3-4 berried females right now, I've not been feeding the tank heavy at all this week because the shrimp seemed to be ignoring the food.

Hard to know what to do with this one. Similar situation as before where there isn't anything to keep the worms in check and it's near impossible to even see them on the sand substrate. At night, clear as day in the water.  They are about 2x as long as they were last week, so they are loving their little home.  Probably all inside the dragonstone too, making it very difficult to eradicate them.

Healthy ecosystem and all that, I get it.  fry will be in the tank soon, so there's that.   I do need to get enough baby shrimp growing before that happens to stabilize the colony first.

 

 

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I do enjoy the scape a lot more. There's room so to speak for things to grow in and there's better circulation and flow. The hardscape flows better....

The hydrogen peroxide treated BBA didn't really get affected at all, again, so I need to figure out a better method. Probably pull the wood one day, soak it in a bucket and give it a good dose.

I'll get some better photos under the white lights once I get the plants in place.

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I know it seems foolish, but I am still waiting to see more molts. Shrimp got fed today and I peaked in to check how active they were. This is a very, very interesting video.

I do appreciate the effort there to weigh shrimp and figure out how much. It's good to see the side by side and to keep some semblance of how much I feed my tank. I think using 0.5 or smaller granules is probably really great shrimp food as long as you can manage to get it into the dish for them.

The food I have now is 1mm pellets and I tend to feed 1 per shrimp or 1 for every 2.

Had to snag some photos, and I did see the shrimplets hiding in the sponge, that'll be fun come Wednesday. My apologies if the lighting is wonky.

 

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On 4/11/2023 at 2:47 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Say goodbye to sponge filter maintenance! LOL

And vacuuming the tank

Nah, we'll see. I am used to handling them, surprised how fast they are growing.

The plan is to get to a biweekly schedule for both tanks. Extend things out from the usual.

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