Walstad Jar & random terrestrial plant posts

[Lennie]

On 4/14/2023 at 8:15 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I’ve seen those sold online as Sunkist shrimp.

sunkist is another name of sakuras if I'm not wrong

Update: yea it seems so!

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by Lennie

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/13/2023 at 9:52 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

32 oz I believe.

Definitely 64 oz

 

On 4/14/2023 at 10:17 AM, Lennie said:

sunkist is another name of sakuras if I'm not wrong

Kind of hillarious to read the description.

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/14/2023 at 8:45 AM, Lennie said:

Pecktec has some nice ones 🙂
 

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Busy day today. I did a 50% water change on the jar. Parameters were still awesome, but the water wasn’t as clear as I’d prefer.

I moved 9 shrimp to the 29. There is about a 4 degree difference so I dripped for an hour. One blue one did get a plop & drop into the shrimp tank though, which is a similar temp. (Must have been identified as a wild before color fully developed.)

I did this due to the bladder snail reproduction and to help alleviate food competition.

I noticed the water I took out of the jar was tinged with tannins. That explains it. Must be from the catappa, the driftwood, and the alder cones. 

Replacing the water. I aged it 30 min with Prime.

 

One of the shrimp in the jar is clear. Can you see it?

Then the light clicked off for the siesta, and I left the jar alone. When I came back to take the after photo, I noticed a bladder snail on the lazy Susan. How long was that there? Suicide attempt? Plopped it back in but it floated. Then a shrimp came and was reaching in the shell. The shell seems mostly empty. I see the body through the shell but it is way, way back in the shell, while the part near the opening is just void. But these guys are small and I’m not well educated on their mannerisms, so I put some jar water into a cup and put the snail there. I do not detect an odor, so I will just check back on it to see if it crawls.

After:

Much clearer now. Looks like kelp forest kinda, no?

Happy plant:

Some of the hairgrass has grown almost to the surface (see first photo)! While other hairgrass clumps have some yellow blades in between the green ones. If they decline I will replace those with something else.

Lastly, everyone got a new piece of catappa leaf to enjoy.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/15/2023 at 10:55 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Much clearer now. Looks like kelp forest kinda, no?

All if needs is some tide shifts and some lo-fi. 😂

Love it.

On 4/15/2023 at 10:55 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Some of the hairgrass has grown almost to the surface (see first photo)

Bacopa? Moneywort?

I might just be confused at which one you're pointing to.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 4/15/2023 at 4:25 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

All if needs is some tide shifts and some lo-fi. 😂

Love it.

Bacopa? Moneywort?

I might just be confused at which one you're pointing to.

 

[nabokovfan87]

Thank you for the diagram. 🙂 That's really cool. I wish I had some to plant!  It's one of my favorites.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I wanted to offer a calcium chip, but those turn to dust, so I used a temporary feeding bowl.

 

Maybe if I could find a tiny clear bowl with a suction cup, that would work better.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/16/2023 at 5:17 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Maybe if I could find a tiny clear bowl with a suction cup, that would work better.

They have soy sauce dishes for sushi and small petri dishes. 30-80mm

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

The bladder snails babies are growing fast. But I now realize bladder snails in general are pretty small. So the babies are a little bigger than sesame needs. The adult are like the seed of an orange. I believe some babies didn’t make it. They were floating. Not sure if that’s normal or not but I did place them in a cup and waited 30 min or so and they were still floating, so I assumed they didn’t make it.

I still test parameters daily and everything is very stable.

Day 1:

Day 25:

Successful molt ⬇️

 

Babies:

Adult snail:

Edited April 17, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/17/2023 at 4:56 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Successful molt ⬇️

Looks good!  That hairgrass is dying to spread all over.  It's really nice to see someone can grow plants and to see that progress.  One of the things Pecktec mentioned in his similar tank was having algae until he had enough bioload in the tank.  The shrimp look good!  Black rose, Black tigers or something like that that.  Very dark and it's hard to tell without being there if it's a deep blue (desired) or that more black rose coloration.

The line of shrimp you have, they all have a lot of traits.  It's interesting to see all of those expressed a bit more and what comes of each variety that you decide to colonize up.  It will be very, very interesting how things look in a month or two when you have 2-3 more generations.

On 4/17/2023 at 4:56 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

This looks black ^^

This one looks more blue:
 

 

On 4/15/2023 at 10:55 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I watched the recent ACO member video about shrimp breeding. The speaker said the white ring of death, he hates the name. Because it doesn’t necessarily mean the shrimp is going to have a problem. It just means they are about to molt in a day or three. Sometimes a stuck molt can happen but the white ring is not cause for panic.

He also said that water changes, even though all parameters are good, will keep tds in check. Less important for neos that do well in hard water w/ tds. More important for caridinas that like soft water. Pop an earbud in and give it a listen if your membership is active. @nabokovfan87

And I am still surprised at the varieties of shrimp I have. The second LFS I shopped at did a poor job of ID’ing what they were selling as blue shrimp

On 4/17/2023 at 10:12 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

it's hard to tell without being there

It’s hard to tell in person too!

Edited April 18, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/17/2023 at 7:20 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Because it doesn’t necessarily mean the shrimp is going to have a problem. It just means they are about to molt in a day or three.

Yeah, exactly.  I am finding a lot of misinformation when it comes to advice on keeping shrimp.  Especially well known names, I see their tanks and they have the rings on a few shrimp. It's pretty normal from what it appears to be.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

uh oh:

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/20/2023 at 10:40 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

uh oh:

I know.... You're gonna have to trim that plant soon! 😂

[Randall H]

All of this looks awesome, especially the throwback 80's wrestling glass

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 4/20/2023 at 3:58 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I know.... You're gonna have to trim that plant soon! 😂

The uh oh was for the 2 bladder snails um.. “socializing”

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/20/2023 at 3:46 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

The uh oh was for the 2 bladder snails um.. “socializing”

I know! Joking. 🙂

There will be 100 more by dawn.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 4/20/2023 at 7:59 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

There will be 100 more by dawn

I don’t care, as long as they are not in my tanks. 🙂

Seeing them in person, they are really really small. Even the adults are small. Like an orange seed.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Cucumber feeding frenzy. 
 

 

Last time I fed cucumber I noticed the bladder snails took no interest 😈

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Last 2 or 3 days I noticed an issue. Plant leaves. Are the plants really doing poorly or is something eating the plants? They look green and healthy but I keep having to remove leaves from the surface.

These are indeed bladder snails, yes? Not pond snails? And supposing there is not enough algae for bladder snails to eat, would they eat the plants? @Guppysnail @Odd Duck

[Guppysnail]

Yes bladder. Your plants are settling in. This means some portions will melt, some just not be robust. I love my bladder snails because they do not eat any healthy portion of the plant. (Unless they are starving then most things eat what they normally would not to survive). But they do start eating the portions that are starting g to die. Essentially keeping my plants nicely pruned. But the raking (removing floating trimmed leaves) is your job or they will sink and eventually be cleaned up also. 🤗

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 4/21/2023 at 7:51 PM, Guppysnail said:

Yes bladder. Your plants are settling in. This means some portions will melt, some just not be robust. I love my bladder snails because they do not eat any healthy portion of the plant. (Unless they are starving then most things eat what they normally would not to survive). But they do start eating the portions that are starting g to die. Essentially keeping my plants nicely pruned. But the raking (removing floating trimmed leaves) is your job or they will sink and eventually be cleaned up also. 🤗

There’s not a lot of algae in there at this time; this is my concern.

Maybe I will allow those leaves to remain and whoever wants them can eat them. I’m scared to feed them because they’ve already made a bunch of babies; I keep seeing more.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Odd Duck]

Scuds will work on live plants, but I’ve not known bladder snails to do so unless desperate for food.

[nabokovfan87]

My S.Repens did the same thing about a week after moving the tank which likely happened due to CO2 system crashing.  Algae and snails is one thing, but plants losing a lot of leaves likely is shock in some capacity causing old growth to die off, even if it looks good.

Maybe Seattle_Aquarist or Miller Or Crew or others would have a better idea in why plants do this?  I'm not sure....