Brolly33

Tampa Bay keepers! Sweet! I am over I. St. Pete.

Control soil, 12 months. R/O remineralized only. KH 0. Still stable. 1 tank. Bee mischlings. Decent breeding.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tank+glass+thicknesses+calculator untempered or tempered? My 12 gal long, 9x9x36, they use 1/4" on sides and 1/2"on the bottom untempered. I have looked at 1/8 before. I would only consider it for internal dividers.

I love the tight formatting and easy to scan list. If I was in Canada, I would totally try you as a seller.

I recommend buying her a diamond and keep the tank.

Yes, add minerals to RO. Pure RO is missing the calcium that your shrimp need for their beautiful carapaces (shells). It is also missing Magnesium and a host of other trace minerals necessary for aquatic metabolism and life. I use the Fluval Shrimp Mineral Supplement, but SaltyShrimp and SL-aqua both seem very popular with the hardcore shrimpers here. Find one that works for you and stick with it. Shrimp love consistency. I read in your other posts that you have very hard tap water and had a dieoff. RO is a good restart option for you.

@Rivergardennursery I really liked the 1 week interval videos portion of documenting your test. It does look like you have less green hair algae in your tank now. The Twinstar could have had an effect, or it could just me that the algae has corrected the underlying nutrient imbalance and went away on it's own. I would love to see a side by side test in a couple of clear plastic 2-liter bottles in a sunny window. Seed both with your hair algae, feed both some fish food once a week, for nutrient load. Once both have a big clump of the hair algae, drop the Twinstar in one of the containers and run test for 2 more months. Compare the bottles weekly. Having a control is the key to a good experiment.

Do you feel like some amateur kitchen science. If you were to do a 50% water change, and test tank water for ammonia before and after, does your test result go up, down, or stay the same? When you remineralize with salty shrimp, before you put the new water into the tank, does it test positive for ammonia? If you bought a gallon of pure distilled water, does it test positive for ammonia? If incoming water has no ammonia, and your test kit is good, then it has to be in the tank already. Your filter should be pulling ammonia out. If you were to accidentally kill the bacteria colony in your filter you would get a double whammy due to the dead bacteria not eating ammonia anymore, as well as their microscopic little bodies decaying. Are you dosing anything strange that might kill off your filter? Hydrogen Peroxide treatment? anti-biotics? Your plants look nice and green, and should be pulling ammonia out for you. Ammonia can be a by-product of organic decay. Fish waste does this, but you don't have any livestock in there. I don't see any dead leaves or dead plant material in your tank picture. If you wood is rotting, it might be releasing ammonia (doubtful, but testable) You could put your wood hard-scape into a bucket of tested RO and see if you get an ammonia spike over 1-2 days. You could do the same bucket test with a small handfull of your substrate and your RO if you wanted to eliminate it as the source of ammonia. My Hagen test kit compensates the test color of the ammonia against pH of the sample. I wonder if the API test kit is effected by pH of the sample? Lots of fun variables to eliminate

Use your test kit on the filtered water coming from that Glacier machine. I have had terrible luck with grocery store "filter" machines water quality. Start with your TDS meter. Good RO should be <5.0 and great RO should be 0.0.

Have your tank ready to co and fully cycled and stable before shopping. Consider your tank water parameters and try to find a seller who's numbers are close to yours. Imports tend to be more fragile than locally tank bred. Consider shipping temperature and time your buy for when both you and the shipper's weather will not be terribly hot nor cold. Consider shipping distances, as the longer the shrimp are in the bag, the harder it is on them. Consider buying younger shrimp, as the old ones are harder to adjust to a new tank after the stress of shipping. Check the for sale threads here and other boards, watch for feedback from other buyers and consider how long they have been selling to the community. My mischling culture came from @Sbarbee54 about 2 years ago. Quite satisfied with the shrimp and the seller.

@Rivergardennursery Update? Did the treatment work? Any treatment related losses of moss or lifestock?

How is the noise level in the room? What did you use to guard the inlet against shrimp entry?

Holy Gorgeousness, Batman! I have dreams of owning shrimp like this and being able to pop off macros this crisp.

Out of the initial buy of 20 mischlings and 1 Blue Bolt I lost all but 3 mischlings. This was before I switched to control soil. Staring from those survivors, 2 females and 1 male, 1 year ago, I now have a healthy and strong colony, 3 generations deep. Current population is about 100 shrimp. 1 low quality red bolt 2 low quality blue bolts (but I have not seen one of them in a while. He might have been a loss) 10 CRS of various grades and patterns 6 CBS of various grades and patterns There is an interesting brown trending to purple on the cheeks of some of the second generation females. I am very curious to see where it goes. Somewhat lower than the 25% I was suspecting, but still very rewarding. I only have one tank, so I don't have options for selective breeding. Nothing astounding or show quality has come out. If you want to have top quality, prepare to spend a few years aggressively culling to your goal, or invest in an established line. If you want great starter shrimp at low cost and the potential for some nice surprises, go Mischling!

15 days totally uncovered - water loss about 15% of total volume. I started with full (1/16 inch from top) and ended as you see in the screenshot. Here is a closer shot. I did not measure inches, but I would guess between 2 and 3 inches loss. House temp was sustained 78, as we left the AC on for our trip.

Ohmiko, I started my colony with mischilngs as well. They were about the same price as low grade CRS/CBS and the big fun of it is getting TBs popping out from time to time. As starter shrimp, they are awesome.

I got a postcard as well. Looks like any prior customers got one. At the risk of turning this into a product review... I have been running 1" of control soil in my 12 G long for a year now and it has retained it's buffering so far. I only use reconstituted RO and I run 0 KH, both of which are likely extending it's life. My plants grow, my mischling CRS/CBS breed well, overall I very happy with it.

Plan executed - results successful. I returned from 15 days away to a happy colony and acceptable water parameters. 2 IAL in the tank 2 nuggets of snowflake Started TDS of 145, ended with 175 due to evaporation. pH unchanged (thanks control soil) Nitrates unchanged (thanks plants)

After extensive consideration, and a bit of testing, the consensus is to remove the CO2 (done 3 weeks ago) and add an Indian Almond Leaf (IAL). The IAL grows bio film yumminess for the shrimp to eat. The sponge filter will provide the rest of the "food" while I am gone for 2 weeks. The filter is mature, so no worries about water. My evaporation test showed no ill effects from a 2 week stretch of "do nothing" Good news: "do nothing" seems to work.

I dropped the CO2 3 weeks ago. Plants still happy. Temperature stable. IAL in place. Filter changed. I did a 14 day stretch without feeding or topoff. Water parameters crept up but well within happiness margins. Not even the berried ladies seemed to mind or notice. All set for my trip. Thanks for the advice.

Did seller's parameters closely match your own? You only really need 1 berried female to hatch. Babies born in a tank have much better survival rates.

On the Federal Noxious Weed list and Illegal in some states. Great at growing, but be careful at water changes, even partial leaves can grow into whole plants. I like the Wisteria suggestion the best.