Brolly33

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.

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)
 
 

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)
 
 

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.

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.

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.

Got some Wasabi shrimp from a friend they will be fun to work with.

I'm at an auction right now and I scoped out the table there's a nice bag of orange shrimp. No one knows it yet but their mine.

A lot of babies they all look like they are cbs though, there's no way they are michilings, how ever my next berried female there is no telling who the father is of my tb or the next to get saddled up.
Tomarrow will be one month of my tb tank being cycled.
ammonia is less then 1 ppm, same as both nits. There is a ton of tiny critters all over the glass and substrate. Also see these little spastic bugs swimming in fast circles from time to time. The hawaiin moss is taking off I can't believe how good it is doing.
I took a break from the hobby as well as a day off work to spend with the family. Wish I brought my bathing suit saw a bunch of plants in the lake I wanted. I did find a bunch of nice moss for my frogs. I got enough I was going to try and grow some submerged. How ever I'm home now and already feel like I've sat on the couch too long I think I might start moving tanks out of my fish room for the remodel.

+1 sponge filters.
There are some that come with twin sponges that I prefer, since you can clean one sponge and leave the other dirty.
 

+1 sponge filters.
There are some that come with twin sponges that I prefer, since you can clean one sponge and leave the other dirty.
 

Congratulations. I remember my first RCS babies.  That moment will totally hook you!

+1 sponge filters.
There are some that come with twin sponges that I prefer, since you can clean one sponge and leave the other dirty.
 

I wasn't trying to keep the rack efficient wrt the 2.5s.  I added this chrome rack late last fall.  With the duct work in the way, I simply set the rack up to handle 10g tanks and put in 2.5's instead.  The thought was that I may not like the 2.5's and want to replace them with 10g's.  There really wasn't space for a 3rd tier of 2.5's so this worked out well.  A lot of fish keepers don't like using 2.5's mostly because of the whole 'they go badly quickly' thing and setting the rack up for 10g's just made sense. 
My racks are all set up with water, overflow, central air, and DIY LED lighting.  The 2.5's get the same percentage and timing of water changes so I have yet to really encounter the overloading of biomass problem.  I can see how it would be easy to procrastinate doing hand maintenance on these smaller tanks. 
 
Regards,
Chris

Feeding is not a big deal I have gone a month without feeding a single thing and 0 issues.
 
The real issue is evaporation so I would recommend you find a cover for the tank. I would think about going to Lowes and get picture frame glass since it's ultra cheap and they cut it for you. The glass cover even if just temp will cut back on evaporation big time.
 
Or you can be lazy like I was before and toss some saran wrap. Was gone for 2 weeks and had almost no evaporation lol.

I boiled up an IAL and tucked it away in the corner. So far the shrimp have been unimpressed with it, but I think that will do the trick for my 2 week vacation. Thanks for the wide consensus and suggestions on that topic.
 
Evaporation is an important part of my overall shimp-ecosystem due to it's cooling effect on the tank. 
My AC runs 78F and my tank runs about 75F.
 
Covering the tank will effectivly raise the temprature while maintaining water level and mineral concentrations.
If I cover the tank, I think I should also shut off the CO2, due to much lower O2 exchange (especially if I used saran wrap)
 
If I add an ATO (overall it's an attractive idea) I increase risk of flooding (depending on how sophisticated I get)
If I ATO, I will need an additional reseviour of pure RO for top offs.
If I were to drip ATO with overflow, I would need to drill a hole in the wall for the wastewater. This would have to be done in top secrecy to avoid the wrath-of-spouse.
 
I typically do not top off but instead do a 10% water change once a week.
Start of water change is typically about 150-170TDS
Incoming water is 110-120TDS reconstituted RO (with ferts for the plants)
Post change TDS is usually around 140-150.
 
There are no neighbors close that I would trust with my tank.
I am leaning heavily towards KISS and not do anything about evaporation and simply water change when I get home.
 
(Tank with IAL tucked away)
 
 
 
 

Maybe use a feeding dish and drop about half a metric ton in there. Also add a couple of IAL and you should be good to go.

Yeah i'd avoid a large amount of snowflake and go the more natural leaf or similar route.  I'd be more concerned with water evap. 

Snowflake option is good or also dropping in some mulberry leaves/natural products they can graze on over time.

Hey guys,
 
As a Cardinal Shrimp breeder I really admire what this guy in below video did about covering algae on the rocks. How can we do that? It's very obvious that cardinals love it.
 
Is it lighting or light color or rock type, what is the secret? I have got also some rocks but never covered algae like this?
 

Took some time today to setup my tanks. Two 20L at the moment, going to be using a UGF and HMF. Bare up front, substrate and then the HMF at the back. Didn't want to have the HMF in the bare area so it does not get completely covered in food when feeding happens. I added some glass in front of the HMF so I can remove it and clean it without disturbing the substrate. Had some extra glass so I decided to make a breeder box if you will in one of the tanks.
 

 

Great job!  I hope it is okay to expound a bit further on your article.
 
 
 
The common accepted theory is that the black is dominant over the red in CRS.  This is if we are dealing with homozygous backgrounds.
 
Homozygous means having identical pairs of genes for enough breedings.  You know that there is almost no chance of that particular shrimp throwing anything else but a phenotype (lookalike) of itself.
 
Creating a homozygous recessive (CRS) in theory is pretty easy- since the recessive is lowest on the totem pole, no other color should pop up.  HOWEVER, there are always surprises in backgrounds.  That is why breeders often do test breedings.  (Ie.  Testing a "Pure" red strain by crossing with a golden to see if any goldens are thrown.  If so, it has golden in the background close enough that it is not really Pure.)...or breed lines for several generations to make sure there are no "surprises" in the background.
 
So assuming the crossings are from "Pure" homozygous shrimp:
 
CBS x CRS = CBS
 
The CRS is now hidden in the background of the CBS offspring.  This is called heterozygous.  Or het for short.  The pheonotype, however, is CBS.
 
As mentioned above in the article: CBS (het CRS) x CBS (het CRS) = CBS + % CRS
 
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TB, unfortunately, we really don't know too much about.  If there were just two colors, perhaps it would be more black and white. (Pun intended.)  But there's a lot more than that.  Often the punnet squares just don't work on TB.  Why?
 
Well, there's also the real life challenge of hierarchy of genes and recessive genes.  For example, let's say green was an actual color for crystals.  The hierarchy may look like Green > Black > Red
 
Black x Red = Black
Black x Green = Green
Red x Red = Red
Green x Red = Green
 
Now all these genes are involved and can throw Black, Red, or Green.  Trying to separate these out can be quite confusing with all the shrimp having different combinations of backgrounds and  throwing different types...  and this is just an example of 3 types of genes involved!...and just simple dominances and recessives!
 
I'm sure part two by 00camadro16 will discuss co-dominance and modifiers, which can be more confusing yet and applies often to TiBs and Neos as well as TBs!
 
Bravo on a job well done!

Just realized I haven't taken many pics for a while...let me post an older one.