madcrafted

Ammonia readings aren't a big deal when using buffering substrates like you are. Almost all of that is in the NH4 (ammonium) form. The bigger issue is your nitrate level. You are likely overfeeding as many tend to do. We've all been there. Itchy fingers and the need to do something doesn't help matters. The best thing you can do is increase water change to 25% until you can get that nitrates down below 10 (ideally below 5). Just don't go changing more than that at one time or risk shocking the shrimp. Alternatively, you could try doing a couple 15% in one week if you like. Just do this until that nitrate test starts giving you light orange colored samples. These drop tests aren't exactly precise and only gives us a ballpark estimate to begin with. I do know when adding salty shrimp GH+ to R/O water, TDS should be closer to 85-95 ppm, so for your TDS to be that high, you either have more nitrates than you think, or something else is raising your TDS besides calcium and magnesium. TDS really means nothing without knowing what our starting base is and what we've added. If it just been food, then yeah, it's probably nitrates being generated as it gets processed from biofilter. Stop feeding the shrimp for a few days, they won't starve so don't worry. There's really no reason to be adding a bunch of liquid supplements each week to a tank with good buffering soil, good quality food that isn't too high in animal proteins and a consistent GH product. These other products are just not needed for shrimp health, at least not in the way they want you to believe they are. Just let the soil do it's job and stay on top of evaporation by topping off with RO water. As for feeding... 50 shrimp isn't a lot. 1 pad/pellet every other day is more than enough for smaller colonies like that. You'll know if they need more food as 80% of the colony will swarm that pellet and stay there until it's gone a couple hours later. If they don't, skip another day between and try again. Eventually you'll find that sweet spot for feeding your colony. As the colony expands, more food can be introduced.

I doubt you'll find many here keeping their caridinas in tap water. I'd probably look for low grade CRS if I were to experiment here. Just have to acclimate them to these parameters yourself. Get more than you think you'll need. lol

The shrimp might have an easier time molting at a slightly lower mineral level. I've had fewer problems at 3.5 - 4 GH. I would get the occasional stuck molt when when I was keeping minerals closer to 5 GH. With SS GH+ that puts me right around the 100 TDS range. YMMV a little.

Haha, ok. I understand. Hopefully you can find more buyers or keep doing water changes, feeding forage foods or maybe using a product like Purigen to help keep nitrates and DOCs in check. I won't be separating by patterns but by actual phenotypes. I could have explained that better, my apologies. I keep mostly hybrids.. tibees, frt, taitibees, galaxies, etc. so it's a grab bag of surprises with offspring with TB genes until you can stabilize them (somewhat). I have several different lines mixed in there, so a long road indeed. I wouldn't select like this with my PRLs for example... only culling out washed out colors, bleeding of reds into whites, yellowing, clear legs, etc. Maybe tossing a few pairs from another line every few generations to keep colony healthy and vigorous.

I feel like you've reached the limit without having to change more water and thin colony some as Shrimp Life suggested. That sounds about right going by the 25-30 dwarf shrimp per gallon suggestion I've heard others talk about. Might be time for another tank? lol I have yet to reach a breeding threshold with my own shrimp and most likely won't as I will be separating them by phenotype and selectively breeding them. Drawback to this method is you need several tanks for each type/line. Not very practical for most.

In a tank that size, with that amount of shrimp and heavily planted, you don't need to do much different for the fry. I personally like to feed every 3 days and I have tanks with about the same amount of shrimp as yours, some with a little more. I do like to sprinkle a little sl-aqua magic powder into each tank 10 minutes before feeding. I do this regardless of whether or not there is fry in the tank, so there's a constant source of beneficial bacteria and biofilm residing there at all times, plus the shrimp like to graze on the little bits as the settle. With Bacter AE, I would use less than the recommended dosage. When I was using that product I used a "drop" size measuring spoon (1/64th of a teaspoon) per 12-15 shrimp twice a week. Any more than that seemed to pollute my tank. Even with magic powder, I use a small amount because I feel less is more with these powders in general. I don't have a problem with planaria or hydra but the detritus worms let me know when to ease up on feeding.

There are very few published papers on neo/caridina breeding. One of the ones that I've ran across mentions the affects of temperature and very little on photo period, being it was at a constant 12/12 schedule throughout the entire study. This was for the RCS too, btw. Crystals and other bee shrimp have even fewer studies and ALOT of speculation printed on the web. We do know that metabolism and growth slow down in cooler waters as does reproduction. So temperature is a big one. Not so sure about light myself being as I keep a shorter photo period than most at 7-8 hours of light. I have shrimp berried right now but these are hybrids (tibees and galaxy pintos). My PRL's aren't doing anything in these unheated tanks. Temps are between 62-65° F for the last month or so. I'm chalking it up to temperature. What these temperature thresholds are for each given species/sub-species is hard to say but I'd be willing to guess at 68°, my PRLs will be getting busy. It may very well be speculation to say the sex ratio of offspring is also affected by temperature for these particular species. From a logical standpoint, it makes sense that there will be higher percentages of female offspring in cooler water where food sources are abundant in early Spring but this is with wild shrimp, not ornamental shrimp that have been selectively bred for many generations. However, there are reports on the internet of breeders seeing a higher percentage of female offspring during winter breedings. Hardly concrete evidence but worth observing in our own tanks.

The wood provides a nice grazing surface for shrimp. The white stuff is likely fungal based and the shrimp will pick at it. They are probably more interested in the biofilm that is growing on the wood's surface but also eat various things that make up a mixture of what is referred to as periphyton. A small colony of shrimp can survive off the natural food resources in the tank if it's readily available and might not show any interest in commercial foods when offered. If you want, you could try offering a vegetable based food or fresh boiled leaves of spinach, nettles, mulberry, collard greens or any other high calcium leafy green. After boiling, you can freeze them and it will make them easier for shrimp to pick apart. For convenience, I usually just drop pellets of ken's premium veggie sticks in my tanks twice a week and a protein based food once a week. Feel free to experiment. Just be sure to siphon up any uneaten food after 3 hours. A turkey baster comes in handy for this.

I find this very to be a very interesting scape with great placement of hardscape and plants. Never seen anyone use a slate like that either... very unique.

I think it's more like Marified makes soil for UNS, as well as Brightwell.

Glad to hear they are transitioning well into their new home. Shrimp will generally let you know when there is a problem. I find that the less I fool with parameters and testing, the better off they are. The key to success starts with good soil and SL-Aqua is one of the best, so you made a wise choice there.

Oh they lay eggs in soft water just the same. All in my mosses and cholla wood. Doesn't bother me much, they eventually just dissolve.

If you keep them in soft water permanently, they will die sooner than they normally would in waters with normal carbonate levels. You can see the shells getting thinner over time, sometimes even displaying "pits" here and there. I rotate mine between soft water and tanks with tap water. The tap water tanks barely have any algae these days, so when I toss them into my soft water shrimp tanks, they devour whatever algae they can...quickly. Then I move them back after a month or so, leaving only "pesty" snails like ramshorns and bladder to finish up.

I still have a difficult time sexing shrimp under 4 months or so, but to me, that looks to be male. That underbelly appears straight when males are young but as they age, it takes on a fish-like shape. Kinda like a slight S-curve shape to the belly. Females are rounder bellied and look more "stout" in general. Not always bigger, but beefier. Sometimes that 2nd scale will overlapp scales 1 and 3, but not always easy to see this in females that haven't carried. I never could go by that antenna trick to sex them. I've seen males with what looked to be short antennas up top.

Fissidens always the first to show algaes. It's truly a magnet for the stuff. lol I employ the use of nerites and whatever other hitchikers I may get. Right now there's a huge explosion of bladder snails in my tanks but they are keeping the moss clean for me. Reducing light helps a lot with fluffy and filamentous algae. I have all mine wired to dimmers. So, what are these rare mosses you speak of? I like rare mosses too. lol