journal JonX- Shrimp Tank

[2OFUS]

Its their favourite spot :)

[JonX]

I hope no baby shrimp got taken out with the moss :S

If one or 2 made it in the cuttings then thats a plus to the person who bought my trimmings. :)

I was careful trying to shake the shrimplets off.

Feels like a lot less clutter now and I can see the shrimp. Feel like getting rid of the goldvine but they are the feature of the tank. The mesh has grown black beared but it hasnt spread any where else.

Tomorrow I will be changing the mesh to a smaller hole one so shrimplets cant swim through.

Im tired had 2 hours sleep. More updates tomorrow.

[Squiggle]

Very cool Jon, love your work :encouragement:

[al4n]

Cool update, tank looking good!

[JonX]

I'm back in West Australia for another stint of work. Here are some photos I took while I was home with my shrimpies.

Here are my beloved CBS. More pictures to come tomorrow evening. I'm working 12 hour days now 6am to 6pm. Waking up at 4.15am.

[ineke]

Lovely shrimp Jonx getting really nice shrimp now well done:encouragement:

[al4n]

nice colours Jon!

[JonX]

My girlfriend sent me some pictures while she was feeding them. The home made feeding tubes are good, they direct the food to fall right into the feeding dish. Ugly, but useful. I'll save up some day and get the nice glass ones from Aquakitz. http://aquakitz.com/shrimp-feeder-glass-tube/

Video -

http://youtu.be/ydQHyxtTplU

Some of the CRS

New moult means berries!

The bright light makes her look like PRL. I wish!

berried snow white

[ineke]

Great pictures Jonx you must be happy!!!!

[Squiggle]

They all look awesome dude, that one does look PRL under the lights, well done & to the GF for quality pics :encouragement:

[JonX]

So finally after 1 month of ordering another tank from Abyyss Aquarium I finally have my second divided tank. I moved the 30cm cube to my dads house now the stand has 60cm tanks.

This tank is running independently. I wanted to keep them separate because I didn't want to risk losing all my life stock if one tank crashes.

Specs: 60cm x 40cm x 40cm

Soil: Benibachi super powder

Filter: Air driven sponge filters, Eheim Professional 2026

Heater: sera precision 100 watt

Light: 45cm Up Aqua Z series

Dividers: acrylic with stainless stell mesh rectangles

When it settles I will add in mosses. I have US fissidens, flame moss, and tawain moss, also some anubias nana pettite to scape it with. I used one of the sponges in my current tank in this new tank to help cycle it faster.

Chameleon shrimp in the nano cube happily relocated to my dads house.

Hydrocotyle is one of my favourite plants. Its grows very fast.

[Squiggle]

Wow Johnny, your new tank looks amazing :victorious: what sort of shrimp are you going to keep in it? :encouragement:

[JonX]

Wow Johnny' date=' your new tank looks amazing :victorious: what sort of shrimp are you going to keep in it? :encouragement:[/quote']

I'm going to put half of the CBS, half the CRS stock, and my snow whites.

Just bought a house so I'm not going to jump into Tai Bees yes, although I do love blue tigers! Roberts pair of blue and blonde tigers was so so tempting.

[Squiggle]

Very nice dude, should have some awesome shrimp in no time. Those tigers were very cool :encouragement:

[JonX]

Benibachi super powder is very cloudy, I've been stirring it up and trying to get the filter to suck up the dust, its slowly clearing up, the 2026 is going to have alot of dust in it.

The mesh is smaller now so hopefully future shrimplets will stay in their divided sections.

I spent the morning scaping the tank tying moss and anubias on goldvine and bamboo shrimp shelters. While the tank is cycling I have turned the co2 on so plants can get some growth.

The 40cm height is much better than the 1st divided tank which is 30cm high. I don't have to bend down to look into the tank. The height also allows me to have the water 5cm below the tank height so that none of the sneaky shrimpies can climb out and commit suicide.

The light is 45cm up aqua z series. I think it gives the right amount of penetration and brightness even though the tank is 60cm long. My previous 72 watt led was way too strong. I like this better.

Side by side 2ft divided tanks. This is as close to a rack as I'll get for now. =)

Still clearing up.

45cm Up aqua z series

middle section

[CNgo2006]

I wouldn't stir it up because you will be losing a lot of the goodness the substrate has to offer!

[JonX]

I wouldn't stir it up because you will be losing a lot of the goodness the substrate has to offer!

Bro, there was a fine layer of flour like powder sitting on top of the grains. I wanted that gone because in future when I try and catch shrimp or move something the tank would get cloudy. Its all in the filter now.

[Squiggle]

Awesome setup dude, you've definitely made a nice nano system, well done :encouragement:

[JonX]

Okay its been nearly 3 weeks since an update. The new divided tank has finally cycled. I was planning to just move half my CRS and CBS stock over but my gosh has that changed! There have been too many irresistible shrimp packages on SKF for sale that I took advantage of and sadly have drained my savings. I feel terribly guilty about it all, but when I see these new shrimp I am very happy.

I have had problems with cherry shrimp in my 1st tank with alot of deaths. A few months ago I bought 10 black cherries and only 3 are remaining. Also, I had 4 pairs of blue velvets, all but 2 males are alive. A few pumpkin girls haven't been so lucky either. I've checked my PH and its at 6.5- some will say it's too low for cherries, but I'd bet that other people have kept them fine at that PH. I am going to give up on cherry shrimp.

I have also been losing some crystal shrimp aswell- I've tested my water and everything is on parr with normal and healthy. There must be something else, I hate losing shrimp and I'm scratching my head wondering what the hell is going on.

Although I have been having these losses, all my 6 CBS girls are berried to some very quality SSS crown and flower head boys. I'd have about 8 plus CRS girls who are also berried and I have many shrimplets CRS and CBS with a high survival rate many SS grades, I see a few SSS grades aswell.

About 2 weeks ago I found that someone was selling a PRL SS female. They only had one, I swapped my 30 or so remaining yellow cherry shrimp for it. I've only seen PRL in photos from over seas breeders- when I got it, it didn't look that great or much different to my already high quality solid colour CRS. She came freshly berried to a SSS normal crystal red shrimp. I thought about seperating her and her babies and breeding her best male offspring back to her, but I'm just going to mix the shrimplets with my existing CRS colony to strengthen the gene pool. I highly doubt that she is PRL- there's not much point if there isn't a male PRL to go with her. - Does any one have any PRL males I could have?

Now- back to the new divided tank. It has finally cycled and I've nosed dived into the deep end with TaiBees and Tigers. I thought I was years away from it, but since the CRS and CBS were breeding so well and also 2ofus telling me that keeping Taiwans is not really any difference from keeping crystals (except that when one does die, you cry with half a day's pay gone!) so here I am.

I've been hooked up well with nice king kongs, pandas, mishlings, blonde orange eye tigers, and there will be blue bolts on the way- just think of how expensive this Taibee and tiger colony has cost to start up. =/

I've been reading lots on SKF from everyone's experiences, and hopefully I get the same amount of success that every one has been getting.

That's it for now with pics below. Enjoy.

Full tank shot. I might change the snow white section to a tai bee section once I get the mysterious deaths solved.

1st divided tank

new divided tank

crs section

cbs section

middle mischlings section of new tank

sss caught in the act

1 of 2 remaining blue velvet males

CRS family feeding

birds eye view

lost female berried ss CRS

CBS colony - I've lost a few good females. =(

[JonX]

I've turned a spare breeder box into a hang on filter. It's packed with an air driven sponge filter turned on its side, noodles, and sponge wool giving me an extra 4liters of filtration. The new tank already has air driven sponge filters in each section, plus an eheim 2206 loaded with matrix and eheim substrat pro. I've been extra cautious because of the high quality taiwans going in there and also because the tank is newly cycled.

since this picture I have added a little pump to help circulate the water around more.

new additions of the new tank - a couple of tigers

one blue male he is huge about 3.5cm! Larger than any of my female CRS by miles!

blonde tiger

Panda juvie

King Kong juvie- you can see one of my remaining black cherries (looks brown. Hmm)

The PRL i bought- I'm keeping her with my CRS because I don't have a PRL male to go with her. I've got no proof of PRL except that the seller said she was PRL. =/

Doesn't really look much different to my quality CRS.

Bucephalandra: seems like everyone is going crazy for these rare and very expensive plants. Here is mine that I bought sp Kedagang. Its beautiful and has more than doubled its size. It was grown with co2 for about 2 months. Now it is growing with no co2. The picture on the left was taken when

I first bought it: 17th March 2013. The picture on the right was taken 7th June 2013- just under 3 months later.

[CNgo2006]

Nice johnny! But why did you get a male so big he could be real old and not have much longer, also he could be past his prime. Also I have noticed when the male outsize the girls he can be pretty rough when it comes to that time and pretty stressful on the girls especially when they have just molted.

Tell the truth now you got the breeder box filtration idea from my posts in other threads didn't you? Looking good btw! That can't be all of them there suppose to be 4.6k worth right?

[JonX]

Chi, the old bluey was a freebie but thanks for the tip about the bigger ones man handling the girls.

With the filter box as filtration I had the problem of the tank still having trace amounts of ammonia after 2 weeks (after reading that benibachi doesn't need to cycle-pfft) and having Taiwans on the way I needed to do something about it. I was thinking about packing it with seachem matrix but having the Taiwans and the Tigers I am sure that ill need to use the breeder box for selective breeding in future. After I did it I saw your post about breeder box filters. :) great minds think alike thats all.

Theres more shrimp on their way but 4.6k you dont get that many shrimp. :(

[HelvinHT]

Nice tank, nice tools and beautiful shrimp.

[kunzy]

Nice shrimps! very cool tanks :)

[JonX]

I am still getting deaths in the CRS/CBS tank. The other morning I found my good SS CBS female with eggs dead and also an S grade CBS dead. I don't know why...

I feel like starting the tank all over again, but I can't because I have around 100 shrimplets ranging from new borns to 6 weeks old.

On another so far so great with the new tank. I got some of the shrimp I was waiting for.

Here are some pics.

cannot wait for these little guys to mature and breed.