journal The begining

[BristledOne]

Noticing some babies starting to come out of hiding sorry about the poor image quality

[Squiggle]

Awesome stuff dude, very nice pics, well done! :beer:

[bozzy]

always a good thing seeing babies. nice tank too

[ineke]

congratulations it's always good seeing berried mamas and new babies:encouragement:

[BristledOne]

Thankyou everyone

Inke it definitely is! the last lot of eggs in my tank were dropped early apart from about 3 in her clutch, it's nice getting to see them crawling about rather than worrying the mums will loose them again :p

I've been adding in BeeMax a little bit more often and have also been trying out my own mix of powdered foods. So far it seems to be working well for me.

I should also mention that I've added a cheap disposable CO2 setup to this tank, but have also connected it up to a DIY bottle.

The light since startup has also changed from a 20W T5 to 2x18W T5's. The light I was first using was sitting flush on the tank, this light is raised slightly which has allowed an increase to light without an increase to heat. I'm hoping that the extra light combined with the CO2 will allow the small amounts of HC to spread and hopefully will help combat unwanted black algae that was forming prior (I had to cut parts of some plants out though)

I'm making sure I keep ontop of the PH level though as I am/was worried about the CO2 causing a bit of a PH swing. PH is stable at 6.1 though with two almond leaves present in the tank at all times, the CO2 gets disconnected when the light goes out.

[BristledOne]

Time for an update.

So first the sad, I mentioned in another thread that I believe the majority of my golden snow bees have vanished. Either escaping (though I try to keep the water level a good 2 inches from the top) or possibly been eaten after a moult.

I've been able to count 4 in the tank, that I believe are all female.

Question is, if I only have 4 females how is one berried? :p (excuse the picture quality, was in a hurry to take a pic as she was moving fast)

As I type this I'm actually doing a 30% water change with RO water purchased from a local hydroponic shop and made up to a TDS of 200 (salty shrimp minerals)

This is the first time I've used RO water so I'm doing the change at a slow 4Lp/h so as to not give the shrimp a shock. The pic of the berried mumma was her actually sitting under the trickle of RO water into the tank.

The rili's are doing well, no losses, high survival rate and another few are berried again :)

[Squiggle]

Bummer dude, but it's good to see you have a sneaky male hiding out in there to keep the girls going, good luck with the berried girl! :encouragement:

[BristledOne]

Well I've started to spot some shrimplets around the tank from the berried Golden Snow Bee I've been able to count 5 at one time but there's lots of hiding places so I expect them might be a couple more hiding.

Sorry for the pics, I dont have a macro lense at the moment and this phone is surprisingly bad at focusing on small things

[Ronskitz]

Awesome dude good to hear

[Squiggle]

Awesome stuff dude, for every shrimplet you count there will be at least one more hiding somewhere! :beer:

[BristledOne]

Cheers guys :) now the confidence is building I'm itching to get new/more shrimp lol

[buck]

Hows things, any updates?