pleasant surprise

[ineke]

I am changing my tanks so they all use Salty Shrimp GH+ instead of GH/KH for the Cherries, but the ones that need changing have had to have a complete water change meaning I have to catch out all the shrimp. I was happy with my Rili tank and picked out a few of the best to continue to breed with and put the rest in my community tank. The Blue Velvets are doing well and again kept a few of the best to keep breeding and intensifing the blue.

Today it was the Blue from Chocolate tank and with the substrate being so dark I haven't really been able to gauge how well they were doing. The babies coming through are showing a beautiful blue, a few looked like little blue sapphires as they coloured up while being caught. I am extremely pleased with the results - remembering that I lost my colony and these are from some "culls" I had in the community tank. I have caught everything out as I am getting some nice Reds in amongst the blue but don't want to breed them at this stage. I caught out the berried females and have put them in a satelite breeding box so I can keep a closer eye on the babies and also put the mums back into the community tank . I will now be breeding my blue babies together but have kept back 1 very nice deep blue male in the hope that he is the one giving me the blues. There were mainly juvie males in besides him so hopefully he is the right one.

I have decided to get some zeo lite /zeo chlor to add to the front half of some of my cherry tanks so I can keep a bit better handle on what is happening.

I have 8 heavily berried females from out of that tank so will be over run with them soon but some of the berries are looking very pale -it may be the baby blues but they look strange I haven't seen berried girls with this colour egg before but then it's been difficult to see them at all so now I can check out the babies in the breeding box and decide if there is something "new" happening. Will let you know what they are once they hatch.

In the mean time I have about 50 babies to put back into the breeding tank and about double that number went into the community tank .I also put a heap into the pond. It's a shame there aren't more breeders in Adelaide that may have wanted to take some on. Never mind the community tank should look great with little blue gems flashing in the water.

Once we get the computer sorted I will try and put up some photos of the babies if they show up on the camera.

I still have the Black/Chocolate tank to do in the next few days and again it's a bit hard to gauge their colour due to the substrate but they are growing into lovely big black shrimp like my original breeding colony was- all I can say is thank god for my community/cull tank as I was able to save the blood lines using shrimp from there. They look very promising so fingers crossed.

I need to do my Yellow tank but have finally got a berried girl and don't want to disturb her so that tank will have to wait. I am only keeping 5 tanks for Cherries now and may cut back to 4 as I decide whether to continue with the Rilis. Although now I have cut back on numbers of breeding pairs I COULD put some Crystals etc in with the Cherries:blowkiss:

I need more tanks for the "MONGRELS" :happydance::happydance::happydance::beer: