Maddog's Chameleon shrimp tank

[maddog_12]

Hi guys

 

just showing off my tank . I'm only a noob and started this in December . Since starting out i have learned a fair bit about everything and i'm still learning. I started of with cherry's  and i  got some Chameleon  Shrimp in early feb .

 

Since joining this forum i have learnt a fair bit more etc , one thing i learned about is the tds , GH, and KH .

After reading the article about tds i took the tds pen home from work and tested my tanks. All my tanks (2x3ft) had a tds reading of 1200ppm. Tap water is 550ppm

 

The first tank is for my rainbows, bristlenose , sae , flying fox , mollies and two of species of fish (forgotten the names ). With this tank i had problem with ammonia it was high all the time and doing wc every 2 days to keep it down . The 2x canister filters were already seeded when i got them and the total flow is around 1600L/h . In the end it was frustrating me so i researched for different media type for the canisters and came across the Biohome Ultimate so i ordered some because i had nothing to loose . Two weeks later after adding it to one of the canisters i noticed ammonia went from 3.0 to 0 overnight and its never showed up again :). I started to notice the fish started to look pale and thats when i noticed the article about tds . I have been slowly dropping the tds down with ro water and its sitting at 550ppm now and the fish have got their color back.

 

 The second tank is for neons , rasboria , black tetra and cherry shrimp . I had problems with black hair algae and constant filter blocking with no flow . With the filter its a ehiem 2213 and every week without fail its either blocked in the pipes or at the bottom of the filter . I searched everywhere for help on this and used some products  with no results . The only time it started become good was when i started dropping the tds down . I am surprised that cherry and Chameleon shrimp survived the very high tds of 1200ppm . As you can see i'm a noob , because i should of learnt all this before hand.

I gave the tank a big clean out and refreshed it with ro water slowly but i made sure i had Salty Shrimp GH+ KH+ on hand first . After the first day of the new wp all the shrimp  molted , a week later most of Chameleons went to nice dark colors .

And as of yesterday have 5 berried Chamelons and some more showing signs soon . 

My wp are : Ph 6.8, GH 7, KH 5 and tds is 340

 

So thats my story so far lol , sorry for the long write up

 

Heres my Pics of the Shrimp tank

 

 

 

 

[ineke]

That's a beautiful tank , very nice. I love the Chameleons -I don't have any natives yet- keep meaning to but never see them in the shops- will have to order some one day I suppose.

I think a lot of us start out doing all the wrong things. I was given my first few RCS and didn't even know they had existed. They went straight into the fish tank with a huge TDS as well. But they bred and multiplied and seemed happy- after I gave away my fish. I even had my first Mischlings in tapwater and inert gravel and they were constantly berried. I then finally read up properly about keeping them and now have the right substrates,RO, water conditioners etc etc  and can really see the difference between them surviving and thriving. 

[Disciple]

Love the Chamleons. Thanks for sharing you experience.

[maddog_12]

Since everything is good now they are a lot more active and plus i see them more .

 

The shops over here dont sell shrimp :(