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I haven't updated much on my shrimp room lately so thought it was time. I have just had my lighting updated thanks to the sale of some of my culls and Eshrimp - I did some house sitting for him and his lovely wife, looking after their dogs and shrimp/fish room- I now have Aqua One plantgro LED lights. What a difference they make - I can now see my shrimp without having to use extra lighting and the moss should start growing much better too. So I have 3 x 3 foot lights per side of room. My TB / Mischlings are breeding madly with babies everywhere but the TB percentage is quite low so I have removed heaps of what I think are males leaving only berried females , babies and my male Shadow Panda in that tank so he will be the father to all the babies hopefully improving my TB percentage. I should have done this a long time ago but somehow just never got around to it. My females are mostly F6/7 so I should get better percentage now. I am in the process of putting new substrate in half the tanks possibly more depending on how far the new substrate stretches. I am using Elos instead of Benibachi in the hope that it doesn't buffer my tanks quite so low - I have had my tanks sitting around 5 to 5.5 even after taking a lot of substrate out . I have finally cut back on the number of Cherry tanks and now only have 4 dedicated tanks - Black, Blue Velvet, Yellow and blue gene Red Rili- I won't keep any culls now although I will continue to cull heavily. I have most of my tanks now setup for Crystal varieties , TB/ Mischling , Tibees and very soon thanks to BlueBolts some OEBT. Hopefully I will be able to start breeding some Pintos and more fancy Tibees - I just love Tibees- their colour and variety is so beautiful . As I have plenty of tanks I am going to pick out berried females and have maternity/ grow out tanks so I will be definite about the females and then have the best males in tanks of their own so I can pick out who breeds with who- something I have been very slack about, basically just letting anyone breed with anyone. So that is where I am at the moment - finally going to do selective breeding properly and about time too me thinks! Now I can see my shrimp properly I no longer have any excuse to be so layback. Once I have finished redoing the tanks I will take some pictures - of the shrimp as well- to show the difference the lighting makes.

I call her Big Momma (as in Big Momma's House). She's a massive Choc/Black Cherry that is mom to at least 4 separate batches of eggs. Naaawwwwww. Isn't it cute! I have a soft spot for CRS shrimplets. This is just one of the many little CRS shrimplets in the tank. More preggers Choc cherries. This one isn't a very good grade though. But still fun to see eggs. This one is going to be interesting. Can't wait to see what will turn up. Unfortunately the one and only male died a few days ago. Really bummed about it. I've got a couple of blues like this shrimplet in the tank as well. At least, from what I could see. Another one. Spring has well and truely hit at my place.

Well that just depends how dark it is when you go there! lol

Those lights did make a huge difference. The room looks amazing.

alternatively you can siphon out some of the old substrate -maybe a quarter of the tank- add new substrate slowly to minimise dust but you will get some clouding regardless- let that settle for a few days and then do another quarter etc. I have done this without problems and must have been told by someone else on the forum at some stage. keep an eye out for ammonia spike but if you siphon carefully you should be OK. I know it works and my shrimp have been fine. Eshrimp suggested moving all the plants to one side so the shrimplets will be away from the area you are suctioning as they will stay near the moss.. The soil comes out quite well but keep an eye on how much water you are taking out as you will need to replace it with fresh water.

My thoughts exactly. I'm always thinking of conservation. :-) love the oddities of our hobbies.