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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.

Awesome news Ineke! Sounds like the bug is biting harder now! Look forward to the update pics, your setup was already outstanding, must be amazing now! I admit my enthusiasm has spiked since I have been able to select breeders easier and feel like you have some control of the potential outcomes. Can't wait to see the bubs you create with those OEBT and Tibees! Watch this space!!

I'm using Elos Terra Black. I don't know where you can get it as Eshrimp got it for me here in Adelaide. I'm amazed how it makes the water go crystal clear,it looks similar to Benibachi and has great buffering qualities but most of the writing is in Japanese so I don't know a great deal about it. Apparently stem plants love it but I mainly have mosses now. Eshrimp swears by it and his big Crystal colony is thriving, he also uses it in his planted Discus tank and that's pretty awesome too!. I know it is expensive as the bags have $100 on them and they are 9.5 kg bags. I got these as a thank you for house sitting so I am very lucky indeed. I have had no problems with setting the tanks up and putting shrimp back into them within 24 hours. If I just siphoned the old stuff out I could put the Elos straight into the established tank but as I need to redo them soon any way I am emptying them and redoing them all. Photos to follow soon I promise -just waiting for hubbies phone as that takes better pictures than my DSLR. my OEBT arrived today courtesy of BB (thank you Marcus they are beautiful ) -what a gorgeous pair he has sent me , such a beautiful blue with orange devil eyes they are dripping as we speak. YES pictures very soon!

Thanks all. Gotta love this hobby of ours, especially when little shrimplets appear.