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Decided to try out an alternative biofilm recipe. Really simple, just egg white and spirulina (although in this case I used a powder form of some marine microalgae). Mix it up and coat onto rocks. Leave to dry in the sun and thats it. Heres an example. My snail seemed to like it. Yet to try it on the shrimp but will let you know how it goes.

Some shots from today. The eggs on these headwater shrimp are huge. Almost definite that they hatch as mini adults. Some cool algae. Decided to add some to my tank (as shown here) to see how it goes.

I have about 50 to begin with , all f1. Hope you Like .

I have been using strawberry punnet as snail traps but they never seemed to work very well. I then thought about the ISTA traps and decided to do my own. These are not exactly traps but lures and snails being snails would stay on the trap, ready to be collected. I used a 1.5L green tea bottle, cut the top and bottoms off and inserted the bottom, upside down into the top. I ran out of superglue so the two are taped together for now. I then drilled lots of 0.5mm sized holes so that the algae wafers scent can get out to lure the snails. Pebbles were put in to weigh it down and tied some fishing line into the cap to lift/lower it. You have to use it like a crab net, that is, check on it regularly. I checked after 1 hour, then 2 hours later and then this morning (each time removing the caught snails). All up, caught 90 or so. They sure do poo a lot as well. Yoghurt container with 90 or so pond snails ranging in size between 1mm to 7mm from the three checks: Plan for version 2 to: 1. Use a slightly smaller bottle as some snails got knocked/scraped off by the frame around the tank when lifting the trap out. 2. Drill more holes to better attract the snails.

Here`s some more. A little Jelly bean KK i think ?

Cool shrimps, would love to see more of them.

Cool shrimp man

Very nice shrimp mate.

Drumroll....... And the winner is Kym Biber!! Who is yet to respond to the notification so keep it quiet!!! The post reached approx. 3800 fb users, 258 confirmed entrants, though there were many who did not quite qualify by missing a step. We have had a great response, much interest and many new friends of the forum!!! Now to get them on here to share their experience and setup pics!!!! Thanks to all whom entered, it was a fun comp to run. Keep your eyes peeled on the SKF facebook page, you never know what might be on there next........

So who ended up winning and how many entrants were there?

I started with cherryies 6months ago and got addictive so i finaly bit the bullet and brought some mischlings, tbm panda x2, cbs an crs and a tibee they arrive this week scared and excited at the same time like being a kid again

I have started using this on my new wall tank (700+L) that has been set up 3 months or so ago. As with all new set ups until a balance is reached it is inevitable to have some algae issues. Anyway I had all sorts of algae starting to grow from green filamentous to black to green spot. I just started using this product directly in the tank last Saturday (19th) and in one week alone you could see that it has hit the algae hard. Treatment in tank is recommended for once a week for 4 weeks and this past weekend I added the second dose. I have to say I am very impressed with this product and I am going to start using it in my fishroom as well. Another awesome thing that happened is that I did have any new algae growth on the aquarium glass since adding the product in the tank!!! At this rate my super dooper algae scrapers are not going to be used much at all!!! My actual concern in the tank at the moment is whether the Otocinclus catfish going to be able to find enough food in the tank!!!

Every pump generates heat. At work I have a 800L insulated esky which I use as a header tank to heat seawater. A pump in the esky pushes seawater through a looped 3KW titanium heater. With the heater off and the pump only pumping water around the loop, the water reached 45*C overnight.