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I am very fortunate to have a lovely GF who loves to travel and accompany me and put up with my crazy antics. She is willing to travel to different parts of Asia with me (as I've openly refused her suggestions to travel to Europe and other parts of the world ). I’m just lucky that the parts of the world I like to travel to is big on shrimping. It’s my way of “hitting two birds with one stone” sort of thinking. Who knows, maybe I'll visit HK again and visit Mr. Shrimpy Daddy in the near future. It also helps that she speaks Cantonese and has an excellent sense of direction. I rely heavily on her when I'm in Asia. It helps to have a GF that can communicate with the vendors in HK (Cantonese dominate zone). Haha! The JRB and JBB have excellent shape and posture. They really look amazing. The transparent one is a very young shrimp, but I am also wondering why it looks the way it does. I've been back and forth with SD about the possible causes. I believe the culprit is the tank size. Due to the size of the tank, my dosing of minerals and traces is off. I believe my traces and minerals inside the 25G Cubes are lower in levels than compared to my other tanks. I’m working on fixing these issues before I report back. I definitely agree that culling aggressively is key to having the best shrimps. I'm also keeping a close eye on the tank. I've been culling whenever I'm over at the house. Interestingly, a few of babies that I did cull undergone a darkening of their red coverage area as they matured. I've added these back to the main tank but am still keeping a close eye on them. Tell you what though. My JRB require more work than my JBB. Nearly all the JBB babies are super awesome.

If i have have a large amount of leaves I blanch some then roll them and freeze them, I also put them fresh into a cloth bag or pillow case and hang them on the clothes line for a few days. They dry really nicely and there is no mould on them -if not dried properly you could get mould on them then they won't be any good. Here are some blanched and rolled ready for the freezer

Chlorine aka bleach should kill everything, something in the order of 20 ppm. That said, I've heard stories with MTS where they have survived bleach baths, possibly by closing their shells up tight. Possible. Which snails are you dealing with? Might be best to ditch the substrate and everything else you don't hold dear, give the tank a good clean with bleach, rinse well several times, then setup using new substrate ect. Everything going back into the tank needs to be thoroughly checked for snails and treated. You could try potassium permanganate (Condy's crystals) but some mosses can be sensitive to it. Actually the first thing I should have asked is, are you sure you can't save the tank? The algae and the snail outbreaks sound like the tank is being overfed. Can you move the shrimp to a new tank, and then try to rescue this one without having to worry about killing your shrimp? If so, here is my suggestion. Move only the shrimp to the new tank. No other mosses, plants ect.. Then stop feeding the tank. This includes leaves like IAL and veges like Kale. Use a snail trap (and manual removal) to get the snails out (they will go more readily to the trap because you aren't providing any other food), use a blackout or dose with Aquagreens dinospit (glutaldehyde) to kill the algae combined with daily manual removal and large water changes. Consider also siphoning the substrate, depending of course on the type of substrate that you have. This will be a difficult process over a couple of weeks to get the tank back to where you could consider putting the shrimp back in. However a little effort every day will see it through. Essentially its reseting the balance of the tank. Alternatively you could even leave the shrimp in, and focus on fixing the problems by implementing solutions over time (weeks). The first thing to do then would be to stop feeding for around a week. This includes leaves and kale ect. So if you have IAL, take it out. During this time, use a snail trap and manual removal to reduce the numbers of snails. Remove some algae manually, a bit every day, even if you can only get to it 5minutes every day. And importantly, do water changes. I think 2-3 times within that week, around 10-20% each time, possibly more if you are keeping RCS or most natives, but definitely not more if keeping CRS ect. Then after the week is up, you can begin feeding again, but only a fraction of what you did in the past. Say, 1/10 of before. The shrimp should beat the snails to the food. Keep trapping every day and removing the algae manually until you can't see it anymore. But most important, keep up the water changes. Only increasevthe amount of food if the shrimp are consuming it all within minutes, before an snails get to it. A feeding dish may be really useful at this time. The number one thing to carefully consider (whether you go reset or repair) is to try to understand what happened to get the tank to where it is now? Are you overfeeding? Were water changes regular? Did you experience a decline in shrimp numbers but keep feeding the same amount of food? Are you dosing fertilisers? If so, how much? Are you running CO2? The reason why I say this is because if you don't figure out what went wrong, its likely to happen again. Best of luck.

Hi SKFers! I"ve been a member for a few months and and I'm thinking I'm finally comfortable enough to make a journal that will be documenting my journey with breeding Japanese Black/Red Bees. A little info about me - I've been a shrimper for 5 years now and been into aquaria for 7-8 years. It all started with the GF getting me some goldfish to fit her theme of asking me to Prom (i'm older by 2 years and it was her prom and I didn't go to the same school) and since then have been involved with aquaria related stuff. What started off as an attempt to keep the goldfish (those $1 for 10 goldfish) quickly turned into a betta hobby which lead to breeding with lead to live plants which lead to aquascaping which lead to where we are now... Shrimping.... Currently, I'm keeping only Caridina species but did start off with Neocaridinas but have recently decided to drop keeping neos to clear up space and narrow my focus. My shrimpy passion is a little "excess" to say the least. It has driven me to travel all over Asia to visit aquascaping and fishkeeping as it is bigger there but the food was also a good incentive to visit. Of the Caridinas that I keep includes: Crystal Red Shrimp in the form of PRL and Japanese Red Bees, Japanese Black Bees, Red Wine - Ruby Red Taiwan Bees, Panda Taiwan Bees, Blue Bolts, Pintos, and Orange Eyes Blue Tigers (OEBTs). It wasn't until my most recent trip to Japan and getting to know a close friend that I discovered Japanese Red/Black Bees. These are (to me) a higher and purer form of Pure Red/Black Lines that we see available today. Originating from Japan, these bees were the predecessors of what we see today as Pure Red Line. I'm very happy to have been able to travel to Japan and bring back these precious guys. Although it did cost an arm and a leg, I'm very happy that I got the chance to experience the culture, the food, and the people. A little insight on my plans regarding the breeding project. I'm planning to do rack style setups where as I can have 2 main rimless 25G cubes whereas I can breed the main colony of Japanese Black Bees (JBB) and Japanese Red Bees (JRB) and have subsequent 10g tanks underneath whereas I can cull and selectively breed for specific traits. Apart of being a shrimper I'm a growing macro photographer (thanks part to said friend and his patience with me) and so as my shrimping abilities grow, I also hope that my photography skills also developes in the same positive manner. Nuff said, please enjoy photos I've taken so far. Japanese BlackBees: Japanese RedBees: The colony of RedBees and BlackBees started off very small but is growing quite rapidly. I'm very happy that I've been thus far successful. I hope to grow out my population within a few months and be able to start my selectively breeding process very soon! Thank you for reading!

Awesome....looks like vine leaves...dolmades!

WEEK 9 Week 9 now, just had a quick look at the tank and noticed my first juvi CRS in there, can't see any others but I'm sure there are more as there were 2 berried females in there, so looking good, things are still going well, have stopped using AquaGreen's Dino Pee and Spit as I think I might go a more natural approach.

Took a few more photos this weekend when I was over at the other house. I spent the weekend setting up the last 3x 10g and finishing up the breeding rack. Now I have 6x 10g with 2x 25g cubes at the top. The dual cubes will serve as massive breeding factories while the 6x 10g will serve as culling tanks. I'm thinking of adding another 2x 10g at the top at a later day and that'll serve as tanks to keep Crystal Whites and maybe Pinto mixing.

I'm not 100% sure but I'm pretty sure you can bake the substrate in the oven to kill off the snails. It was suggested to me ages ago when I put new plants into my tank. I checked the leaves but didn't think about the roots and sure enough I have a pretty bad infestation. I didn't bake my substrate because the tank is too big with hundreds of shrimp in it but if I was doing for a smaller less populated tank I would bake it at about 180 for 30 minutes remember to rake it around to make sure you dry it thoroughly otherwise the snails might just survive! Worth a try and not toxic for the shrimp.

Yeah I definitely think the tank is salvagable, it just might require a bit more effort and take a little longer than a reset. I guess that is up to the OP.

Thanks fishmosy. KISS, a capful per 10L works for me. I recommended not bleaching because of the food source issue and band-aid solutions bit, not because the gravel snails shut their doors. I think trapping with IAL or otherwise as you suggest is a far preferable option here.