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Luckily I am predictable and always looking at my tanks. Had a freak out tonight when I had a look at my tanks, including my favourite CRS tank in the garage! Something just looked off, not quite as active as they normally are. I felt the glass and it was icy!! It was at 13.5 degrees at 10pm, usually constant at 22. Because I check them daily I know this wasn't the case yesterday, so my heaters died today at some stage. Luckily I have a spare heater, or three, so could address the issue quickly. Everyone looks ok but I guess the next few days will show if they have been stressed out by the experience. I will be devastated if I have big losses in this tank. Any losses in fact. Just wanted to remind everyone, it's worth checking the tanks as often as possible, especially as the cold weather is hitting hard already!

Thanks for the replies. The filters are called aBio Steps is made by Matala. The cost of materials all up was about $7000(That includes all the equipment and landscaping rocks. I think from memory it was about 5m3 in river pebble and about 12m3 of mudrock. Overflows as has already been mentioned can be fitted. It would be very unusual for Melbourne to get more than 2 inches of rain This pond because of the depth, size and filtration system could handle quite a few Koi. Depth and filtration are the most critical things when it comes to koi. Lack of depth and the koi will never gain good size in the girth. That is why I always recommend using sub air aeration in koi ponds. Shelving is an important key when designing ponds because it allows provision for the rocks to sit below waterlevel and it helps give a more natural look to the pond. Kizshrimp no I didn,t hurt my back on this pond and had a few people who helped place the rocks where I wanted. It was about 6 weeks later when installing a water feature and a person helping lift it lost his grip and it partly crushed me.

I use 500 micron (0.5mm). Seems to work well. Depending on your setup, you could go smaller to be absolutely certain.

That is a beauty and great picture too.

Someone will correct me if im wrong im sure but I've been looking into this subject a lot recently while trying to figure out how to encourage year-round breeding. im 99% sure that 22-24 is healthiest. shrimpydaddy says 26 is best for breeding. Anyway my understanding is that the warmer it is the more likelihood there is of infections/disease so unless you're looking to breed shrimp as fast as possible then 22 or 23 should be perfect in my opinion

More of a hobby but I have done work at the Melbourne International Flower Show and it also is good being able to sell products and give advice to people with the advantage of having experienced things first hand. I will post a few more things I have done if people are interested.

image removed.

Sent you pm with link, as you know i dont have facebook.

He wasn't concerned when I last spoke to him and its hard to see from the photos but there is lots of rock areas under the water for the fish to seek shelter . The depth will also help and it was still to be planted although in a koi pond anything green dosent last to long. That is why I delibrately built in beach areas which could be planted and it also allowed an area for fry to access without being eaten by larger fish. I will put up some photos of another pond I built a while ago for another friend that highlights this a bit better. The only real way to stop birds is netting. Bird scarers don't work and I have only seen one product that was partly successful. It had a sensor and when anything broke the beam it would shoot water in the direction of whatever entered the beam area. Sometimes its the luck of the drawer but if a heron finds a food source it will continue to come back . I had to net my own ponds for this reason.

What will be done about birds ?

I love it, looks great. I want one now too lol

Yeah not a great view of the moss but almost certainly in Polytrichaceae, there's half a dozen odd genera to choose from if not Dawsonia. Definitely the fern is a Pyrrosia, maybe confluens then? P. rupestris is the species down here in Melbourne and common right up the east coast to New Guinea. The online pics are all of sterile leaves, the reproductive leaves are longer and much more like yours. I do ask you questions about shrimp! You're top of my list for asking questions about technical aquaculture type crap. I've been known to be ok on plant questions. Aquatics are fine but I'm really a terrestrial plant dude first.

Awesome comp Newbreed. Congrats to Morgan.

If I had collected these in the wet forests down here I'd call them Pyrrosia rupestris (main subject) and a Polytrichum type moss like Dawsonia.

Congrats Morgan! Great comp Newbreed. It really gave us all a chance to look through the website and ponder over every item you have stocked. Good luck to you and I hope you succeed, cause we need more Sydney shops that cater to shrimp.

Congrats Morgan! This was a pretty good comp and I think with most involved people for a while.

Woohoo! Thanks newbreed, I'm stoked! :)

Congrats! Thanks for the comp. :-)

Congrats to morgan And thank you to newbreed for the awesome Comp

Well done ol' chap, bravo!

I would assume most colours would be a possible .... all about selective breeding. I've had gold & purple pop up, but had no success with selectively breeding them..... Also, had a deeper/solid purple previously, but cant find it's pic. Had had random purple base coming out of my blue cherry program occasionally too....I'll see whether I can find some today.

Just a little update on my Red Tibees -unfortunately I lost my TB's last year -happily replaced by Newbreed with 2 gorgeous red boys- so my program for red marbled Tibees had to make do with CRS however I'm slowly getting some results. The marbling in the reds is not as good as in the blues and blacks but now I have TB blood hopefully I can get some improvement in colour intensity . I now have a few F2 Red Tibees and some new F3 babies coming on. Unfortunately the mother of the first reds is a giant Tibee and she always lost her eggs week 2 until she got to 18 months and then she finally held. It looks like her daughters are the same as they have been berried several times but week 2 lost their eggs. At least there are a few other Tibees that hold theirs and thats where the new babies are coming from. I'm really looking forward to these bigger girls finally giving me some babies- especially since they are in with the TB's. There is still a lot of work to do but at least I now have some stock to do it with. The Red Tibees are not as prevelant as the normals I must say and getting the females to actually breed is the sticking block at the moment but I have the time and dare I say the patience so we shall see what happens from here. -Jamies boys are a bit slow they still haven't got any of my girls berried I may have put too many in there for them!! the terrible twins waiting for them to get to work

This is one I have -I thought it was a male but she is berried now- I have several others with a bit more white and also several black ones with the same markings. They are all just coming up to breeding size and once I'm sure of the sexes I'm going to experiment with what I breed them to.

Quick update.... This is what it looks like now but it will be changed after this weekend. The HC is growing very well but I'm going to pull it all out and due another planted tank with it.