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Just a reminder that the site will be offline tomorrow night for a server move. I might take advantage of the outage and upgrade at the same time.

Ziss EZ Breeding Box BL-2 http://shrimpkeepersforum.com/forum/index.php/topic/8879-new-arrivalsziss-ez-breeding-box/ Initial thoughts: well packaged and easy to put together except for the clip, I found it really hard to get it to attach to the breeding box, I do like that it’s an adjustable clip but so you can adjust it to suit your tanks water level. 1 week on. The inhabitants seem happy and healthy, I tried the suction cups and as I suspected they failed with in 24hours and released the shrimp I'd spent time selecting . Then I had to do battle with the clip so I could hang it from the side of the tank. The clip is definitely more secure, but it’s a pain in the bum to attach the clip to the box. There is a little adjustable bar at the bottom to level the box out depending on if your using the suction cups or the clip. It’s not very ridged making it too easy to move and even the slightest bump, like when taking the lid off, can push the bar in. To adjust the bar back out, the hole box needs to come out or you need to put your hand in the tank. Things I like: It has a lid It has an air stone on the back that pumps water in to the box to get water circulating, and a valve to control the airflow allows you to adjust the water turn over. The mesh sides seem to provide good flow to help keep the w.p consistent with the rest of the tank. expandable, with the addition of an expantion ring you can add another box on for more area. I’ve also got one of the meta cubs to test now too so I’ll do a comparison review soon

just posted a review and ill be puting a meta cube together tomorrow morning and testing it next to the ziss so ill do a comparison review in a week or so when i see how it doing

They were sold to me as Black/blue diamond shrimps. They are very dark, even close to black, but you can see a very nice deep blue when they come to light The male is almost black with a creamy coloured racing stripe, and I'm almost suspicious about him: he rather look to be a black/chocolate rather than a black blue... Update: the female is berried, finally... I cross fingers

The fastest I had seen before is about 1 week between shrimp hatched and berried again. This is also why I prefers to have higher temperature over low temperature. Last time when I keep my shrimp at 22C, the mummy will moult before all eggs are hatched.

if human experience is anything to go by, im sure the shrimplets won't even touch it if it has brussel sprouts in it!

At this point, treating your water with the list of chemicals you mentioned is probably doing more harm than good. Shrimp are highly sensitive to changes in water parameters. They need stability. If you want to change your water parameters, do it SLOWLY by mixing new water to your desired levels (pH, GH, KH, ect), then add it SLOWLY to your tank as part of a SMALL water change (max. 10% a week). Best of luck with your two remaining shrimp.

look forward to the review comparison with meta cube as i have themand cocerned these may be flimsy in comparison.

I think any moss that will grow in the low TDS conditions of a zebra tank would be fine. If you look in my Tully Gorge thread, there are pics in there showing the moss in the zebra habitats. Looks similar to many exotic species such as peacock and Xmas. I suspect that the basic chemistry behind why your RO may be acidic is because When CO2 dissolves in water, it forms a weak acid called carbonic acid. Normally chemicals in water such as carbonates react with the carbonic acid to neutralise it, But since in RO these chemicals have been removed, they cant neutralise the carbonic acid and therefore the pH is low (acidic). My understanding is that the drinking water section of the RO unit adds a chemical to neutralise the carbonic acid and therefore the pH is not acidic (I could be wrong but thats my understanding). Easy way to test if this is true is to measure the TDS from the RO unit with and without the water passing through the drinking water section. If you are using remineralised RO and inert substrate, then I cant imagine that there would be many inorganic nasties (thinking heavy metals, ect.) so macropore should be enough to remove the chemicals of most concern (particularly nitrogenous wastes - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). I tend not to use carbon in any of my shrimp tanks unless it is for a specific purpose (e.g. Removing leftover medicine) which is extremely rare. In terms of adding wood, I added a tiny piece of driftwood to my last setup. The shrimp seemed to do well with it. I definitely wouldn't add alot as there isn't a great deal of large wood in their natural habitat, but there are lots of leaves and some twigs. I dont know enough about the blackwater product you suggested to reccomend using it or not. I can reccomend using benibachi minerals as Squiggle used it with success, and I'm currently using it to remineralise RO for my zeb tank, and some other native shrimp tanks as well. I dont think the benibachi is a complete solution as I suspect it doesn't contain all the trace vitamins and minerals that the zebs may require to look their best and maintain their health over the long term. Can the food we feed the zebs provide these? I dont know for certain. Its something I'm currently looking into. Inert substrate is a definite must. Its hard enough to maintain a low TDS in a zeb tank without adding the headache of minerals leaching from your substrate.

No hooks? Is this the new Ziss breeder box? How is it compared to metacubes? Does it warrant that kind of price point?

Funny how your shrimps look like my blue pearls with black saddle...

hello lozza im very interested to see what becomes of the black saddle and eggs! im yet to discover that since my journey with blue gene red rilis began in february this year. i found one that has interesting markings but also a black section where the saddle should be but the black area stretches all the way around the shrimp so it's definitely not a saddle! i also had one appear which has a very deep dark blue section on its tail and quite a bright light blue colour on the rest of it. i will be very interested to see what your black eggs turn out to look like i think you should definitely seperate them if you can. so far ive only seen yellow and red eggs. love n peace will

I hope I can do as good a job as you have done. Anytime you want to miss them you can come by and give me some pointers. If you come back theyll be shrimp waiting for you.

Food for shrimp generally comes in small packages so if you have a few tanks there is little chance of it going off before you use it all. However if you only have one or two tanks or live along the coast (high humidity), one of the threats to the quality of your shrimp food is moisture. Moisture added to the food encourages the decomposition of the food and the growth of bacteria and fungi, which could potentially make your shrimp sick. One way to help keep your shrimp food in top condition is to use a silicon gel satchet that absorbs the moisture from the air in your container. Satchets are available online, but are also readily available as preservers in some human food items. Moreover the satchets can be recharged by drying them in an oven. If you are silly like me, and are constantly forgetting to dry your hands before dipping your fingers in the shrimp food, this may be a great way to protect the integrity and nutrition of your shrimp food.

The yellow tank ft one pygmy cory

Ive started kicking my yellows of the little system and there now in a tank above there old tank. There now breeding happier then ever. I culled about 20 males last night while they where dancing, It made it so much easyer.

there are still heaps of yellows ro get out of what id like to be my crs tank, the crs still aren't playing the game much to my disappointment. I cut my brownie ghost in to 5 plants to grow out too

This is my version .

Hello jacksparrow, welcome to SKF. Nice Snow white.

I dropped by Aquarist Chamber to stock up on some goodies for myself and I thought the members here may enjoy some pictures. Please excuse the picture quality I only had my IPad. Entry lol Counter with some stock & shrimp tanks Shrimp pictures again sorry for the quality. I totally stuffed PRL pictures! Thanks to Alvin for allowing me to take these pictures. My iPad is about to die so ill load these and add more tomorrow. Lol I planned on staying for 30 mins but ended up shrimp staring for 4 hours, my wife thought I got kidnapped lol. Chatted to a local shrimpkeeper and got invited for lunch. Got some tips from Alvin himself too. Great day out. Hope your guys enjoy these pics as much as I do lol