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This offer is open to every one. If you are making your way to Far North Queensland and if you are not why the hell not LOL. Give me a yell and I can show you some top places and you get to collect some shrimp and other stuff, the only thing I need is fill the petrol tank on the car, one person we take my 4 x4 ute and more we may have to hire a car and that's on you. Bob

The offer will stand when you are ready. My KH is 1-2 depending on the tank and my cherries have adapted OK.

Thanks Bob - good to know I'm on the right track.... from the source. They seem to like my rainwater... but they need a pretty high turnover to stay vibrant so doing water changes 2-3 per week. Will move them soon to a tank that is on a constant drip feed otherwise I'll never be able to go away!

PM me if you want a few Crystals to try. I will be doing a cull soon and will have a few different pattern CBS that just haven't got the depth of colour I want but their patterns are good. You are welcome to have a few for free -they are fairly tough but I do keep them in RO water at a low ph so they need to be acclimatised very slowly.

Haha Buck, they did... like introducing Mouth Almighty to Lake Eacham! Sadly when anything is introduced to a new environment, there's a high chance for things to go wrong. An introduced species is still an introduced species regardless of the country of origin.

Picked me up a free 2ft (60cm) tank at council kerbside day on Sunday !! Woo hoo! Clean, minimal scratches, and silicone all in good condition. However, it's missing the lid. Anyone know of a place I can get a 60cmx30cm replacement lid for cheapo ? The lids will need a notch cut out for the intake and outtake filter pipes.

I've been using pure rainwater at ~ 30-40 µS. About 1 in 4-5 water changes I put a very small amount (couple of rice grains only) of DIY GH booster just to add some Ca/Mg. This might be a total waste of time, but my logic is the rainwater is coming off a colourbond roof into stainless steel tanks so the residual conductivity is likely to be of organic origin rather than mineral (100% assumption)... Ca is often implicated as important for moulting.. so I'm just making sure there is a whiff of it in the water without actually measuring it (not very scientific). With the recent influx of fresh rainwater in Melbourne the EC in the tanks is dropping further.

I'll keep my eye out for your post in the next week or two and welcome you to the club! To be honest Will, I have either not or only barely used any minerals for these. The tap water and rainwater for that matter are both hard enough for my liking and I've actually done a couple of water changes with straight RO to keep the EC under control. When I move to all RO water I'll be using a salt like Salty GH+, which is I'm pretty sure what Ben is doing. If you can go DIY salts I don't think there will be much difference to using Salty. You could almost certainly just use a percentage of dechlorinated/carbon filtered tapwater to adjust the hardness.

When ever your ready Oz happy to help you design it and recommend pumps and filtration requirements for you. Can even point you in the right direction for some quality Koi.

what minerals are people specifically using to their RO for these? i currently have 2 options - jayc DIY mix (calcium sulphate dihydrate, potassium sulphate, and magnesium sulphate as well as micro-nutrient/trace-mix if that is a good idea) and i also have salty shrimp neo - GH/KH+ ]my RO/DI water is about 4 uS.., i will have plenty of surface agitation as suggested by ben to ensure consistent oxygen and co2 levels etc. Still have time for a techden order to arrive before the zebs - if regular bee shrimp GH+ is going to be significantly better than my current choices. if bob is able i will have these next week, all my dreams will come true and i'll finally be initiated into the zebra crew WOOOHOO :-D love n peace will

Hi mate I had not looked at much so was happy to read your thread and your success with the shrimp, more coming your way and some plants to. Keep up the good work Bob

Fed 'em a block of frozen black worms earlier, they loved 'em, usually use flakes.

They can live with ice on the water, the young look like neons and are easy to breed. Many 1000s are breed up here on one of the farms Don't quote me on this I could be wrong (who said that I am never right) I think they are extinct in the wild and they come from the White Cloud Mountains in China. Top pick of fish to, they are a really nice little fish, get some frozen food into them when it warms and they will breed for you, if they are on there own they wont eat all the young either Bob