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yes sir you can pick another one :) Congratulations we have our first winner! @larrymull come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn down you have won One pack of Boss Mineral Balls. Although not stipulated in the rules i would ask you let the others continue to participate at the chance of the other prizes but your call :) Please pm me your details and i will pass them on to @newbreed when all prizes have been found.

No idea why it is hidden lol

Finally gotten around to setting up a tank just for my red cherries (from chocolate parents, also known as Bloody Mary). I think the red colouration of these guys is much better/deeper than standard cherries. I've also added some Stenomelania cf. aspirans cone snails. I want the tank to be mostly black and green to contrast with the red of the shrimp. The tank is an Aqua One 1ft cube which was sold as a 'tadpole' set up, complete with lid, air pump and small sponge filter. I picked it up from my LFS for $45 at 'mates rates'. I added a 'garbage bag' to the back of the tank for a black background. Added Pisces Iron Sand as substrate. Its a black sand from New Zealand, supposedly made from lava rock (basalt?) so should be relatively inert. I'm using tap water for the shrimp boosted with Benibachi minerals to boost TDS to 180-200. I added a cycled sponge filter from another set-up and added the shrimp and snails after 24hrs when the temperature had equilibrated. I performed a cull when introducing the shrimp so I now have four females and one male in the tank, along with 6 snails. Here are some of the females the afternoon after they went into the tank, the male wouldn't pose. I'm not really happy with the rock. I plan on exchanging it out for a large piece of black lava rock. I also plan on adding more filtration, possibly a hang-on filter, but its not a necessity yet given there is only 5 shrimp in the tank so far.

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum. I've had my aquarium for the last 5 years, originally it was for aquascaping and fish, then I decided I liked microfish, then I got some CRS and thus my shrimp addiction was born! I've been keeping Taiwan Bee shrimp for the last 1.5 years, originally the intention was to just try and keep them alive, after I got that sorted the next idea was to get them to breed. The plan went pretty smoothly up to that point but I had real trouble keeping the juvies alive. Anyway, I managed to crack the code and 12 months later I have a 400L tank full of TBs: KK, panda, shadow panda and blue bolts, even a couple of taitaibees after I had a taibee residing in there for a short while. So, long story short, I am a shrimp addict. It's nice to be somewhere I can admit that!

Time to redo my 4ft tank. I'm sticking to only 2 or 3 plants this time. Stone is going to come out and cholla/driftwood is going in. The fissden will go as well in the new scape. Current mess:

Bingo !! Well done Larrymull.

oh no, you've sunk my battleship. congrats mate

@newbreed @OzShrimp I just knew it was that one, had a very good feeling....bonus!

I would say thank god it's Friday but as i work at bunnings and drew the short straw of working EVERY weekend im gonna say god damn it's Friday haha

Just thought I'd share a pic I took yesterday a shrimp photo bombing the L134's photo shoot lol :) Made me literally LOL when I went through my pics as I didn't see Him whilst taking the pic :) it wasn't until later that I noticed

They are Pogostemon Helferi, one of my fav plants. I hardly put ferts in my tank and don't use CO2. Probably why my pogo's aren't growing as well as my previous setup. I do have a fairly high LED setup though with the red spectrum mixed in.

Happy Friday :)

I like the dark 'blood' red colour in contrast to the lighter red of a standard cherry. For example, I much prefer the colour of my shrimp in the first photo than the shrimp in the last photo.

Completing the circle These typus are from my first successful rearing. They hatched as larvae in mid march 2015 and reared in salt water until mid april 2015. Over the winter they have matured and grown in this fresh water tank. the biggest is now ~25 mm long and there are still a lot of 15mm individuals in the tank (growth rates vary a lot). Today I saw one of the biggest, now saddled for the first time females "perch" by hanging off a piece of plant - the boys came swarming until they knocked her off the plant and they all fell to the bottom in a mass. I'm assuming one male at least tried to mate with her. Its the first time I've seen what looks like obvious mating behaviour in these shrimp. I got a fairly poor phone shot as the action was far back in the tank. three males on her back dragging her off + one to the right. fell to the ground.

Haha, there's a million different ways to fertilize a planted tank and what works for me might not work for you. takes a bit of trial and error to work out the levels your individual tank requires for good growth with no algae. I dose about 5-6ppm of Phosphate into one of my tanks and it uses up nearly all of it (tested using a calibrated colourimeter) but if I dosed that in my other tank it would be an absolute algae farm.

WOWZA !!!!!! If you try our method maybe get the hubby to pull the plants out very slowly whilst you control the gravel vac (you will know where to direct it better) and if you are worried about the tank occupants maybe catch out what you can and put them into a container/bucket and re drip them in later :) me and jess were EXTREMELY worried about removing our plants but she came up with this method and it worked a treat :) we also added an extra drop or 2/3 of prime

Crypts are great emersed, and you get to flower them that way. It's what all the Crypt nuts do! Most aquatics can grow well out of water too. Notable exceptions that you're likely to see are Blyxas, Nymphaeas, Aponogetons, Barclayas... that type of thing. The basic stem plants are all ok.