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You won't kidding about the magnets lol. I wasn't cleaning, just testing to see what happens.

weeping moss I think! Tanks looking great.... nice and healthy

When we drip water into tanks there are all sorts of expensive fancy things that you can buy that work really well but don't get too caught up in it. A piece of airline tubing with a knot can be used just tighten the knot to get the drip rate you want or you can use an air control tap - they work with water too. Just have your bucket or bottle of water higher than your tank and it works very easily.

Thanks @ineke all relevant info. I will continue my regular nightly snail cull - extra food for the others. My fish are Endlers and Rasbora and whilst they have the occasional feeding frenzy nip at a shrimp I don't think they have the intelligence to stalk adults. Stress is my biggest worry running a small 23L tank and I might need to look into this drip water changes you speak about. GH and KH (and now that I've looked up what they mean) is something I've not taken into account. Melbourne water is generally pretty good and I haven't thought to check hardness. I haven't noticed too much hanky-panky from my males to females but this is also something I will assess from now. Thanks again for answering these questions.

The other thing we haven't looked at is are you fertilising your plants , are you treating your fish for any conditions as fertiliser and fish medicines may not be appropriate for shrimp. Also some fish foods have copper added and depending on the amount that too can affect shrimp.

Unfortunately you can't use any snail baits as they kill shrimp too. You can try making a snail trap using a plastic container with small holes in it and putting food like an algae wafer and spinach or cucumber in it. You might catch a few small shrimp but you can release them. You can try either catching or squishing the snails especially at night after the lights are turned off - I have been doing this for ages and while I still have snails the population isn't exploding - the shrimp follow me around the tank and eat them the fish will too. its hard to tell why we get the deaths in adult shrimp. There are so many reasons, bacterial infections, moulting issues, stress - what type of fish do you have with them could they be stalking the adults, water conditions are you checking your GH and KH as well as the normal parameters. If it's only adults could they be old - most shrimp only live about 2 years even less if the water temp is high. Male to female ratio - if you have too many males they harass the females when they moult .

Couple of progres shots, every thing is growing well and algae is staying manageable.

Ive used Iron sand in my tanks for like 6 months or so now. It is an inert sand so you shouldn't have any problems with TDS, ph, hardness etc. I didn't, nor has anyone I know who uses it. So you should be all good for it :) It does suck to clean though... Had a black hand for a while there :D haha. Just be careful in the deeper spots as it does compact a little, however I never had issues (up to 3 inch depth in my tanks). It is a great sand as its heavier than other sand like play sand for example, this means you can plant and scape and so on without running a muck of floating sand in your tank. Be careful with your algae cleaner if its one of the magnet ones, the iron sand will attach to the magnet as some people have found out the hard way.. Personally, I've always used razor blades to clean my glass.

And it's finally an aquarium! Now the hard part, getting everything balanced, setup and the filter cycled ready for some shrimp!