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did a water change two days ago. noticed that the two females are extremely active, going round and round the tank while the males just chilling out. have yet to see any molted shell after water change. meanwhile, a little supper story: oh, i found a yummy food! all mine!! here comes a new challenger!! hey you! what you think you're doing? who run the world? girls!!!

Ended up collecting quite a few leaves... 150ish haha. Also managed to fall over and get covered in mulberry juice lol. (Its on an organic certified farm too :P ) my shrimp didn't seem to touch the fresh leaf I put in there, but it could be the newish tank. Dried a few leaves and froze the rest; put in a frozen (and blanched) leaf after a week and its mostly gone after 3 days haha. It's just a small tree (the lowest leaves are about 6ft off the ground... a combo of cows and alpacas)

I'm looking forward to the substrate comparison article and the verdict on the Dr Tim bacteria.

Why a jardini? I reckon barras and whitings would go better with mud crabs and prawns for a real seafood spread. :)

Mmmm, prawn dinner at your place! Buck, if you converted the tank and kept mub crabs instead, we can have prawn and mud crabs for dinner. I'll bring the beer.

Sounds about right to me. rawprawn is using "Salty Shrimp Shrimp mineral GH/KH+" Don't confuse this with "Salty Shrimp Bee shrimp mineral GH+". I've used it's full name to show that there is a difference in the two. Salty Shrimp Shrimp mineral GH/KH+ contains what I believe is, Sodium bicarbonate, which raises KH and also pH. The Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Sulphate in SS will raise GH. Oops did I just give away SS's secret recipe. How much it raises pH, I don't know since I don't use this product. However, it would make sense that the product could raise pH up to 8.4. When you add this to a mature tank with a mature filter, the natural process of breaking down ammonia by the bacteria will cause pH to drop. So a starting pH of 8.4 can drop & stabilise to somewhere around 7.something over a couple of days.

This is looking awesome JC! Nothing wrong with taking your time to get it right, mine took months, and still needs tweaks!! (Must be a JC thing!!) Looking forward to pictures of lots of Shrimplets now that the harems are in place!

Very interesting. Never seen any like that.

So cute!

It has been two months since my last update. I have not been motivated to try complete the rack as it is currently running fine, even though it is not the 'aesthetically pleasing' look I promised my wife when I first convinced her to allow me real estate space in the lounge room. She hasn't been complaining... so I got lazy. @Disciple asked for some photos and that got me started working on this again. Haha. So first up... night lights. Night lights are highly recommended for breeding discus so that the parents can see their fry easily, especially the crucial first few days of free swimming when the fry need to 'attach' to feed on mucus off the body of the parents. I pretty much did the same LED build in my earlier post here except it is a much shorter version and I used a different type of switch so I can vary the intensity of the lights if required. The photo only shows two but I made three of these, one for each tier. I mounted them in the middle of each tier so a night light is shared by two tanks. Next I tidied up the messy wires dangling across the rack using electrical trunking from Bunnings. The dangling wires were a pain as they get in the way whenever I wield a net to try catch/sort fish/shrimps. Before. After. Before. After. Full rack shot. You would notice that the light on the bottom tier is dimmer because I only ran a single LED strip. I have always plan to use the bottom tier as fry grow out/hospital/quarantine so I avoided bright lights. The light for the sump is usually switched off. I only turn it on when I am cleaning or doing water changes via the sump. Also, the LED strip lights on the middle tier is currently not in use. I am running an Up Aqua Pro Z light from @newbreed. You can get these awesome lights from Newbreed Aquatics. Full rack shot with night lights. Ok... now let's talk shrimps. Isn't this a shrimp forum after all? Full tank shot of the shrimp tank as it is now. From left to right... Section 1 houses my YCS, some from @buck, and my recently acquired CRS from @Gbang. I have always love CRS and wanted to restart a quality pure CRS colony. I think many of you would know the quality of Glenn's CRS... some of them even have sexy red legs!!! I also got some PRL 'culls' from him but they are housed in an entirely separate planted display tank (see further down this post). The YCS are showing great colours but they are still not breeding for me. I hope they would be able to adapt to TB water parameters. Fingers crossed. Section 2 is home to my BB and GB female mischlings. I have my best BB stud male with 3 x BB females and 10 x GB female mischlings. Talking about a harem... haha. Unfortunately, the Bloody Marys I introduced as guinea pigs when I first set up this tank did not survive. It was probably too tough on them to adapt to very different water parameters compared to the tank they were moved from. Section 3 has my KK, Panda, RR, WR together with my CBS/CRS female mischlings. No surprises here and breeding activities have resumed since their move. Section 4 is where all my TB culls and CBS/CRS/GB mischling juvies live. This is also where I look out for female mischlings to be moved into Sections 2 or 3. Sadly, similar to the Bloody Marys, the black cherry culls I used as guinea pigs didn't survive. As mentioned earlier, the PRL 'culls' I got from Glenn are going to this tank. Hopefully I will be able to selectively breed and cull to achieve nice beautiful quality PRLs. Next step is to complete the paint job for the MDF panels and wrap up the rack like how it is here. Thank you for following my first rack build this far. I know progress has been excruciatingly slow but hey, it is about enjoying the journey as much as arriving at the destination.