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recently I was given some hair grass by Disciple and for the first time in 3 years have moved away from moss tanks. I had to buy some extra from eBay and then Neo- 2FX sold me some. The rocks are lava rocks from Newbreed Aquatics. The tanks won't win any aquascaping awards but it's a nice change from just moss and Java ferns. They should look good once the grass starts to spread. The lava tank is about a week and a half and the other one was done this morning. Excuse the towels on the chair in the mirror back of the tank I only just realised it was there!

Huge thank you to Basri for sending me a surprise in with the choc cherries I won during the auction. The surprise was a BLUE BOLT. At first I couldn't work out what it was - a strange colour for the chocs to change to - sure dark blue, but surely not sky blue? Eventually I worked out it was a bluebolt. Totally unexpected. Thanks again Basri. Now I can participate in 'Monday Blues'!

Just wanted to share some shots of the blue bolt that Disciple gifted me. I've never been too fussed on Blue bolts, but seeing the iridescence on this one has gone some way to change my mind.

bb's has us chasing pics and updates like

Its true. haha

thats going to be a lush field in no time! you'll need to buy an aquatic lawn mower soon

Welcome to SKF. You will find members here are very generous. The general motto adopted on SKF is "Pay it forward". Hopefully when it's your turn, you would be equally generous to someone else. This is one of the unique traits of SKF.

Your shrimp look awesome! - I hope you do not mind me adding onto your thread, but I would also like to publicly thank Disciple for the OEBT's he sent me from the auction: he added two extra, and I felt as though I won the lotto when I took the little guys out of their breather bag. What a generous surprise. Very healthy, gorgeous shrimp, thank you so much!

You lucky bugger !

Racks all going awesome. Definitely important spending the time, effort and design right at the start of these projects

No more sand. Keeping the same layout, but the sand section with "islands" will be Stratum substrate instead. I will clean the gravel and re-do the "river" from the cliff to the back, with a similar plant layout in the back hiding the plumbing, and clear in the front except for a few random baby tears instead of the "islands". South of the river (front) will see a carpet of Monte Carlo from the Lilies to the cave, and I will let it go as far as it will inside the cave without light. I will also take the opportunity to move the tank and fit a black vinyl wrap behind the cave section to increase the darkness. North of the river (back) will get a carpet of hairgrass surrounding most of the planting, maybe with blyxa stems here and there if it survives until then. Ambulia to hide the return and going by size up the hill. I was so bummed, the tank was done and running, all that was left was finishing the hairgrass planting on the hill.

Well done, but wtf at that price ! $20 plus $20 shipping !! Didn't you like my substrate idea? Plants: Fore, foreground - Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo' Foreground - UT ( Utricularia graminifolia ) Midground - Alternanthera reineckii ‘Mini’. The red will break up all the green between fore and back grounds. Background - a LARGE bunch of Tonina Belem. Driftwood - US Fissiden draping off the drift wood.

First of all is the lighting hood. I've got 2x 20W cool white 6500K LED floodlights. I know this sounds bright, but I've read that with LED lights you need to go by lumens, not watts. I found several articles stating that for a medium light tank you needed 35-50 lumens/L. My tank is 130L (and 70cm deep), and I'll probably be around 100-110L with sand, etc in the tank. So I need 3500-5000 lumens?? Seems a lot. These lights are rated at 1600-1800 lumens each (120 deg spread), and knowing ebay product ratings they're probably 10-25% less in real life. So I'm probably looking at anything from 2400 (1600x2-25%) to 3600 (1800x2) lumens. Hard to tell with ebay stuff, but I found a couple of articles where they praised these lights highly. I've stripped all the crappy and heavy flouro gear out (weighed a tonne), and 3D printed mounts that put the face of the light down flush with the bottom of the hood. One of the complaints I read more than once was that the flouros being recessed up in the hood cast serious shadows and greatly affected the performance of the lights. I cut the bottom of a junction box out so it would fit, and so I could solder wires and keep the individual light switches for versatility. I've got epoxy and silastic drying now, so that's it for tonight.

Hi all,I'm Neil,from England.Ive had shrimp for around 6 months,I have bred tang tigers,Tigers,just got my oebt to berry up.Just waiting on my f1crs to grow a little and see if I can get them going at it. the oebt are in a 65ltr tank of their own for now,trying to increase the numbers(10) 6i have helped to get berries so hopefully after Christmas I can transfer them over to the big tank (190ltr) where all the rest are.The tang tigers are going for it all the time and in 3 months I've had two drops.The crs are new,I got them from a dealer who was after pintos so next year looking at starting a project with them and some bees,or maybe get some pintos and go from there,but first I need to grow the oebt and rehouse them. been a watcher of the forum for sometime,now I've joined I can look at all the pics and see what peeps have created

Hi all, I wrapped up my work early today. Hence, I setup my camera and managed to take some nice picture of my Japanese Red Bee shrimps. As such, I will like to share with everyone to cheer up your weekend. ^^ Cheers. Shrimpy Daddy

Unfortunately, not that well Crabsman! Looks like something was going wrong while I was away. Algae friggen everywhere and lots of missing shrimp :( There are however, quite a few little babies floating around. I had cleaned the glass for the photo and trimmed the pot HC. The plants should have been overgrowing, not sure what went wrong. Parameters look OK relative to what they were before I left. PH - 7.8 Ammonia - 0 Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - 0 KH - 5 GH - 6 However, Dad decided to do a decent water change before I came back so maybe the parameters are lying to me? Nitrates maybe high? Not sure atm.