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Just a little post about how important it is to make sure that you have the right environment set up and running smoothly in your shrimp tank. I thought all was going swimmingly in one of my tanks until I experienced multiple sudden deaths overnight ?..The cause....PH spike from substrate buffering incorrectly, which took me explaining exactly what I had in the tank and sending pictures to my mentor (thank you oh wise one, you know who you are ?....If you haven't got one of those (mentor I mean)..get one! They are invaluable when it comes to learning and asking advice!), to figure out as I couldn't put my finger on it LOL. Silly me had a PH neutral substrate in with Bee shrimp....I can hear all you bee keepers groaning at me now LOL....So no matter how much fulvic grain, driftwood, RO Water, mineral balls or alder cones I used the PH would just creep right back up again! The cherries I had in there thrived of course, but the poor bees....?...Tank is now being stripped back down and added Benibachi substrate...Nothing but the best this time! ? So heed my warning and please make sure you use the right substrate for the right shrimp....AND...don't be frugal. You'll be thankful for using the "good stuff" when your shrimp are scurrying around happily, berried up all over the place......

I had another silly old woman moment yesterday - well Sunday but I noticed yesterday! I am getting some new shrimp so needed to clean out a tank for them. I caught all the shrimp and hunted down the babies . My shrimp must know when I'm going to catch them because they always have their babies the night before!!! Anyway I took everything out of the tank except substrate and most of the water, gave the substrate a big stir and pooped 2 power filters into the tank. Once that was clear I topped up the substrate with a thin layer of new substrate and put the power filter back on - everything going to plan so far. Next I went to my RO reserve which I keep outside under a verandah. We have had very hot weather in Adelaide for weeks so the water was about 30 c . I put 20 litres of straight RO into the tank at 30 because it was empty of shrimp - are you still with me? Then I needed to up the TDS as the new shrimp are kept in a much higher TDS than mine. I usually add the Salty Shrimp in the bucket and mix it well before adding to the tank but I needed to adjust the whole tank so added it to the tank. So so far , I've swirled the substrate = probable ammonia spike, added warm water, added straight RO water, added straight Salty Shrimp = would or should equal dead shrimp if there were any in there - but I had caught them all hadn't I? Once that had settled and the filters cleaned I was happy enough to add the plants and rocks back into the tank . THEN yesterday giving the tank a final water test and checking that the tank was ready for the shrimp that were arriving the next day -today - I noticed colour and movement swimming on the substrate and sure enough there were tiny tiny baby shrimp in the tank. I doubt they were in the moss as I had that in a separate container and had given it a good clean and checked the water the Moss had been in finding nothing. I don't think they were in the sponge filters because I had taken them out several times to give them a good rinse in the old tank water so they must have been on the substrate . Luckily I had been very gentle putting that in as I didn't want to stir up the dirt from the new substrate. So yesterday I caught out about 20 babies and this morning another 10 , there may well be more but I don't want to move the rocks this close to the new shrimp arriving. I will just have to try and catch them as they grow so I don't mix them up with the new shrimp. I breed them tough!

I've never had it happen, but have heard rumours (friend of a friend stuff). My belief is that IF a riffle is hunting down shrimplets, then it is not being fed properly.

How alarming and exciting! That little dragonfly nymph might be a little small for the adult shrimp, but I'd imagine they would easily be able to catch and eat baby shrimp.

Awesome setup mate. Only comment is that you may need to have the abinet doors open for the heater/chiller to run effectively. Well done

Hi everyone and thank you for the welcome! I have been in the shrimp hobby for nearly 3 years now. I initially started off with the humble red cherry shrimp and after a year took the plunge into the crystal bee world. Unfortunately it has taken me many attempts and a considerable amount of money to get to where I am today, but it has been worth it ? I have added YouTube link for a little video of my tank. https://youtu.be/qSO_C7QuAGA Please ignore the BBC news in the background haha A brief outline of my tank is: 45cm x 45cm custom made tank Borneowild Substrate 2 x 100 litre sponge filters 2 x Eheim air diffusers Fluval E 200 heater Boyu S2000 AIr Pump Java Moss, Java Fern Flame Moss and some Lava Rock. The tank inhabitants are: Crystal reds and blacks, some f hybrids and a two pandas, one win red and one blue panda. I look forward to learning new things about the hobby and taking my shrimp keeping to the next level ?

It does doesn't it? That's why I snapped up this tank when I saw it for sale. No standard size tank was going to fit, I'd never heard of these Aqua One tanks.

OK, so I've been a bit busy with kids, work and whatnot, but I'm back on the job. At least I know my paint is fully cured. Can anyone recommend a good heater other than the Eheim one with the calibrating rings? I don't like them and want to try something else. I've got my mangrove root in the dishwasher (wife is delighted with that) and will try to get more done tomorrow. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't get the glass cleaner. It seems to have some etched in calcium stains or something.

Oh! Nearly missed out on Monday. Here's my Monday blues, inspired by @neo-2FX who was shrimp-spotting with me today :)

Did my painting today with difficult to obtain and ludicrously expensive Krylon Fusion in satin black. Quite happy with the results, but being a second hand tank some imperfections in the glass show up and I wish I'd thought of painting the suction pipe before I glued it in permanently. Still very nice, and with the dark grey iron sand I feel sure that the lighting will work well and make the colors of the driftwood/plants/shrimp pop.

Very pleased with the lights/hood. Certainly very bright, but seems within reason even when empty. I put the power lead out the side as it seems they had it running through the filter box, which would make it ridiculously difficult to remove either hood by itself.

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.

I know I'm a few hours early for Monday, but I have a busy day tomorrow and couldn't wait another week to post this photo! :) I *think* this is a shadow Taitibee (spot the uncontrolled breeding program)