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Better late than never. I finally succed matching my time, and the moment where this female finally shows: Picture makes her appear a bit brown, but she is more a wine pattern. She rather look like a good Merlot, or a Cabernet-Merlot than a Moccachino ;)

After getting a magnifying glass to try to count baby shrimps, I was also able to see some other little things swimming, some of which I'm not happy about. Many were too small for me to identify what they were other than tiny jumping specks. When I bought the plants for my new tank for the shrimp, I dipped and rinsed them well in salt water. Despite this, I still find a few tiny snails each day, which I suck up with a airline hose attached to a small wooden dowel rod. When I was looking really closely today with the glass, I saw 2 small Planaria as well, which I removed with my "Snail Vac." Many of the tiny things that I cannot confirm as RCS, are probably daphnia, cyclops, etc. I was super excited to see the 12 specks, I could definitely confirm were RCS babies, but very unhappy about the Planaria, which I've read can be a bad for baby shrimps. I did some reading and most people said that "No Planaria" from Genchem is safe for RCS and might also rid me of my pesky pond snails. A few Amazon reviewers of the product said that all of their shrimp died after using it. If I can only see a few and remove them, is the "cure worse than the disease"? I'm only feeding the 20 adult shrimp 2 small pellets per day, which they eat within an hour before resuming their grazing on the tank's algae covered back. I'm not overfeeding. Ammonia, nitrates, and phosphates are all below detectable limits. There is a thin film of algae and diatoms on the tank's back, which I don't clean and leave for the shrimp to graze upon. The tank has been running for 3 months, with little debris on its sand substrate, except shrimp poo and a few dropped leaves from floating hornwort. I always take online complaints with some scepticism so I wanted the advice of you guys with RCS experience. For an example of pointless complaints that should be ignored, I recently saw on YouTube where a lady was ranting that "Pothos DESTROYED my aquarium!". I don't remember what I was looking for at the time, but the title of her video caught my eye. Years ago I had a 200 gallon tank with 4 large Comet Goldfish. After 15 years, the Pothos that I grew from the tank had covered an entire wall of my den. I had hung a 12 foot seine net on the wall behind the tank as decoration, and the vine eventually climbed and completely covered it. When I saw her video's title, I had a vision of something similar that might have fallen and broken a tank. This lady was apparently very fond of the black hair algae that had been growing in her tank of monster fish. After putting a handful of Pothos vine in her HOB filter, the algae all melted away. For several decades I've recommended to new fish keepers to keep a Pothos vine hanging over the edge of their tank. Even for people that can't keep underwater live plants or don't want the hassle, the roots of a Pothos vine in the tank's water will suck up ammonia, nitrates, and phosphates like a Hoover. I'm not sure why this lady on YouTube had put the vine in her tank, since the normal purpose of doing so is to starve algae of the nutrients it needs to grow. Sure enough her beloved black hair algae all died, and she was ranting about it.

so I just posted some pics on my Welcome "ME" topic... probably should have posted them here :) I'll just post a couple here. I'm going for random patterns of black-blue, dream-blue, velvet-blue, light back-stripe. I've still got a-ways to go population wise but here's two that are looking promising! :)

Thanks everyone, It's nice to feel so welcome:) So it turns out I don't have a camera with manual focus, I've done my best with a samsung tablet and a waterproof camera. I'm not sure how to change the display size of the pictures... sorry about that, if I figure it out or some kind soul tells me how I'll edit them smaller. Here's two pics of the velvet blues with faded-in red tails I told you about And these are second a third generations of blue dreams, blue velvets, blue blacks, random blueish culls and a few random healthy shrimp that had something I liked, like a white back stripe I thought might become blue over generations, or not much colouring of any kind but damn thats a big cherry shrimp etc

Pics or it didn't happen. ? C'mon, show us these rainbow tanks you guys have.