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My latest addition to the macro collection some lovely Tolmerum thanks to Bob North Boy. They are settling in nice and seem to have a calmer temperament so far than the others the colouration is very nice. the arms seem to be finer and have smaller claws in the coming weeks it will be nice to watch them grow and hopefully breed.

There was a glitch in the matrix and it seemed to have sent 3 of the same today. I've disabled the newsletter until I can sort this out. Apologies for the multiple emails.

My yellow Neo colony has settled in very well with my TB colony.

Hi, new here and thought I'd share some of my shrimp pics. I have two tanks. Both planted, one yellow King Kong only, other a mix. the mixed tank started with 8 TT x KK and 2 OEBT. By f2 generation I added around 15 TB mainly pandas and KK with a couple of blue bolts. Blue steels have popped up in tank and what I think is either a red bolt or hopefully a red steel. Two weeks ago I added 3 high grade OEBTs and 2 one reds.

Some really nice shrimp there. Thanks for sharing.

There are true ninjas here in Darwin but they are too difficult to breed in captivity, that is why Aquagreen has not offered them for sale.

If you only use K2CO3, KH will still fluctuate. It's best to use mainly CaCO3, MgSO4 and a bit of K2CO3, all together. And if you add these as separate powders, then you will need to measure it carefully to achieve a 4:1 Ca:Mg ratio. Or follow my DIY mix formula that Zoidburg linked earlier. Just note that I used CaSO4 in my formula, as my aim there was to not alter KH. Replace with CaCO3, if you want to raise KH. It essentially becomes similar to the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ product. This is my recommended method. However, if all you have or can find is K2CO3, then add this at every water change weekly (or twice weekly). This is much more useful than NaHCO3. Avoid bicarb soda. It adds nothing to the tank using it. You are better off using K2CO3, at least it is a macro fert. All it will do is send your KH and pH sky rocketing. The fluctuating pH will kill your shrimps. Potassium sulphate will raise GH only. You can add more to raise GH. Potassium is very safe in a tank, and is very difficult to overdose. Just remember, if you raise KH, you will also be altering pH. So you want to do this slowly over several days, maybe even weeks. Neocaridina shrimps don't really need GH 8 and KH 4. They will be fine at GH 6 and KH 3.

Just to update this thread/add more information.... I have used Fenbendazole (dog dewormer, 22% Fenbendazole) to treat a *tiny* outbreak of scutariella in a tank. Rather than doing a salt dip on each individual shrimp I saw with the parasites, I chose to treat the entire tank. Worked like a charm! I did a half dose at night, then the other half in the morning, of 0.1 gram per 10 gallons. Made the tank a milky cloudy color, and the shrimp even ate some of the Fenbendazole, but seemed unaffected by it... scutariella were killed off at least, and no further treatments were done. The liquid suspension sold for goats or Fish-Bendazole will also work, however they have different doses per 10 gallons. As far as ellobiopsidae go... there is hope!!!! This this is a parasite that attaches to the outside of the shrimp and forms "roots" into their carapace (if my understanding of how they grow is correct... unless it's an internal parasite that burrows it's way out... also possible?), we need to treat it like an internal parasite. It may sound odd, but apparently the best method may be medicated food using products like Kordon Rid Ich+! Article here.... https://www.discobee.com/blogs/news/the-dreaded-green-fungus-ellobiopsidae-neocaridina-shrimp-parasite-and-how-to-cure-it

Back in 2014 I showed some pictures of my quite large CRS colony. At that time I was breeding for numbers just to fill a very large tank so the quality of the shrimp wasn't very important to me. Last year I decided to take it in hand to improve the quality and weed out all. The low grade shrimp. I ended with a much smaller colony so put them into 70 litre breeding tanks, added a couple of mid - high grade males and left them to it. Along the way I culled any low grade males and eventually low grade females . I'm happy to say I once again have a thriving colony of about 150-200 shrimp of mid to mid/high grade shrimp. Patterns initially were B & A with a few S and now they are basically S , SS and a few SSS . There is still a lot of room for improvement and I will be doing another big cull soon . I can see a few shrimp still have tiny clear sections but on the whole they are looking much better. I'm getting colour on the legs now too which is good. Hopefully in another year I might have more high grade shrimp

@Zebra I think you are right with regards to TDS and GH/KH measurements. Logically, 2KH and 2GH together should give a TDS around 60 or more. There could be two reasons for the discrepancy. First, most people use liquid test kits to measure KH and GH, which rely on the user seeing a change in colour. Its pretty dam hard to see a colour/colour change when you only add one drop of test liquid. Easier to see it after two drops. Second, there is some margin of error for all test kits. The TDS meter might be out by a little bit and the liquid test kits only measure to the nearest drop (i think its equivalent to 17ppm for API test kits) so theres plenty of room for overlap and a wide margin of error. For example, two drops for a GH test could mean anything from 17ppm to 34ppm (assuming 17ppm = 1 drop). Remember ppm is parts per million, so we are trying to measure tiny amounts of ions dissolved in a lot of water. I would have thought 4ppm in the RO water would not have affected the shrimp too much. Trouble is you dont know what the 4pm is. I wouldnt think it would be chlorine because its a fairly easy ion to remove. Assuming the 4ppm is chlorine and trying to neutralise it would probably do more harm than good as you are adding more ions to the water = increased TDS. Always best to get your own RO unit, I've got one and I'm still kicking myself that I didnt get it alot sooner. Our forum sponsor FSA has some units that are reasonably priced and work well. I bought the combined RO and drinking water unit and I think it is fantastic. I'd say they are loving the plants and wood because its a good source of food, specifically biofilm. There is no plants and not a lot of wood in their natural habitat, so I dont see any specific reason to add them. That said, they are unlikely to harm the shrimp and removing them out of the tank now is propably going to cause more problems than it solves. @Zebra I say, yes you are allowed to get more if these die. Zebras have a steep learning curve and my first attempt at keeping them didnt go well, even when I have the advantage of being to their wild habitat and seeing how they live. Keep at it. The pink stuff on airline is usually some form of microbe (bacteria or fungus usually) that seem to feed on stuff that leaches from the airline. I've never found it to be harmful and I've seen snails eating it.