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Now that it looks like summer is on its way and my rainbows in my 4ft tank are getting huge I am seriously planning on relocating them and the endlers down to my 1000L pond to live out their days. They will be joining endlers all ready in the pond along with notopala snails, cull cherry shrimp and from memory purple spot and empire gudgeons.That will leave just a couple of BN's a mob of sterbia corys and around 15 dwarf chain loaches in the 4ft. I was planning on putting my Pacific Blue Eyes into the tank from the 2ft black cherry tank, but that would leave just the 2 whiptails, nerites and black cherry's in the 2ft tank. So I am looking for a suitable safe fish to put back into the 2ft tank that wont bother the shrimp but will stop dragonfly nymphs being able to invade the tank, which has happened previously when no fish where with the shrimp. Hence the useful and pretty Pacific Blue Eyes. I really like Blue Eye species and already have Spotted Blue Eyes in my native shrimp tank, and could order either Delicate Blue Eyes or Neon Blue Eyes for the tank although I would really love some Honey Blue Eyes. I could put threadfin rainbows in but I already have some in one of my other 4ft tanks and if possible I would prefer to not double up on species between different tanks. I did try Rasbora maculata at one time but they just failed to thrive. So requirements.... 1. Available in Central Queensland or from sources that will ship. eg Aquagreen, Livefish 2. Shrimp friendly, nonaggressive 3. Snail friendly (leave the nerites alone) 4. tolerant of heat, the shed and tanks get pretty hot in summer. 5. Wont breed to EXTERME 6. Prefer to not have a fish that will eat destroy the plants. I know I could just leave a mob of male endlers in the tank, but I really want to have a school/ shoal of nice peaceful fish that wont harass the shrimp, snails or whiptails. I even considered cross banded danios but I'm not really sure how shrimp safe they would be. I will probably even be looking for a suitable fish for my 50-60L tank that currently only houses red cherry shrimp and nerite snails in the near future too. So suggestions please......

Hi Heidi, welcome to the forum. I know Dave from Aquagreen sells the native nerites Neritina violacea. Check out their catalogue here: http://www.aquagreen.com.au/catalog.html This is a short write up on the Neritina violacea: http://www.aquagreen.com.au/plant_data/Neritina_violacea.html Very keen if you have any to spare together with the c. wilkinsi when you are able to source them.

Some of the aquarium dividers are installed and I'm pretty happy with how they are looking. We've used some small PVC tube with a slot cut in the middle to anchor and support the 2mm acrylic sheet as well as using the little plastic clips at the top (they came with the aquariums as supports for the lid). We have left a gap of around 23mm at the bottom and i will layer it up high with some fairly chunky gravel in the middle where the divisions are to allow enough flow to keep WP fairly well matched in both sections. LED controller has been built and we Have also finished 3/4 draining and moving out all of the smaller tanks into the room next door while we install shelving and modify the built in robe. Tanks have been filled back up with fresh remineralised RO and the shrimps seem to have handled the move OK and I haven't detected any spikes in parameters. Some shrimps in my yellow colony seem a little paler than I had thought but I think they'll bounce back alright. [emoji173][emoji111][emoji445] will

I know it's going to be a shame to blemish them with the dividers but it's the most efficient way I've decided that I'll be able to do selective breeding without stressing the shrimps having to move them from tank to tank! I also want to dedicate one or two other seperate tanks for oddbods plus those shrimp that I just can't quite bring myself to cull as well as a few of my nicer shrimps popped in there as an insurance policy. The dividers will have no windows with mesh - I will just have 2mm acrylic dividers but with a gap at the bottom of 3cm and a 5cm layer of fairly chunky dark gravel either side of that spanning out 10cm and then a shallower later of either buffering substrate or plain old pool filter sand depending on the tank. I hope that should provide enough circulation. There will be a total of about 400-600 lph of airflow going into the sponges to circulate each tank. I've attached the rough plan for the LEDs here now. The electronics side of it will probably be finished soon. Things are really moving pretty quickly can't wait till the rest of the tanks are ready. Shrimps I will keep (What I already have) - Blue dream Blue body red rili (work in progress) Yellow cherry Bloody Mary Crs Green babaulti Blue dream Tangerine tiger Shrimps I would like to add - Shadow panda Caridina zebra Sulawesi cardinal Mid-dark blue oebt Inverts I have but have not made allowance for (mainly because I don't want to put massive tanks in this room where I'm not sure the floor might cave in and as a result will need to beg the minister of finance to allow me to have 2 tanks in the lounge again) - Macrobrachium Australianese Yabbies (cherax destructor) At this point without naming anyone because the list would be too long I'd like to thank all of the wonderful people in the shrimp keeping community who have helped me to get to the point I'm at now i have learnt a lot in the last 2 and a half years or so since I first signed up on skf. You all know who you are - thank you !!![emoji173] [emoji173] [emoji173] [emoji173][emoji111][emoji445] will

So bunnings has a special on their DETA led downlights. 5x 12w for $69 so have gone with that option. They are daylight spectrum and rated to 900 lumens - I could only find independently tested specs on them for an earlier model on ledbenchmark.com but those came up pretty decent and I've already been using this brand for close to a year and I'm quite happy with how they perform. My buddy has rigged and tested the deta brand universal dimmer that bunnings also sells - we will put each of the four benches on a separate channel so I can easily turn a single bench on or off manually if/when I need. They will all run on a timer and fade on from 20% - 100% power over a few minutes period. The lights come with clips and we will suspend them inside of pvc tube a little above the tanks to keep them enough out of the way to give good spread over the tank and also avoid wasting too much light. When the LED system is setup I'll ask my mate about the technical side of it and include those details here for those interested. [emoji173][emoji111][emoji445] will

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Update: Most, possibly all, the Macros pictured are likely to be M. tolmerum.