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Wow, thats a big tank (for shrimps anyway), my fish tank is only 30 litres and has 5 neons, 5 ember tetras, 2 endler guppies ??? Red cherry shrimp, ??? assassin snails. It gets very neglected as I have been concentrating on a Taiwan Bee tank which is FAR more complicated. It has been running for about 5 years and I am at the stage where about half the shrimps are wild colour and half are still red. The biggest problem then is you can't really see the brown ones as well as the reds so it is very difficult to fish them out and there is a LOT of moss and plants in there for them to hide in, so they just stay in there and do their thing. Assassin snails breed like crazy but I give those to a friend to feed to his puffer. Some years ago I gave a friend a load of my red cherries and he dumped them in his tank (about 360L) thinking they would all be food for his fish (neither of us thought any would survive), but he still has loads in his tank from that date to-date so he is well pleased. I am sure that the fish must eat some/many as he has some big fish but they obviously don't get them all? Hope you enjoy the forum! Simon

Thanks JayC, not sure I want to go that route (have looked at what my supplier has) as a bit too much involved, but I will mull that over the holiday period. I have 2 of the cheapie sponge types in the tank at the moment and I see dennerle do a 'hang on' type of filter but by the size of it I am not sure that will be any better (filter media can't be any bigger) than what I am already using? I guess it would be easier too keep the media clean as it isn't in the tank but that would come back to my original concern at using dechlorinated tap water to clean the media in????? A big unit is impractical as I don't have anywhere near the tank to keep it so would mean moving the whole tank etc, and thats not happening! Tomorrow will be the half way between maintenance so I will probably try what I was proposing and just keep my fingers crossed that rinsing the sponges in dechloirnated tap water won't cause any problems with the sponges bacteria etc. I guess I shouldn't be too nervous about experimenting as I wouldn't have got this far without it? I will plan to up the culling in 2019 and hopefully that may also help! Friend is coming sunday so maybe I can give him a load to feed his fish.............. Simon

Welcome to SKF Aquatics.

Without a GH and KH test kit, you wouldn't know if it's needed or not. If you can buy a TDS pen, that would help as well to get the TDS measurement. Remove the cuttle fish bone for now, at least until you get your test GH/KH kits. A cuttle fish bone doesn't know when to stop releasing calcium, so that will keep climbing, and it could be too much calcium in the water. Also note that calcium doesn't get utilised as efficiently if there isn't Magnesium as well in a 4:1 ratio (Ca:Mg). If you have Magnesium sulfate in the form of Epsom salts, then add a little, a pinch or two for a 25L tank. Just make sure it pure Epsom Salts, without fragrance or other additive that can be added for baths. The impacts of ammonia on shrimp can only surface a week or 2 after. So this is also a possibility. Report back when you get your GH/KH test kit.

Sounds like it has cycled. Nitrates are high, that means the bacteria has been converting ammonia into nitrites and then nitrates. So time for a 90 - 99% water change with your distilled water and adjust the parameters to suit your shrimp.

Then it's good for yellow shrimp.

Yes, absolutely fine. Hibiscus is edible for humans and shrimp alike. Just don't feed red flowers to yellow shrimp. It might change their colour. So if you want to colour up red shrimp, feed them red flowers. Yellow flowers for yellow shrimp. And strawberry leaves are also fine.

It is possible to breed high grade shrimp from low grade, but it takes a lot of time, a lot of culling and a lot of tanks. You select the best looking shrimp from each generation and breed them. Cull the rest or separate the low grade ones, so there is no risk of them breeding with the best shrimp and producing degraded shrimps in the next generation. Select the best again from the next generation and cull the lower grade shrimps. Repeat. This assume no new shrimps are added. But if you add one or two high grade males to your low grade females, it improves quality immediately. One good male can impregnate many female shrimps. So if you don't want to spend much on many high grade shrimps, get one good male.

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.