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I went ahead and culled that shrimp and another just to keep things safe. I finally got some photos with my dslr, what do you guys think? ?

You did well, they probably didn't have what you ordered exactly so made it up with what they had. You got a lot for your money there, wow! I have just ordered my LAST lot of taiwan bee shrimps today so should get those next week, 5 black, 10 blue, 10 red assorted mix! If this lot don't work out it will be dwarf spotted rasboras in that tank in future? Simon

Well, where I got them they said to acclimated them for about 45 minutes. I disagreed with that and it took me about 8 hours to acclimate them. PH is around 7.2, temp 74 degrees. No ammonia, nitrites, nitrates. GH and KH were tested locally and they are within range. There was no way I was going to spend the money I did if my parameters were off at all. I even went big in the tank so fluctuations were smaller. The tank is fully cycled and the rabbit snails in there are breeding. No fish, just snails and shrimp.

Okay awesome, I was getting a little worried about that underside but I think it is normal. I believe it is a rams horn snail, my second species is indeed the bladder snail. I think that’s the one that breeds uncontrollably, and has more of a cone shape. im going to try to get a deeper blue line, we will see :). I’m not sure how long the red cherry was in there for so hopefully that wasn’t the one that mates. It was pretty small but we will see!

So huuuuuuuge update and great news! Firstly 2 endler females dropped fry, one on Monday the other on Tuesday, problem is I couldn't tell who was dropping at first so one of them dropped 50% in the tank! They're hiding well so far. And to complete 3 days straight of spawning action... guess what! My Apistogramma Nijssenni pair spawned today! Well, technically they spawned on the weekend but I didn't notice... came home this evening and saw my pseudomugil luminatus male sulking in a corner, so my eyes went straight to the apistos. Male was doing his usual 'strut my stuff' thing, but the female was guarding fry! At first I thought they were guppy fry and she was trying to eat them, but then I realised they were striped black and white, and much smaller... APISTO BEBES!!! I am sooooo stoked to have bred them, and luckily I was monitoring parameters quite regularly for the endler fry, so I noticed what made them spawn - I dropped the pH below 6 (at least that's what I suspect, 6 is the low on my pH tester) with some almond leaves, and voila! Fry! There's probably more to it but quite simply dropping the pH below 6 when they are of age and in the right environment seems to be enough!!! Now I have a dilemma - do I leave the fry in the community tank and let the mum look after them? She's doing a really brilliant job so far, very territorial and showing them where to hide. I could also move them in a breeder box, or my 5 gal. Likely moving a male jap blue endler in the 5 as well though, so could be iffy there. The 5 really is perfect conditions for them right now, besides the hardness and pH. Lots of mulm, messy, and loads of plant cover. So there's that. Really the issue with that would be catching the teeny things! I'm leaning towards leaving them in there this first time, so I can observe how they behave and interact with their mother. After that I'll be fine to relocate any further batches of apisto fry for higher survival. Does anyone have an opinion on what would work best? Will upload pics tomorrow. Hard to capture with just my phone; may need to break out the canon. Cheers! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I GOT FRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thought perhaps it was time for an update and a thank you. So.......I did the 100% water change refilling using the water from the Zerowater filter adding the GH/KH +. 3 of the original cherries survived. I waited 6 weeks before restocking, having no more losses. All water changes are now with the zerowater and added GH/KH+. I now have a thriving tank successfully raise one lot of babies with more on the way. Thank you everyone for your help and advice. Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

You have something in your tank that is raising GH, or KH or both and increasing pH. Usually this means you have some sort of rock in the tank. Still waiting on a picture of the tank if you can manage it. Not quite. Ammonia will be turned into Nitrite. Nitrite will be turned into Nitrates. There will always be some Nitrate unless there is no ammonia being produced. So when Ammonia and Nitrite are zero; and Nitrates climb to 20 or over, than you might have a cycled tank. Which is what you have now. To be sure the tank really is cycled, keep up the routine as Crabby said above, and as I also mentioned previously ... keep it up until you finish the bottle. There is no use keeping a half empty Fluval cycle, it's not like the bacteria in that bottle will live long enough for use the next time you need to cycle another tank. Besides, if you ever need to cycle another new tank, you use the filter from this tank and wash it in the new tank. Yes, get all that gunk from a mature filter into the new tank. That will seed the new tank with millions of bacteria. No need for any store bought bottled bacteria.

Hard to tell what Val that is. It's a Vallisneria of some sort. Either Jungle val, Vallisneria Spiralis or Vallisneria Australis Gigante. The colour of a shrimp is not on it's shell. That is, it doesn't change colours after moulting because the colour is below the shrimp's shell. So the colour of that shrimp you have is it's normal colour.

I have been trying to raise neocaridina. I got some nice looking blues from a local guy. I lost maybe one or two but they are in there... somewhere. I made sure they had plenty of places to hide and hide they do. I don't know how many I have because it is rare to see one out and about. The reason I know they are there is that I see shrimp poop everywhere. It is a 45 with about a dozen in there. Now on to the issue. I have a 29 set up. All the parameters are the same as the 45. I decided to get some yellow ones for it. So I bought 10 online from a highly rated place. They all arrived alive and the colors were amazing. In the first 24 hrs I lost two. Figured it was a stress issue. They started dying off on a daily basis. I now have two left and I am going to assume they are not long for the World. So, The problem I have is the parameters are the same as my 45. In matter of fact, the 29 has tons of algae that they are always eating. Any ideas?

Yeah watch the bladder snails, they can take over a tank so quickly! They will only really be a problem if you have a very messy tank, though, if not then they will just be around, cleaning up. They breed out of control when there is lots of food for them.

I have just received my order I was surprised what has come. I ordered a 10 cup jug with one filter and two filter, what I got was one piece 10 cup Jug and 2 pieces 8 cup, total of 3 jugs and 3 filters for GBP35.

When your sons blue start breeding you may think again and take some of his and maybe the last 2 yellows you have will survive, so don't give up entirely at this point, just take a break for now! There are a few shrimp specialists in USA who do delivery so they should be safe, flip aquatics, the shrimp farm etc, so mull that over for a few weeks??? I have just spent £150 on shrimps today for my LAST try next week! I must be insane but at least I KNOW if it doesn't work this time then its fish instead? Simon

I have decided that I will be done with Shrimp. Not many places carry them in our area and mail order for everything aquatic has had horrible results. I had a company send me two orders of plants because the first they sent died, not melted, died. The second batch was the same. I won't be doing mail order any more because I know it isn't me when I have the same plants in the same tank that are thriving.

It is funny because my Son and I are scratching our heads. I went with a perfect tank. Neos tend to be a bit more forgiving vs other shrimp. He has a tank that is set up with no heat, poor filtering and he threw in a handful of shrimp that he took all of five minutes to acclimate. They are thriving in that setup. It appears the harder I try, the harder I fail. I have rabbit snails that also require specific parameters and they are breeding like crazy. I got babies all over. I will wait a little bit and try one more time. It is not that I can't afford it, it's just that buying things just to see them die is stupid.

To be honest I think I had a bad batch. Son said GH: 8 KH: 6 TDS around 200. I did drip acclimation. I have a special two gallon tank that I use. I ran airline from the tank to the two gallon and was at about one drop every two seconds. When it came time to add them to the tank I dipped the net in the two gallon, allowed them to walk into it and added them to the tank. Oh, temp wasn't off either. Again, I spent about a month researching this to make sure that I wasn't throwing money into a hole. My blues have no issues so far and I have a few berried females and I treated them no different. Even getting these shrimp delivered was a production. I called my local PO person and she called me as soon as they came in so I could go pick them up. I took the water to two different local mom and pop stores to have the water tested. I spent all those hours watching them to make sure they were acclimating properly. Oh and the dead shrimp are just curled up and dead. Not eaten, just dead.

Starting from the beginning, did you slowly (drip) acclimate the shrimps to the tank water, this is a rookie mistake we all make when starting with shrimp, they are very fragile? What you are describing sounds like you didn't acclimate properly so I won't go any further at this point until we know that? What are the water parameters in the tank? Is it just the shrimps in the tank as fish can stress them to death? Simon

The snail pattern looks more like a bladder snail in my book? The black dots in the eggs will be the eyes! I can't see the furry stuff you mention, but they have a lot of hairs on the protruding front part underside that maybe what you are seeing. It looks very healthy too me and great colour blue! Simon

Yes I have two kinds of snails from the pond, that one is a Ramshorn I think and I think the other one is the one that breeds a lot. I also moved another light blue shrimp because I still have at least 3 males. Are the black dots on the eggs eyes? Also what is the furry looking stuff under the shrimps nose? Everything looks fine?

Fantastic photos, very clear! I like the snail, is that a native hitchhicker? It was probably a wise precaution to get rid of the other shrimp, as if it had mated it would likely have messed up the quality of the tank in the longer run. Keep up the good work and hopefully there won't be too much of a wait for shrimplets? Simon

Wow, lots happening all at once! Hope it all continues to go well? Hope you manage to get some photos to upload! Simon

Not really sure 100% what that is. I suspect it is Montmorillonite Clay or Bentonite clay, in powder form. I used to use that but not anymore. Don't waste your money on it. It's not essential despite what the marketing on the packaging says. But White mineral powder can be anything. What does it say in the Ingredients section?

Well the way the cycle will work is each will spike, so first you will get really high ammonia, then high nitrite, then high nitrate. Once you get ammonia and nitrite to 0 and have the nitrate spike, your tank is ‘cycled’. But it usually takes a couple weeks. Keep doing what you’re doing for a bit I reckon.

Update: February 25: Water Temp 70-72 PH: 7.8 now.. not sure how it went from 7.6 to 7.8 after adding mopani drift wood? Ammonia: 0!!!!! Nitrite: 0!!!! NitrAte: 10-20 ( I think 10) My shrimp molted for the first time since getting them! I have been adding fluval cycle (half dose) every 2 days. And been doing a 10% water chang every few days as well. Do i know my tank is done cycling when ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate is all 0? Thanks!