13g Blue Velvet Love (56k warning)

[rocksmom]

Originally Posted by Kunsthure

...I bought what were supposed to be blue ramshorns from a member here. They all arrived alive despite major USPS screw ups. I had them in QT for a week because I'd rather have one die in a Tupperware bowl than under a rock in the tank and cause an ammonia spike. One of the smallest ones did die. I put the remaining nine in the tank this morning. They look white, not blue, but they were cheap, so I can't complain. I just hope I'm not unleashing certain doom upon the tank. I don't want a population explosion and I don't want them to push the shrimp out of the feeding dish like the mystery did. ...

Good luck with your snails. I added pink ramshorns to my shrimp tank and exactly what you said happened. They would crowd onto the shrimp food which blocked the shrimp and then there was a HUGE population explosion. Hundreds of babies. I've since fed almost all the adults and quite a few babies to my loaches and dwarf puffer. There are still babies everywhere though.

[Kunsthure]

Originally Posted by dannylc

Cleaned up the pic a bit for a better look at the shrimp lol thought it only fair to share it.

You have some serious noise in your pics, if you can use manual mode on your camera turn down your ISO to maybe 100 with 300/sec shutter speed and F6. may get better results but keep playing about till you get it right

Thanks for the photo tips. These pics have been taken with my iPhone. It's faster to get them posted online than to break out the tripod, set up the DSLR, set up my lights, take photos then post process them. I've done a lot of macro shrimp work, actually. I posted a few in the invert section. http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/sh...9&postcount=12

-Lisa

[Kunsthure]

I went away to Florida for two weeks and came back to this:



It's amazing how much things can change in two weeks; the moss really took off. I also came back to a tank covered in mulm () and four dead ramshorns. They are dying slowly. I think they were of weak stock to begin with because there certainly isn't a lack of food.

I added an amano to eat the hair algae and I had no idea they were so messy! I watched it pick up bits of Flourite and toss them away looking for food. In the process, it was throwing mulm all around. It has not eaten the hair algae; just made a mess. I haven't fed the blue velvets any veggies or wafers since I've been back because I'm trying to force the amano to eat the hair algae; I know that once it gets a taste of other food, it won't eat algae. So I have no new saddled females because they've been left to foraging.

There's been another critter addition. The assassin snail babies are emerging in the 20g so I'm moving them to the 13g to take care of the mini-ramshorns and baby MTS. I'm tired of squishing snails. Every baby I find in the 20g is being moved. They're cute little things, actually.

I also came home to a berried female with eyes in her eggs so I knew they would be hatching any day. I have seen three babies so far but the weird thing is that they're orange. They're too small to be baby RCS that I missed when I redid the tank, so they must be baby BVs. The other two berried females' eggs are darkening and now I'm on eye watch.

I added three pieces of cholla which immediately garnered interest from almost everyone. I didn't know cholla was so messy. Bits are being cast off as the shrimp eat, especially that pig amano. I'm going nuts because I can't vacuum now that I have babies in the tank. I might have to buy more ramshorns because I've been told that they'll keep the tank spotless, ie mulm-free. (I hate mulm with a passion in case I haven't said that already).

I've been finding a planaria here and there and I'm not happy about that. I don't know why they've shown up because they weren't there before I left and the shrimp were not fed anything while I was gone. There aren't enough for me to treat the tank but I worry their population will explode once I start feeding the shrimp again.

WC is set for tomorrow as it's long overdue, three weeks or so. I don't even want to know how the params have changed after that much time.

-Lisa