[Karackle]

I decided I wanted to try RCS again, and I figured with the abundance of subwassertang, this might be a great tank to try them in. So I picked up 3 and got a 4th shrimp (that is sort of clear or maybe yellowish with stripes) for free. Here they are drip-acclimating to their new home (I haven't been able to get a good pic of them in the tank....mostly because I can rarely even find them):

And the snails are back! GRRRRR (as much as I love snails as planted tank inhabitants, I do not appreciate them gumming up the works!)

I decided to remove the spray barand just angle the outflow up. I try to keep up surface agitation to keep down the growth of the floaters which were trying to take over again with the reduced surface agitation because of the snails at the outflow (I removed some duckweed after these photos were taken)

And a FTS

Crypts are getting huge, I'm thinking of removing the one on the left (and putting it in the betta tank), and shifting one of the 2 huge ones in the center a little to the left, but not as far as the current left-most plant is.

 

[Karackle]

I'm so sad, at least 2 of the shrimp are dead. 1 is definitely alive, I can't find the 4th at all. No idea what happened to them. The tank is well established, the zebra danio is happy as can be, the guppy I was quarantining in here was happy (unless the danio was picking on him) so I have no idea what happened to the RCS.

I couldn't find any so I decided to check if they had gotten behind the mesh of the subwassertang wall. One was dead back there, but there's plenty of space so I don't THINK it got stuck. I saw red through the mesh, so one was in the subwassertang but if didn't move when I tapped the mesh so I went to find that shrimp, it was also dead. Then I saw more red, that one also didn't seem to move but when I dug around in the subwassertang, that one swam out. No sign yet of the 4th.

Is it POSSIBLE they are getting stuck in the subwassertang? It seems really unlikely to me right?

 

[Karackle]

This tank continues to do well, and the zebra danio is still going strong. However, I believe that all of my shrimp have died. If there is one left it stays hidden in the subwassertang. I think there's enough subwassertang that they could have stayed well hidden from the danio, and when they first went in and I did see them walking around I didn't see him bothering them, but it's a definite possibility. That said, I have had trouble keeping RCS alive ever since I moved to NJ. I had a nice colony going in NY, but once I moved here they slowly died off so it's also possible it's something about the water here.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the tank. The little prepackaged crypts I got are doing much better than I expected! And the huge crypt continues to grow gigantic! In fact, I think it might be time to pull it from this tank entirely and move it to the 30g and move the little crypts to the left side of the tank.

I do have a few new leaves that aren't looking so great so it's probably time to put some fresh root tabs in this tank.

 

[Karackle]

Massive overhaul!

Well Mr. Zebra Danio finally passed away about a month ago so I decided it was time to tear down and redo this tank. I got the idea in my head that I wanted it to look like the underwater root system of a mangrove forest. I got my hands on some beautiful branch bits of manzanita and began my rescape!

Before (parting shot):

After:

More pics and descriptions available in this album. I didn't have time to write out the long post because I must get back to editing my thesis proposal!!! But I just remembered I made the album and never shared here so I decided to take a quick break and do so

Oh! And don't worry, the gorgeous massive crypts found a nice new home in my 30g