[aweeby]

Over the summer, I've been planning out a shrimp tank, so that I can hopefully isolate my breeding rills and breed some Caridinas. It's about 3 weeks old and the bacteria seems solid at the moment. I don't really feel comfortable putting caridinas in there yet, but the tank they were in had way too high TDS. (550+) And even after multiple water changes... After a death, I realized they had to be moved.

But here's what I have so far. The idea was to put as much plant material in it as possible from the get go to hasten cycling. I pulled a large piece of driftwood from my neglected 55g, to my surprise, the NLJF I planted a few months back had increased in size 10 fold! The HOB powering the UGF is mature.

Here's some pics of the shrimps:






Stats:

Water:
TDS: 230 ppm
pH: 6.3

Shrimp:
• Red Rili x11
• S+ CBS x9
• S+ CRS x8 (4 tiger tooth)

Filtration:
• Mordalphus style UGF powered by a 30g rated HOB.
• Marineland 55g rated HOB

Substrate:
• 1.5" Aquasoil
• plastic needle point mesh (to prevent AS from clogging the UGF)
• 1" Crushed cinder gravel and peat (biological media)

Plants:
• Needle Leaf Java
• Normal java fern
• Bolbitus
• Notocyphus Lutescens
• Fissidens
• x-mass moss
• Mini-pellia
• Hydrocotyle sp. Japan
• Crypt. retrospiralis
• Marimo
• Echidnodorus Angustifolia sp. Vesuvius
• Anubias Barteri (petite and regular)
• Abnormally large Echidnodorus tenellus
• Water Sprite
• Italian Val

Hardscape:
Malaysian Driftwood
Manzanita twigs (for biofilm farms)
Basalt stones
Cinder gravel (for the moss)

 

[aweeby]

thanks. haven't been able to get a decent FTS yet, but everyone's settling in very well. I took those pics in my 5.5g, which has the crazy TDS. Since then, I've moved half my starting colony to this 20g and the colors on the CRS are really popping.

as an aside, I just got my borneo wild foods last night, and the shrimp just fly straight to it. It's awesome. They even prefer it over the biofilm I cultured.

 

[aweeby]

Yesterday, the mature filter powering the UGF broke down. I transfered the media to a magnum HOT I had lying around. The current is really strong right now... but hopefully they'll get used to it. Anyway, pics! I DO have a 100% real tank.
I just sold my old 100g metaframe to some guy wanting to raise guppies (???) to help pay for this... so let's hope it's worth it.

FTS!

It's sharing space with some rabbits, so excuse them.


Mini-christmas!

The lighting situation.

UGF detail.

These saddled girls in the pic are all berried now. Wish I could say the same for the caridinas... they are molting, anyway.

 

[aweeby]

Haha, I have no idea. I hauled out about a good buckets worth of JF. The stuff on the driftwood is super thinned out. I gave most of it away to my old advisor, but if I can find some, and you need some to start, lmk! Hope I'll be able to say the same about the shrimpies. :/ The rilis are all either saddled or berried though. Give it a couple of months and we'll see.

Yeah, the guy who bought the tank was on craigslist. I still can't believe he's raising guppies. Surprise of the week.

I know these metaframes are like super rare now, esp. that that one was enormous. But yeah, I didn't see what I would do with it, so I sold it. Maybe I should've asked for more, now that I think of it. Eh. Whatever.

 

[aweeby]

What kind of snails are those in the pic?

so-so grade red ramshorns.