Revaria

When you keep neocaridinas and caridina shrimp together generally 1 set will do much better depending on your parameters. In your situation the caridina would do better. And mixing shrimp well you can get generally anything for instance if you mix blue and red neocaridinas they can throw multi colored shrimp and even purple neocaridina. In your case if you like the black and white types of shrimp and are not worried about mixing them, what about keeping some black crystals as they can fit the tank parameters and black crystals do throw red crystals from time to time. Just make sure to quarantine anything before throwing them in and have fun!

Oh wow this is quite cool, it would have been useful when I first started. My only critics would be that although weight is more accurate than scoops I don't think many of us will use a balance to measure the weight of salty shrimp.

For me reducing feedings will reduce the amount of hydra within the tank over a few weeks as they starve out, after which most of the remainders will be left on the first few inches on the top of the glass where they can be removed manually with a scouring pad after you drain the water a bit. For the ones on my sponge filters I swapped them out with some spare filters which are floating in other tanks and boiled the infested sponges.

Wow you are going through some crazy experiments, congratulations. Its cool that your sharing your work with us, thanks I hope you are able to get them breeding in total freshwater or close to it.

No probs

To me from that angle that looks like a male of breedable size, however its winter so whether they breed or not is questionable even if they don't breed you can probably get them to grow to breedable size by spring so they do start to mate as soon as the weather changes.

LOL I consider bashing to be marking down every negative thing about a product relentlessly which is basically what I did. I just try to be polite as possible cause it is way too easy to commit social suicide on the internet nowadays and I like this forum. Regarding the dosing instructions I just meant that a lot of people have questions about it and they still have not clarified the dosing instructions of the powder on their product which in my opinion would decimate shrimp tanks. I didn't think about them fixing their website, but you do make a good point they haven't fixed anything on that side either. I expect the Bacter Ae to activate I just don't know how much of it will activate or how many bacteria is inside the actual powder. For instance OTC lactobacillis from pharmacies estimate the amount of bacteria within each capsule, Bacter Ae doesn't provide that information and the bacteria are listed last on the ingredient list as well. Regarding the anaerobic part of the bacteria, if it was possible to recreate within our aquarium that would be amazing as it would complete the nitrogen cycle in our tanks causing nitrates to gas off from the aquarium saving us the trouble of water changes or at least less frequent water changes, but I believe our current tanks are too oxygenated for them to go through the denitrification process. And I think we are on the same page on this one; that would be quite the story if Glasgarten ordered a cease and desist order due to the testing of their product and suing them as an individual, now that would be a really big headache pricey as well lol.

Unfortunately medicating shrimp in the hobby is somewhat still new and there are diseases that we cannot identify nor treat once they are identified. I myself have never had to medicate my shrimp so far in my hobby and have no experience regarding identifying them or treating them as well. Here is the site I was using back when I started and was researching common shrimp diseases, but regarding treatment its quite iffy. There are also youtube sources that talk about shrimp diseases like on Rachel o Leary's channel, I hope these sources help. https://www.aquariumcreation.com/blogs/news/freshwater-shrimp-diseases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3BHHZHS1ak (Link to Rachel's video)

Cyanoacrylates are the aquarium safe superglue, from what I know about them mixing it with water causes it to harden which may be why it says that. Once they have harden it should be aquarium safe.

I just pm'd you.

Well your plan sounds good plan, just keep in mind that changes in temperature more than 2-3 degrees at once can be stressful to shrimp and fish. As for the tannins from the wood if you do a 30-40% water change every 2 weeks I do not think your pH will get altered much or at all as you will be removing most of those tannins, especially if its a small piece of wood. Some other things to keep in mind are that shrimp don't produce that much waste, so a 30-40% water change may be a bit much. If you plan to feed them less now that its colder, changing too much water may cause you to needlessly waste remineralizing salts which are expensive, but that is my opinion if it works for you and you want to keep doing so feel free too. Old tank syndrome also takes around a few year to actually occur and is mitigated by water changes in general, so as long as you don't let the water stew for months at a time you should be good, in fact I would say from experience a newly set up tank actually takes 6 months to a year to fully stabilize. And if you are planning to breed the shrimp having more females is always better lol a 1:3 male to female ration is always welcomed in my fish/shrimp room.

Those parameters look just fine and are similar to my cherry shrimp, from what you are telling us if the female did fail to molt then there was not much you could have done for it as it can sometimes just happen especially if it was a larger female as older shrimp have a harder time adjusting to new water parameters. Regarding the change in behavior there are a lot of variables in play right now, which may be affecting the shrimp. 1. What was the original temperature and how many degrees did you drop the temperature by and how much time did it take for you to drop the temperature. Dropping or increasing the temperature too fast can cause stress, which will not heavily effect healthier shrimp, but can hurt weaker shrimp. 2. The weather just turned a lot colder within the last week which can affect the shrimps metabolism, but it sounds like you are using a heater so that may not be a variable in this case. 3. You added 2 new shrimp to the tank which may have carried a disease and you didn't notice it and it may have spread to the other shrimp. 4. The water company may have changed something in the tap water as I heard this occurs in certain locations during seasonal changes. And if you are using heated water from the tap during water changes heat it can cause toxic metals to leach from your pipes. Also how big was the water change and how frequently do you do them? 5. Your shrimp may be fine and the death may be unrelated to the overall health of the tank as sometimes shrimp just like to sit there, just keep observing the tank. If you experience another death soon that is probably a sign that something is wrong, but what it may be is honestly quite variable; aside from the factors above I don''t know what it may be. Here are some other tips regarding the food issues. Because you have so few shrimp within the tank they may be living off the biofilm within the tanks and not require supplementary feedings, especially as the temperature has decreased recently (I'm assuming you are within the U.S) dropping their metabolism. If you feel like it you can probably try feeding them again in a 3-4 day period and if they reject it again, but are active and foraging you should be fine. Just remove the excess food to prevent ammonia spikes and clouding of the water especially if the food given was a piece of vegetable. Also it is currently winter time so the cherries may or may not breed, from my knowledge it is quite variable to whether they breed or not in the winter; a lot of shrimp keepers have non breeding shrimp in the winter, for some apparent reason I'm not one of them so it is definitely quite possible. Some other things to keep in mind a pH spike within the tank. For the longest time whenever I did a water change on my cherry shrimp tanks I would always always lose 1-2 shrimp no matter what. The problem I found out eventually is that the water in the actual shrimp tank acidified to around 6.5 or 6 somehow, so whenever I changed the water with 7.6 pH mineralized water, whether it was 10% or 25% or 50% it would cause a pH spike which would cause the shrimp to either stand still doing nothing or in go into a frenzy and try to escape the aquarium. So its just something to keep in mind when doing water changes. I hoped I helped with this post and I hope your shrimp fare better in the next few days.

Can you give us your water parameters and depending on the size of the driftwood, it may drop the pH; its just something to keep in mind while utilizing it.

I have to thank you for writing this long post post, but I honestly really don't know how to respond to this post cause most of whats being talked about here is speculation and to me Bacter Ae is full of speculations in regards to what it actually does. I used it before for a very small amount of time and stepped away from its use for the following reasons. 1. The amount to dose is currently up in the air, so far experience has taught us to ignore the manufacturers instructions (which is already a bad sign) and place a dose that is as small as possible into the tank which already adds a mild degree of difficulty to using it as the instructions are not clear and is up to trial and error for the new user. 2. I cannot observe any of the claims Bacter Ae has made; including knowing whether the bacteria activates in the water or not, whether it removes toxic substances from the water, or provide the tank with a good microclimate and provide good digestion for the shrimp. As a shrimpkeeper I have no way of confirming how much bacteria activates within the water, how much bacteria is good/bad for the water column, what a good microclimate of bacteria should look like, whether this specific bacteria while good for humans is good for shrimp, whether it can remove toxic substances from the water, whether it removes oxygen or not and if it does how much oxygen does a certain amount of Bacter Ae remove and if it does remove oxygen how long will it take for oxygen to be replenished. Another issue is that if it does removes oxygen from the water and we know that know that removing oxygen is bad, why would we willingly add what is equivalently a poison to our tanks. So to sum it up I have a million questions regarding this product and the cost to benefit of this item only looks like costs to me, especially as you could utilize the 12-20 dollars to just purchase a different food that does not have a myth of killing your shrimp and just avoid the hassle of running multiple experiments for one product; that should be the manufacturers job not ours. 3. I cannot guarantee nor disprove the efficacy of this item as its efficacy is sorta based on the shrimp not dying. If the shrimp die, people back away from the product, if it does not kill the shrimp people keep using it, it has no color enhancement claims and no one has done a solid research regarding Bacter Ae, its all speculation. You can probably just feed your shrimp some food and get the same results which is growth, babies and surviving shrimplets. Sorry if it seems like a rant, I'm trying my best to not make it seem like one and just listing my reasons for not using this product without bashing it. Its one of the only topics that keeps recirculating in regards of whether it is good or bad and to me its not worth the degree of time we give it; as the entire conversation itself is speculative. This product either works or doesn't work for the user and when it doesn't work we pull at all these reasons that we don't even know are correct. Until someone decides to run all the necessary experiments on it which in itself would be more of a hassle than it is worth in my opinion we are going to be stuck in the dark. Anyways thanks again for the long post, these are always fun to read on the site and I believe it is deserving of a long thought out reply.

Aside from overfeeding I don't really see a problem, shrimp can kinda live off of anything, just make sure to provide a variety of foods and a source of ingestible calcium.