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Kurobom's Shrimp Chronicle


Kurobom

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Some good news and bad news. I came home a few days ago wondering why my larger BB was getting so close and friendly with my new juvi black TB, only to realize it was happily eating it... =_=''' After a few minutes of wrestling it away from the BB, I was able to send it a prayer and wished it a better next life... Surprisingly I'm not super bummed out by this loss. The other shrimp are doing fine, and this one was probably from a recent import batch, so it may have been stressed to begin with. I will try to focus on locally bred shrimp for this point onwards I think!

 

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The irony of losing a $10 shrimp was that I probably gained about $10 in extra food goodies from my order of CSF food, ordered directly from Peter Linders himself! The order only took one week to arrive from Germany, and he provided a variety of samples that went along with the Pure Mineral, Baby Pro, and Hokkaido order I made. Thanks for the recommendations everyone! The shrimp love the Pure Mineral and Omni so far. The Hokkaido got a few pokes, but they ended up finishing it by the end of the day. I will try the rest gradually and report back with my shrimps' impressions of the food.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 5: It's Macro Time (Again)!

I recently acquired a D800E to replace my D600, essentially allowing me to use 36.3 megapixels instead of 24.2 megapixels. In terms of macro photography, this means greater detail in the photos, and better cropping options! I've been experimenting with the amount of light needed for more optimal shrimp shots, and have added a macro head for my tripod. Check out my set up with two remote triggered flashes (propped over my tank lid), tripod, macro head, camera, macro lens, and extension tubes!

 

Figure 1: Bad case of GAS (gear acquisition syndrome)

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I've had to reposition some of my marimo balls and alder cones to allow for better composition and distance for my macro lens. The pieces that were too far back in my tank didn't allow for full magnification of the subjects.

 

Figure 2: The arrangement of pieces in my 10 gallon tank

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Using a tripod is a bit of a difficult thing, given that the shrimp are constantly moving. I found that by flipping over my marimo balls and repositioning my alder cones generated enough interest for them to check out the change and munch on some untouched biofilm. That made getting shots finely focused with the macro head much easier, as there is a knob you can turn to adjust focusing while the lens is at MFD (minimum focus distance, which allows a 1:1 magnification of the shrimp). Even then, it took a lot of patience to get some decent shots!

 

With my previous shots with the D600, I pushed my aperture up to F32 to F40 to try to get a greater depth of field. Looking back, such high apertures leads to diffraction coming in to soften up the images. Doing some research on www.dxomark.com, I found that for my lens and camera combination, my lens retains the most sharpness up to F16 to F22. So I tried to stay within those parameters, and allowed the macro head to do the fine tuning in getting the eyes of the shrimp in focus. Both my flashes were at 100% light output with a diffuser in front, as well as floating Salvinia getting in the way. I kept my shutter speed at the max possible with flashes (1/250th for me, it may vary for your camera make). Depending on the aperture used, I would use a different ISO to get the right exposure. F16 would usually be fine at ISO100, and F22 at ISO200 to ISO400. All the camera controls are on manual mode.

 

Here are some sample shots, along with an image at 100% crop, to show the amount of detail a D800E can generate!

 

Figure 3: BB on a cholla wood, and then cropped at 100% to the eyes

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Figure 4: An alder cone party with few BBs, pinto mischling, and BKK, then a 100% crop to the eyes

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Figure 6: A close up of a pinto mischling with both my extension tubes on to fill the frame, followed by a 100% crop of a tail portion

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All in all, I am super happy with the setup now. In time, I hope to vary the background colour and lighting, try to bring in more interesting structures, and start taking pictures of more interesting shrimp that the GTA Shrimp Society has. I'm attending a shrimp meet next Thursday, and hope to take pictures of fellow hobbyists' shrimps there. I'm hoping to pick up some Red KKs and pandas while I'm there! The pipe dream is to get lots of good images of high resolution, and perhaps start making calendars and posters to see if any hobbyists are interested in buying and enjoying them!

 

Here are some other images I thought turned out nicely... FYI, all my images are downsized to 25% of the original image to make it easier to upload. The originals are over 20 MB each (but has so much more detail)!

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Last but not least, I wanted to acknowledge the loss of another juvi, this time a shadow KK. I was pretty bummed by it passing away, as it had beautiful coloration! I noticed that it was walking around weakly, and it looked like it didn't molt off its tail section well...

 

Figure 7: Notice the greyish area of the tail, the shell didn't come off cleanly...

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The water parameters looked good though... GH is 5 and KH is 0. These things happen I suppose...

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As for the food update, the shrimp have enjoyed all the CSF foods I've had them try. The Hokkaido got lukewarm results, but they still ate it up at the end. I've also added GlasGarten Betaglucan to my lineup, hoping to let my shrimp "thrive, not just survive" (quoting DETAquarium here). Still no berries yet too... I'm starting to wonder if all 20 of my shrimp are in a male monastery!

 

Hopefully I'll have pictures of Red KKs and pandas in my next update!

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Awesome write up Kuro! Those macros are amazing. Thanks for providing a behind the scene photo too. Nice to see how it's done. I have the flashes, camera, extension tubes, but no macro lens. That's next on the purchase list.

Hope you have a berry or 5 soon!

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Awesome write-up Kurobom! Shots are amazing, can't wait to continue to see what comes down the pipeline!

 

 

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Thanks everyone for the kind and encouraging words! I will see how my experimentation goes with changing background lighting goes this week.

 

On 6/11/2016 at 10:27 PM, Densha said:

Awesome write up Kuro! Those macros are amazing. Thanks for providing a behind the scene photo too. Nice to see how it's done. I have the flashes, camera, extension tubes, but no macro lens. That's next on the purchase list.

Hope you have a berry or 5 soon!

 

Densha, something I've always wanted to try before going with a dedicated macro lens was a reverse mount set up. I've seen people get great results doing it with their kit 18-55mm lens or a 50mm F1.8 prime lens. Something that's like this (although the guy is using an expensive wide angle lens): http://www.robertotoole.com/2016/01/04/sigma-24mm-art-lens-reversed-for-macro/

 

I've also had reasonable results in the past using a dipoter like the Raynox DCR-250 (provides 2.5x magnification, there's also a DCR-150 with 1.5x magnification), which would fit over the front of most lenses (check the size of your filter). Coupling that with a lens that has a low MFD (minimum focus distance), you can get almost 1:1 magnification on your sensor. I had a DCR-250 on a Canon EF-S 55-250mm (IS and STM versions) with my T3i and 60D, and had some nice macro level shots. Something like this: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1220251

If I had the right lighting and a tripod, I'm sure that combination would get pics that would be very reasonable for small prints or web sharing. I went with the Raynox diopter since it had good reviews on image quality. I've also read that Canon's own diopter is excellent too (and would fit over other lenses that have the same filter thread size). Other cheaper third party ones may not provide as good of an image quality.

 

That being said, a dedicated macro with full AF and aperture control is something quite convenient to have. And if you get one with a long focal length (90mm and up), they double nicely as a portrait lens too.

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On 6/13/2016 at 6:41 AM, Kurobom said:

I've also had reasonable results in the past using a dipoter like the Raynox DCR-250 (provides 2.5x magnification, there's also a DCR-150 with 1.5x magnification), which would fit over the front of most lenses (check the size of your filter). Coupling that with a lens that has a low MFD (minimum focus distance), you can get almost 1:1 magnification on your sensor. I had a DCR-250 on a Canon EF-S 55-250mm (IS and STM versions) with my T3i and 60D, and had some nice macro level shots. Something like this: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1220251

If I had the right lighting and a tripod, I'm sure that combination would get pics that would be very reasonable for small prints or web sharing. I went with the Raynox diopter since it had good reviews on image quality. I've also read that Canon's own diopter is excellent too (and would fit over other lenses that have the same filter thread size). Other cheaper third party ones may not provide as good of an image quality.

 

That being said, a dedicated macro with full AF and aperture control is something quite convenient to have. And if you get one with a long focal length (90mm and up), they double nicely as a portrait lens too.

 

Thanks for that! I've never heard/used a diopter before. I plan on using a dedicated macro, possible the Canon 100mm f2.8 since it has great reviews, and like you suggested, could be used as a portrait lens too. The level in your detail in your 100% crop of the tail portion of that pinto mischling makes me crave a macro lens even more!

 

Do the shrimp react/flinch when you are using two flashes?

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1 hour ago, Densha said:

 

Thanks for that! I've never heard/used a diopter before. I plan on using a dedicated macro, possible the Canon 100mm f2.8 since it has great reviews, and like you suggested, could be used as a portrait lens too. The level in your detail in your 100% crop of the tail portion of that pinto mischling makes me crave a macro lens even more!

 

Do the shrimp react/flinch when you are using two flashes?

 

The shrimp have shown no ill effects to the flashes so far! Before you go for the Canon 100mm f2.8 (it is a great lens), check out dxomark to see how the Sigma and Tamron macro lenses perform on your camera. They are optically very good too I think. Try to see how the sharpness changes at narrower apertures, as they may have different profiles. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 6: Blueberries and The Cursed Rocks

There have been a few interesting developments and learning in the past few weeks. I finally got myself out to a shrimp meeting with my local Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Facebook group, and had a chance to meet a great bunch of guys. During the session, we Skype interviewed Max Wei (pretty famous award winning breeder) from Taiwan via Randy Lei (EbiLei) and got some pretty interesting insights about how Max approaches shrimp breeding. One of the take away ideas was how he changes water (up to 30%) quite frequently during the rain season, and feeds bloodworms almost every other day, to spur on breeding. Another was that he closely watches the growth of fine green algae and selectively removes brown diatoms and hair algae to allow the green algae to thrive. He found that tanks with this covering the glass tends to yield more shrimp and healthier shrimp. This information affirmed many of the experienced shrimp keepers at the meeting, as they did similar things too in terms of water changes, feeding bloodworms, and kept green algae on their tank walls. These things have helped them breed pretty well!

 

So I left the meeting with a few extra Blue Bolts (bought them from the host of the meeting, he has locally bred them) and a pack of frozen Hikari bloodworms. Out of the four, two we think are females. Hopefully this meant this may help in case I had an all male tank! I drip acclimated the new shrimp, and wasn't planning on doing a 15% water change until they got settled in for about a week. One of the females ended up not doing so well in the following days, looking like she was laboring around walking along the bottom of the tank.

 

Figure 1. Tested out an Olloclip adapter for the iPhone 4S on my unhappy BB girl :(

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So the change in tactic was to do the water change sooner to help give them all a cleaner environment. This was my first every real water change since April, as I was always afraid to do a poor job and nuke the tank, and the parameters were always in a good range! I've only ever done distilled water top ups. Having connected with many of the guys I met in the meeting online afterwards, many still said there are other things you can't measure in the test kits that will be worth getting out. So with that I did my first water change!

 

Figure 2. A slow drip of about 4L of remineralized water over 16 hours...

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A few days after the water change, I thought I saw all the shrimp behaving well, and even thought the unhappy BB female looked perkier. But I'd say about three days after, she looked weak again in the evening. The next morning, I saw one of my pinto mischlings nibbling on a suspicious looking piece of white fluffy meat. With no sign of the BB female around, I sent her a prayer and wished her the best in shrimp heaven...

 

Around this time, I was asking my GTA shrimp society members about shrimp-friendly rocks to be placed in the tank. I mentioned that I had two lava rocks from Hawaii that I had placed in before, and was planning on reintroducing them so I could stage some photos with them. It was at this time a member said it was a bad idea to take rocks from Hawaii, never ever! Curious, I did a quick Google search, and learned of the Curse of Pele, as well as other rules that said why you shouldn't take rocks from the islands. Not that I'm the superstitious type, but I did notice that many of my early shrimp deaths did occur on or near these rocks before they were removed from the early days of my tank. Also, as I was pondering reintroducing the rocks back in the tank, I got rear ended on the road. Superstition aside, I have a strong respect for the cultural beliefs and laws of others, so to pardon my ignorance, I looked up how to return the rocks to their rightful place, and sent them back. I felt so bad that I didn't know about this!

 

Figure 3. $8 to send these rocks home... small penance for my ignorance! I'm sorry Pele!

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Two days later (so about 5 days after the water change), I came home to find that one of my other BB had a clutch of eggs! Woohoo, the dry spell is over!

Was it the water change? Was it the return of the rocks? Who knows, eh?

 

Figure 4. Blue Berries!

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So all in all, things are looking like a bit of an upside. I also managed to sell off most of my Salvinia for a few dollars on Kijiji, and allowing all the extra light to reach the tank walls again is starting to spur on some green algae growth. There are brown diatoms too, so I will start to selectively scrub those off with my new magnetic scrubs. I also did a lot of reading on the feeding of bloodworms on this forum, and saw that it is a bit of a split in opinion on using them too. Some threads say they are what helped spur on breeding and berrying for them, and some others have had negative experiences with them since some are killed with a pesticide. Trusting the brand and wisdom of my local group members, I gave some to my shrimp tonight, and they seem to be enjoying them so far. I will try feeding them once a week (a fifth of a tablet for my 23 shrimp), and start water changing 15% every two weeks.

 

And what would an update be without any new photos, right? I just finished marking report cards, so I had some time to snap some portraits and swimming shots of my shrimp. I entered some in my Facebook group's photo competition, which will be judged by MK-Breed, so I hope they do well. Until the next update, enjoy!

 

Figure 6: Shrimp portraits

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Figure 7: Flying shrimp!

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Great update! Glad the "curse" has run its route, and you have a berried BB! Congratulations, and awesome pictures as always, good luck in the contest.

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Chapter 7: Shrimplets and Shrimp Friends

I've officially become a shrimp daddy over the last month! It turns out I don't have quite the male monastery I thought I had, as I've been able to identify the following berried females: two BBs, one tangerine tiger, two black pandas, one red panda, and one BKK.

 

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As my berried BBs were a bit later than expected (who else marks expected due dates for their shrimp babies on their calendar?), I paced around day by day, peering into my tank looking for signs of little life. Noticing when the females no longer had the eggs in their clutch, it took me a week to realize that such young shrimplets really are quite shy. They really don't start exploring the tank until about 5 days post-hatching. Even then, it is so easy for them to hide behind or below a single grain of ADA Amazonia, so it takes a real keen eye to spot them.

 

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I've had about 4 females hatch their eggs so far, but the survival rate of the shrimplets have been far from ideal. Still, from what I can see, I have two spotted head mischlings, three BBs, three tangerine tigers, and four panda shrimplets make it so far. They range from one to four weeks old now, and the ones that have made it are growing steadily. There were two almost-snow-white looking shrimplets that I thought were doing well, but I haven't seen them in almost a week now. It really does make me wonder how good shrimplet survival rates typically are for TBs! The tiger shrimplets are probably growing 30% faster as well from what I can tell...

 

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I've also heard that the first batch of babies from first time mothers aren't usually the best, as the quality of the eggs in their first go aren't the best. My first berried BB took about 2 weeks after hatching the shrimplets to get reberried, so I will try to see how her second brood does at the end of September! What sort of best practices have you all found helped boost shrimplet survival rate?

 

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Wanting to address the shrimplet survival rates (or lack thereof), I was rethinking my nutritional input for the shrimp and water remineralization. How can I ensure my females would be able to produce higher quality eggs? I read that proteins and fats are crucial for this from Breeders and Keepers. I was also wondering if the lack of certain trace minerals in my water (despite doing biweekly water changes with Salty Shrimp) was affecting how healthy my shrimp are, in terms of their egg quality, growth, shell thickness, and molting.

 

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On the nutritional side, I noticed that guys like Densha, DETAquarium, and others in my local shrimp group had good success even with their first round of shrimplets, and that they all fed Lowkeys foods. Having had the opportunity to chat with jumpsmasher a bit more via a local shrimp chat group, he really had me sold that Japanese foods just seem to have more "oomph" in terms of giving shrimp what they need. They've been doing it the longest, and really do have the most experience in raising ornamental shrimp after all. I read some more of jumpsmasher's posts on our forum, and was intrigued by the parallels between the food line from Benibachi compared to Lowkeys. I pulled the trigger on some Kale Tablets and Red Ambitious, and have made them part of my weekly "must feed" rotation. My shrimp really enjoy these foods, and they are usually consumed within minutes. Not to say they don't like my existing supply of foods from GlasGarten or CSF too. Those are on a looser rotation now around the Benibachi goods. I've noticed that shell thickness and coloration has improved since introducing them. I've returned to daily feeds (except for Fridays), but of smaller amounts, with the idea that the nutritional variety is on a constant uptake. To try to prevent any wild nitrate swings from the daily feeds (I only have a 10 gallon tank), I've included a Lowkeys zeolite ceramic slab to help lower nitrates. Having it sit in the tank for a week has lowered my nitrate levels from 5 ppm to about 2.5 ppm.

 

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I've had the good fortune to pick on the wisdom of Avie Grinberg, local shrimp expert extraordinaire in Toronto, one of the administrators for the GTA Shrimp Society, and owner of www.shrimptopia.ca. Again, noticing that a few of our Shrimp Spot members seem to have great success with MK-Breed remineralizers, I pulled the trigger on their Blue and Blood diamond line from him. I've been using it for my last few water changes, and have noticed the aforementioned improvement in coloration in my shrimp, especially my BBs and red TBs.

 

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In my reading about shrimp digestive systems, I also came across some information about how all types of shrimp (including ours) have strong chitinase (an enzyme that breaks down chitin) levels. This makes sense in that when they scavenge and come across another dead invertebrate, they would have to digest those remains successfully, and intake the chitin for their own shell development. In fact, when our shrimp molt, they actually lose the outer layer of their stomach, as it is also mostly made of chitin and is a part of their outer shell! One can imagine that if a shrimp had poor nutrition, say a lack of chitin in its diet, then its ability to molt and regenerate its outer shell and stomach would be compromised. This would not bode well for its survival... This is where having the Blood Diamond (which contains chitin), and the use of Benibachi's BeeMax (full of chitosan, an acetylated from of chitin), are beneficial to our shrimp. I'm currently using the Blood Diamond during water changes, and the BeeMax on the weeks I don't, to avoid having chitin overload in the tank. However, many people do use BeeMax on a weekly basis regardless. Hopefully this helps bring in the trace elements and minerals needed to really boost the health of my shrimp!

 

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I've also added an Ozako mineral rock (made from compacted sea mud), which have since broken down into many more smaller pieces, but I hope that it too will gradually dissolve and provide other beneficial minerals to my shrimp. The rubble would appear to provide decent hiding spots for my shrimplets too! Other water additives I've recently incorporated include Mosura Rich Water and TDS Up. According to Avie, a slightly lowish gH (around 4) and pH encourages breeding. The fulvic acid from the Rich Water also helps with oxygen exchange for the shrimp, as well has extend the life of the substrate's buffering. I certainly notice my shrimp being more active when I dash in some Rich Water powder! The TDS Up is used for my new water during water changes too. A TDS of 150-170 helps increase shell thickness. For my water changes, I use 4.7 L of distilled water, 1 mL of Blue Diamond (a gH of 4 and a TDS of 100), 2 mL of Blood Diamond (does not change gH at all), and 1 flat scoop of TDS Up (brings TDS from 100 to 150 once Blue Diamond has been added). I'll provide an update on how this regiment does after a few more water changes with this combination!

 

Avie has gorgeous shrimp, and he has a beautiful line of shadow mosura pandas from a German breeder. I couldn't help myself while I was at his place getting my MK-Breed and Mosura goodies, and picked out two for myself! Here's a recent paparazzi moment of one them after settling into my tank:

 

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Last but not least, some of you may have already seen my post about it, but I wrote an article about taking macro photos of shrimp for Photography Life (a pretty big Nikon and Photography blog site), and they actually decided to publish it! Here's the link to it: https://photographylife.com/aquarium-macro-photography-of-ornamental-shrimp

I sent Chris Lukhaup the link via Facebook messenger, and he actually responded and said "nice article"! He even accepted my friend request! I felt stoked for a good number of days after that... lol

 

I've also uploaded a large selection of my photos to https://steven-chan.smugmug.com as a gallery collection, so feel free to go check it out! I'm still mulling over whether or not to use the site as my main gallery, or if I should give it a custom domain name or not (any suggestions? haha...). I'm certainly not doing this for any sort of monetary reward! This is all first and foremost a hobby, and my genuine interest and joy in keeping, breeding, and photographing shrimp. The praise and encouragement from our community has really made this a fun thing to be a part of, so thank you to those who have been so kind!

 

I've recently acquired my dad's old 30 gallon breeder tank, made a visit to Angelfins for some supplies to get it started, but haven't had time to set it up yet. Depending on what pops out from my mixed tank, I'll see if there's something worth starting with for a breeding project. I feel like a farmer, in that I'm trying to pump my shrimp full of good nutrients, give them the best possible environment to grow in, and nosing in to see who could be paired with who for breeding. If only those shrimplets will survive a bit better! Until next time then!

 

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Thanks for the update Kurobom.  The details of your writings is really great.  You helped me start my day with more knowledge of shrimp physiology then I had yesterday.  I had no idea that shrimp molt part of their internal organs as well as external. 

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Awesome, just awesome! I can't say more, I am truly happy to see the progress you have made from Day 1 to now. You have absorbed so much knowledge and it truly shows. Shrimp look amazing and it is certainly nice to read the journey.

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