AquaticShrimpNoob's Journal

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

I decided to right a journal so that I can document (at least) things that I have done and current things that I will be doing to my shrimp tank. This will be kind of my diary entirely about my shrimp tank. Honestly, this is for my own purposes only but feel free to browse, comment and/or ask questions.

 

My dream shrimp at first was blue bolt. However, after I learned the basics of shrimp keeping, my dream crumbled to pieces. So I decided to look for a different shrimp. I still preferred Caridina over Neocaridina. However, most Caridina are being kept in soft water. It was frustrating at the time until I decided to join this group. The first thing that I did was to browse the Marketplace. I got enchanted by OERBT. This was even more exiting because the OERBT are being kept in hard water. Without thinking twice, I immediately contacted @wyzazz. Unfortunately, wyzazz did not have some available at the time. After 7.5 weeks, I finally got them in my tank. The wait was well worthy. Fast forward in time (months), I got another batch from wyzazz to add to my remaining first batch. I really love my OERBT!!

 

 

I am a very big fan of rare and wild type shrimps. I am very fond of wild Caridinas because most of them do not crossbreed with other Caridinas. That said, I found it to be difficult to find another type of Caridina that thrives in hard water. Well, that was until I found out about Flip Aquatics. In their website, I found Caridina Babaulti sp. Zebra Stripped. Again, I did not have any second thought about ordering them. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I then subscribed to get notification when they are back in-stock. After 5 weeks, I finally got the notification. Well, Flip Aquatics have 30 days quarantine period for all their imports. So I had to wait 30 days. However, I still placed my order. After total of 10 weeks, I finally received my batch. Again, the long wait was well worthy.

 

During the 10 weeks waiting period, I was browsing the net to look for information about these shrimps. I found out that they are not as prolific compare to other dwarf shrimps. For a seller, this is not ideal because it takes lots of time, money and effort to produce a batch to sell. In short, this is negative net income. But for me, this is very ideal. I do not have to face the issue of over population in short period of time. Don't get me wrong. It would be nice to sell home bred shrimps that are bear fruit of my hard work and to get back some of my capital cost. But that is not the reason that I got into this hobby. Anyways, I found some journal papers about them. Long story short, it seems like I found the way to breed them faster than they normally do but still not comparable to regular Caridinas.

 

 

I was not going to get another shrimp type. After I gave up on Bloody Mary due to financial and personal circumstances, I decided to just focus on the shrimps that I have. As a shrimp keeper especially a beginner, you might understand my situation - I want more type of shrimps but I could not. However, you will never know when the opportunity strikes. Anyways, I got this opportunity to keep Caridina Rubropunctata (e.i. Leopard Tiger Shrimp). At first, I was not going to because of the circumstances that I mentioned. My decision of getting them went down even further after learning that they are being kept in soft water. But having them is like once-in-a-shrimp-keeping-lifetime. I was afraid that I will regret not getting them. So, I did my research. I talked to the breeder A LOT. I asked A LOT of questions. I even went to foreign websites and did A LOT of translations just to get info about this type of Caridina. I found out that they can be kept in hard water PLUS they don't crossbreed like Caridina Babaulti. The later can be assure by the breeder because these are being kept with other Caridina but never crossbred. Anyways, after sorting out A LOT of things, I was able to get a batch. I successfully slowly acclimated them to hard water. Lucky, I was able to use successfully my Chemistry and engineering knowledge and skills into my hobby. The question now is will they be able to thrive (e.i. breed) in hard water. I do observe them every single day since they enter my aquarium. So far, I do not see any problem. They are acting same way as my other shrimps in the tank. They are adapting pretty well. 

 

I hope to get more shrimps in the future when given the opportunity.

 

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

 

Sincerely,

AquaticShrimpNoob

[EverStuff]

NICE!! Keep us updated on how the shrimp do in harder water. I'd like to see how the baby survival rate and growth rates are. I'm going the opposite route with putting neos in caridina params so I can keep more colors with less tanks. 

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi EverStuff,

 

Sure. I would keep this journal updated. If by any chance you are interested, I can give you some tips on slow dripping process. Send me a PM.

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

I would like to share one of the on-going projects that I am working on. I am breeding Bacillus subtilis and Lactobacillus to produce biofilms, which came from Bacter AE. Just to be clear, I have no way of quantifying if these are the bacterias that are in my homemade solution. However, I do have proven that Bacter AE has bacteria in the powder by doing the "milk test" that can be perform to probiotic supplements at home. In addition to that, my solutions inside the soda bottles budged up - pressure releases when open. I will discuss more about these in my later post. For now, I will be just sharing results.

 

Anyways, I got good result as can be seen on the picture above. I have started feeding my shrimps these biofilms for a while now using an aquarium baster and they love these. Despite that, I believe that this has more room for improvement (e.i. I can get more biofilms out of my solution). Notice that not much biofilms have formed despite being aged for weeks. This is due to low ratio of surface area to volume along with bad surface texture. Therefore, I decided to investigate the use of bio bale.

 

Bio bale is simply a bio-media for filtration just like sponges and bio balls. I decided to use this bio-media because of its physical aspects. Anyways, the above picture shows bio bale inside my solution. I am expecting that bio films will start to form on the media in the next few weeks. I am hoping that I will be able to harvest more biofilms with this methodology. 

 

That's it for now. Please feel free to comment and/or ask questions.

 

Thanks,

AquaticShrimpNoob

[chan011]

curious to see how the bio bale works for you.

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Good news. After just three days, all the bottles were already pressurized. My house is sitting around 72F, which is fairly cold. Anyways, I had a douche move. I decided to replace half of the solution from each bottle. I changed my aquarium water. That said, I have a new broth for the solution. I did made new solution using the following:

 

1.) Half liter of my aquarium water

     a.) my water contains right/recommended dosage of Seachem Flourish for plant fertilizer.

     b.) at this point, the concentration in water will not be exact since the plants may have already used some of them.

     c.) we can speculate that the water has some reasonable trace amount of nitrate in it (my test says zero otherwise).

     d.) we can speculate that the water has some significant concentration of organic junk for carbon and nitrogen sources from decomposed food and organic matter.

2.) 1 tsp of table sugar

 

I mixed the solution. This time, I added one scoop of Bacter AE to each bottle. This is not really necessary. But to increase the growth rate, I decided to add more bacteria and food in the solution. I combined this solution to my old solution. After five days, the bottles are already pressurized. You can see the solution a bit yellowish/orange color compare to the second picture above. Also, you see in the attachment how much biofilm is in the solution, which is pretty impressive. In addition, you can see that the solution is alive - meaning that there are bacteria inside creating gas(ses). My hypothesis is that this is mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas. Carbon dioxide were produce when the environment was still closed to aerobe. Nitrogen gas starts to form when the environment depleted of oxygen and the environment gets closed to anaerobe. The video does not show, but the bubbles are forming on the bio bale. I have not observe this much bubbles before. That said, I can conclude that bio bale helps biofilm production.

 

I also changed my feeding process. After reading more papers, I realized that this solution would have lots of by-products that I definitely don't want in my tank like acetate and 2,3-butanediol. These will not decomposed unless a different type/strain of bacteria use them. I did an experiment using my old solution. I took the biofilms under the bottom of the container and transfer it to a different container (cleaned small coke bottle). After the biofilms settled down on the bottom of the container, I carefully removed the solution. I washed out the biofilms using RO water. This took time because the biofilms suspend on the water and need to settle down on the bottom. I removed the solution out. I did this again. After that, the solution must have been either free of these unwanted chemicals or at least diluted them. I fed them to my shrimps.

 

Even with these positive results, I don't believe that I have achieve my goal. I am a bit greedy indeed. I will wait for couple of weeks and see improvement.

 

[TwiLightLi]

How goes the great experiment?

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi there,

 

My apologies for late response. Unfortunately, someone throw away my solution sometime that week. I had to start all over again. This time, however, I did not use aquarium water. I instead used remineralized RO water. The water parameters is identical to my aquarium water. Here is my recipe:

 

1.) Half scoop of Bacter AE.

2.) 1/4 cup of white sugar.

3.) 2 liters of remineralized RO water (7.4 pH, 3 kH and 9 gH).

4.) 1 mL of Sachem Flourish.

 

I made two solutions. Now, they are pressurized like soda. I need to depressurized them once in a while. I believe that this is a must because the gases are forming inside the bottles. I have not tried feeding this to my shrimp yet. I believe that this set-up is pretty successful. Biofilm are forming on the surface of the bio-bale, which is amazing.

 

In this regard, I actually did something crazy. I made another bottle of this solution. I throw out 2 cups of solution and replace it with 2% fat milk. YES, milk. After couple of days, I created fermented solution. I have fed milk curds to my shrimps at least twice now with great feedback. Of course, I washed the curd twice with RO water. So, unknown junks soluble to water are gone. I have never seen dead shrimp. It also does not foul my water because the curds chunks were washed and sunk in the bottom of my tank (e.g. do not float around).

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

I believe that I have to do some updates. Bad news first. I still could not get my OERBT to breed. I do not know how many I still have left, but I won't be adding any more. I have raised my white flag on them long time ago. But I will still be mindful of them.

 

Now for some good news. My Caridina Babaulti sp. Zebra Stripped colony is growing very strong. Babies from different sizes and multiple berried females are everywhere. I am very happy and proud of them. That said, I won't be selling until I met my ultimate goal. I am happy to share my experience to anyone who wants to try them. PM me please.

 

Another good news. My first batch of Caridina Rubropunctata are all fully grown now. All of them seemed to survive in higher pH. They are all healthy (molting fine and no physical deformation or abnormal) and all have saddles. Unfortunately (could be fortunate), my first batch turned out to be all female. Therefore, I had to request for another batch that is all male. Fast forward, now one of the female is berried. I think that this is a good indication that they could definitely survive at high pH. For the record, this would be first. As I have mentioned, I have not found a single record online that indicated that someone has done it. I could be wrong on this claim. Anyways, I will be happy to help someone who wants to go through this (e.g. pH change or try Caridina Rubropunctata).

 

Thanks

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

I would like to give an update about my Caridina Rubropunctata that were acclimated in high pH. After my last update, most of the females became berried. This indication is a proof of the possibility for them to thrive in hard water. Reminder that I started working with them as juveniles. They grew and acclimated well as adults. Today, I saw this sub-juvenile, which indicates that the acclimation experiment is successful. We can conclude that Caridina Rubropunctata can thrive in hard water. Again, this might be the first case, at least, to be recorded. 

 

For my next experiment, I would like to try to work on zero-generation wild-type shrimp. This means wild-caught version of a shrimp type that is available already in the market. I will give an update on this. 

 

As usual, if you have any question, please let me know. 

 

Thanks,

AquaticShrimpNoob

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

One month has almost passed since my last post. I'd like to give few updates to my shrimp tank. 

 

Babaulti Zebras: They are breeding all right. Their breeding has slowed down but did not stop. I think that I have enough shrimps to sell (at most 2 packs of 10 each). But I would like to wait for few months. I may have 3 packs by then. We will see.

 

Leopard Tigers: It has been almost a month since I observed few baby leopard tiger shrimps in my tank. Now, these guys are everywhere (population explosion). I might be selling leopard tiger shrimps before the end of this year. Stay tune.

 

Few bad news. I tried to buy new types of shrimp to work with. Unfortunately, I encountered bad luck consecutively. For confidentiality, I will not revel the types of shrimps and tell the stories. So lets call them shrimp A and shrimp B. These shrimps came from different sellers. They both came with water with crazy high nitrate concentration. We are talking about >80 ppm. The color of each water was so dark red that I could not believed what I was seeing. Of course, I did a control for sanity check. For prospective buyers, here's a word of caution. PLEASE CHECK THE WATER PARAMETERS OF THE WATER THAT THE SHRIMPS COME IN. This might be one of the reasons why people observe shrimp death after introduction to their tank. It is not that their tank has the problem. It's just that the shrimps transit in such a messed up environment that the effects are irreversible and recoverable.

 

Thanks,

AquaticShrimpNoob

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

I forgot to mentioned on my previews updates that I did have new addition to my tank. I bought two types of Sulawesi shrimps: TYLOMELANIA SINABARTFELDI and TYLOMELANIA ZEMIS. Both are known to be two of the smallest types of Sulawesi snails available in the market. So far, I have not observed breeding yet. I do want to report that I am keeping them to temperature as low as 69F. No death. I have been keeping my chocolate rabbit snails in this tank and they have spawned few snails. They can thrive in this temperature. Good news to people who want to keep rabbit snails in temperatures lower than 80F. However, I do not recommend to go lower than 69F. I did my research on these snails before trying this. Do your homework and not take any risk.

 

I have been observing that TYLOMELANIA SINABARTFELDI likes to stay near water flow. I am not surprise since they are originally from Larona River. This might be the reason why they can tolerate low temperature. Sometimes I see at least one of them partially immersed on the water (just part of its shell that is off the water). They love the algae and biofilm that are growing on the sides of my tank. They don't eat any plants in my tank. They do don't compete with shrimps when it comes to feeding. When they get bored, they go down to the substrate and browse around. Sometimes they burrow themselves. 

 

These snails are very cool and very unique. I hope that they thrive so I can share them to you.

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

For reference, here is the list of plants that are thriving in my shrimp tank:

 

Fissidens Splachnobryoides

Cameroon Moss

Hookeriaceae Moss

Distichphyllum Maibarae

Riccia Fluitans

Mini Bucephalandra (unknown sp.)

Monte Carlo

Hydrocotyle Tripartita

Marsilea Crenate

Anubias Nana Petite

Anubias Nana 

Anubias Coffeefolia

Anubias Nana Pinto

Java Fern

 

None of these has been targeted by my Sulawesi snails.

[AquaticShrimpNoob]

Hi Everyone,

 

It's been at most 2 months now since I gave an update. There were few changes in the shrimp tank and few addition. One major change was that I upgraded my filtration system. I have been having problems with my filtration system before. I have to engineer my filtration system this time to run my pump and chiller efficiently and get sufficient filtration and flow in my tank. It was a success. At the same time, I was able to make it so that I save so much space. 

 

I removed my Riccia Fluitans. To be honest, my shrimps like this plant. But I had to remove it. It is a fast growing plant. You have to trim it every month at most. It is a messy process. It is a good plant. I just want to decrease my time cleaning my tank during maintenance. I removed my large cholla wood with monte carlo growing on it. It has been great. But the cholla wood is visibly thinning out. It is obviously deteriorating. I replaced it with driftwood instead. I got lucky that I found porous driftwood at one of my LFS. It looks like it used to be home for termites. I placed some of my Anubias Nana and my Anubias Coffeefolia. I hope that they start to attach to the wood by the end of the month. I rearranged my hanging plants so that front half of my tank is visible to me and the back half looks perfect space for baby to adult shrimps and snails. The front part has growing Monte Carlo and Marsilea Crenata. It's not good looking yet but I know it will be soon.

 

I may have to sell some portions of Distichphyllum Maibarae. I have two sets that are growing pretty well. At first, I thought that they will grow slow like Hookeriaceae Moss. Well, they are not fast growing like Riccia Fluitans. But they are definitely faster than Hookeriaceae Moss. I will also be getting Pagoda snails this week. Since I have sufficient water flow and oxygen/air injection, I think that they will thrive in my tank. I will give an update in the next month or so. 

 

Good News!!! It seems like I have enough Caridina Rubropunctata and Caridina Babaulti sp. Zebra Stripped to sell. But I will hold on this since we are in summer peak. I will sell some starting the beginning of fall season.

 

Thanks,

AquaticShrimpNoob