Ch3fb0yrdee

Hello Fellow Hobbyists! I have a couple of things for sale! Firstly, I have a couple of shrimp packages available for sale. PRL Package - 10+1 PRL for $110 + Actual Shipping Cost (1 Pkg available) **Note** These are NOT my Japanese Red Bees. These are PRL that is a hybrid of my original XIN/Feather PRL (from speedie) and Nishiki PRL. These shrimps have been selectively bred for over 3 years and are my work in progress project and a labor of love (along with my JRB project). Japanese Zebra Black Pintos - $25 + Actual Shipping Cost These are sourced and bred from my original trip to Japan. If I’m not mistaken, Japanese Pintos and German Pintos comes from the same source. These are all of Japanese lineage but bred by me in the good ‘ol USA. Mischlings - $3/Each + Actual Shipping Cost / Minimum Order: 10 Just good ‘ol regular mischlings… nothing you haven’t already seen. These will be a mix of black/red colored crystals with a few blondes in the mix. Crystal Red Shrimps - $3/Each + Actual Shipping Cost / Minimum Order: 10 Crystals are of good grade. I don’t really focus on patterns so they’ll be a mix of S-SS but they will definitely have better than average whites and reds. Nothing special. Sorry no photos... too lazy… All shrimps are shipped inside insulation foam boxes. Cool packs are available and will be included per request. DOA Disclaimer/Guarantee: * Packaged must be received on first attempt. ** Shrimp package must be physically received within 2 hours of delivery confirmation w/ clear photo of shrimps in original packaging & untampered. *** I am not responsible for USPS delays, mishandlings, and negligence. Lastly, I have plants for sale.. Flame Moss - $10/GB Peacock Moss - $10/GB Mini Pellia - $25 / 3x3 portion Mini Fissidens - $40 Grown on Lava rocks. Size is generous and moss is fluffy and healthy Fissidens Geppi - $20 / 2x2 portion As always, my plants are algae and snail free. I don’t skimp on the plants or portions of plants I’m selling. Too lazy for photos but the mini pellia is a good size in case folks are wondering. Always healthy and happy plants! Shipping will be $6.80 for all plants and items not marked with free shipping or a shipping cost next to the unit cost. Please be mindful of your local weather. California temperatures have been moderately cool, but please still be mindful of the temperature. Shrimps must be received on first delivery attempt. Buy with confidence. Thank you!

Hello Fellow Hobbyists! I have a couple of things for sale! Firstly, I have a couple of shrimp packages available for sale. PRL Package – 10+1 PRL for $110 + Actual Shipping Cost (1 Pkg available) **Note** These are NOT my Japanese Red Bees. These are PRL that is a hybrid of my original XIN/Feather PRL (from speedie) and Nishiki PRL. These shrimps have been selectively bred for over 3 years and are my work in progress project and a labor of love (along with my JRB project). Japanese Zebra Black Pintos - - $25 + Actual Shipping Cost These are sourced and bred from my original trip to Japan. If I’m not mistaken, Japanese Pintos and German Pintos comes from the same source. These are all of Japanese lineage but bred by me in the good ‘ol USA. Just good ‘ol regular mischlings… nothing you haven’t already seen. These will be a mix of black/red colored crystals with a few blondes in the mix. Crystal Red Shrimps $3/Each + Actual Shipping Cost / Minimum Order: 10 Crystals are of good grade. I don’t really focus on patterns so they’ll be a mix of S-SS but they will definitely have better than average whites and reds. Nothing special. Sorry no photos... too lazy… All shrimps are shipped inside insulation foam boxes. Sorry no heat packs available. DOA Disclaimer/Guarantee: * Packaged must be received on first attempt. ** Shrimp package must be physically received within 2 hours of delivery confirmation w/ clear photo of shrimps in original packaging & untampered. *** I am not responsible for USPS delays, mishandlings, and negligence. Lastly, I have shrimp related plants for sale Flame Moss - $10/GB Peacock Moss - $10/GB Mini Pellia - $25 / 3x3 portion Mini Fissidens - $30 Grown on Lava rocks. Size is generous and moss is fluffy and healthy Fissidens Geppi - $20 / 2x2 portion As always, my plants are algae and snail free. I don’t skimp on the plants or portions of plants I’m selling. Too lazy for photos but the mini pellia is a good size in case folks are wondering. Always healthy and happy plants! Shipping will be $6.80 for all plants and items not marked with free shipping or a shipping cost next to the unit cost. Please be mindful of your local weather. California temperatures have been moderately cool, but please still be mindful of the temperature. Shrimps must be received on first delivery attempt. Buy with confidence. Thank you!

What's up brother. Just been keeping busy with life and adding tanks to further my Japanese Bee project. [emoji3]

Last I heard, YKK wasn't an original Taiwan Bee. Taiwan Bee, to me, is defined as Red Wines, Rudy Reds, Pandas, Blue Bolts, BKK, and probably a few others I forget off the top of my head. Generally speaking, green hills, and Blue Jelly are unstable and tend to revert back once they age or (personal experience) get healthier as the trait is an indicator of an unhealthy shrimp. Never have I seen an adult blue jelly or hulk. I don't even know what a YKK is so I won't claim mines can produce. Regardless, they're $3 a piece. Did you expect them to produce everything you want and need? Lol! ...Kidding... Thanks for the assistance. [emoji38]

You got it! Expanding the project with a few more tanks. Should help with the project. A mixture of reds and blacks. I sort of tossed my excess culled males into the mischling tank. Should throw out crazy stuff. Thanks for the assistance! [emoji1]

Hello Fellow Hobbyists! I have a couple of things for sale! Firstly, I have a couple of shrimp packages available for sale. PRL Package – 10+1 PRL for $110 + Actual Shipping Cost (1 Pkg available) **Note** These are NOT my Japanese Red Bees. These are PRL that is a hybrid of my original XIN/Feather PRL (from speedie) and Nishiki PRL. These shrimps have been selectively bred for over 3 years and are my work in progress project and a labor of love (along with my JRB project). Japanese Zebra Black Pintos - - $40 + Actual Shipping Cost These are sourced and bred from my original trip to Japan. If I’m not mistaken, Japanese Pintos and German Pintos comes from the same source. These are all of Japanese lineage but bred by me in the good ‘ol USA. Mischlings - $3/Each + Actual Shipping Cost / Minimum Order: 10 Just good ‘ol regular mischlings… nothing you haven’t already seen. These will be a mix of black/red colored crystals with a few blondes in the mix. Crystal Red Shrimps $3/Each + Actual Shipping Cost / Minimum Order: 10 Crystals are of good grade. I don’t really focus on patterns so they’ll be a mix of S-SS but they will definitely have better than average whites and reds. Nothing special. Sorry no photos... too lazy… All shrimps are shipped inside insulation foam boxes. Sorry no heat packs available. DOA Disclaimer/Guarantee: * Packaged must be received on first attempt. ** Shrimp package must be physically received within 2 hours of delivery confirmation w/ clear photo of shrimps in original packaging & untampered. *** I am not responsible for USPS delays, mishandlings, and negligence. Lastly, I have plants for sale Flame Moss - $10/GB Peacock Moss - $10/GB Mini Pellia - $25 As always, my plants are algae and snail free. I don’t skimp on the plants or portions of plants I’m selling. Too lazy for photos but the mini pellia is a good size in case folks are wondering. Always healthy and happy plants! Shipping will be $6.80 for all plants and items not marked with free shipping or a shipping cost next to the unit cost. Please be mindful of your local weather. California temperatures have been moderately cool, but please still be mindful of the temperature. Shrimps must be received on first delivery attempt. Buy with confidence. Thank you!

Loving the Hino Red Wines. Reminds me of my own. They're lovely, great stuff vinn.

A fun thing you CAN do is individualize your tanks for specific lineages and once the individual colony grows, you can cull males (those not on par with the best tank, but still better than your lesser tank) and have the lesser tank piggyback the cull males genetics. Really up to you, but that's what you can do. It's what I'm doing. [emoji41]

Like DET already mentioned, don’t bother mixing X grade PRL with lesser X grade PRL. Breeders takes years to perfect the look and the lineage of their shrimps. This can be undone with a single lesser shrimp mixing it’s inferior genetics. I’m speaking from experience, it’s not advisable to mix your $40 PRL with something lesser. It’s almost always better to just start a new tank for the new shrimps, selloff existing colony and upgrade, or work with your existing colony and improve upon it.

@Det Picked up a new hobby while I was away so learning about the new hobby has been an interesting journey. It’s been keeping me well distracted. In-between work and down time, I’ve been watching X-Files on Netflix (something I was too scared to watch as a child, very good show btw). @Maurice- Thanks! They’re much better if seen in person. The cull tank has a few that are lesser but overall pretty nice. On par with some PRL being sold, I’d say. I want to give it another go at trying to capture a truer photo of the Monsura JRB cull. He reminds me a lot of that really famous MK PRL that so many folks drool a while back. The grade of white on the cull is so high that he is reflecting most of the light from my flash. I’m unable to capture more details of his shell. I’m a bit rusty with my camera.

Long time no post. I'm alive, but inactive in the shrimping world as of late. Here are some photos of my culls inside a trial inert substrate test.

Buces are lovely. Due to over harvesting, most are extinct in the wild. But overall very nice plants. There's a lot of hype because it's the new "hotness" similar to the cryptocoryne crazed a while back. Until we find a new slow growing plant that's also suitable for shrimp tanks, buces seem to be the it plant. This one is a rare one I have. It's naturally red. Can't recall the name, but I know it's quite rare.

Amanos have voracious appetites. I've seen them snatch swimming shrimps and eat them. The bigger and badder females are even more notorious for this. They crave protein.

Long long long time ago, I wrote about how SD’s mineralizers will show values of +2dgH when using the API kits. This is true when you test the salts and other liquid mineralizers. When I test with Hanna Instruments, I get roughly 5.71 – 6.11dGH. I’m at work currently, but I can dig up the original post when I’m home. Anywhose, I’ve just learned to trust what the Hanna Instruments tests tells me. I’ve since switched over all my testing equipment to Hanna brand. Ratio is pretty straight forward when dosing the minerals. 1mL of AlfaΒ per 1gallon (3.78L of water if you want to be technical) of water will give you 6dGH. I don’t use the pumps when administering my dosages because I’m a bit OCD and need to know exactly what is going in my RODI but if memory serves, each single pump of is equal to ~2mL of solution. So, you’d need to perform 2 pumps of Alfa and Beta each when dosing 4gals of water. I used to include disposable pipettes when shipping out the orders with the Bianco products but have since stopped as I’ve ran out. Notice how I've removed the pump and replaced the Bianco mineralizers with caps. I always dose using a pipette because the pump can give +\- solution depending on last usage. Residual solution will throw off the total solution going into the rodi water. Not a big deal but again I'm OCD and it bothers me.

ADA Africana user here, I’ll shed some light on this particular substrate. Before salt and liquid mineralizers came to the scene, most shrimp keepers had to rely on guestimation when it came to figuring out how to buffer their parameters to the ideal ranges to keep bee shrimps. In the past, it was a hit or miss when it came to keeping bee shrimps. Either you live in an area where you tap was ideal which afforded you the miraculous luck of being able to keep and breed bee shrimps or you live in an that had liquid rock for tap water and had to figure out a way to buffer the water down if you wanted to keep bee shrimps. For many, the latter was the option available. Myself, I found that my tap water was so hard, I almost always killed my bee shrimps and only found luck keeping neos. At the time, the idea of using RODI remineralized with salts or liquid mineralizers wasn’t wide spread. Many folks bought ADA Amazonia and allowed the substrate to buffer their parameters. This is also why ADA Amazonia was so wildly popular among shrimp breeders, even to today. The downside of ADA Amazonia is that it takes a long time to cycle. Some folks started to test other ADA Brand of substrates and found that Africana doesn’t leech anything harmful during initial startup. Folks started to get on the Africana Bandwagon (myself included as I bought 3 bags of 9L) figuring they could start a tank, seed the shrimps, and have a thriving colony in no time. Around this time, folks were frantically searching for alternatives. This is more evident for more veteran breeders. Some may even recall the Akadama Double Line fiasco a while back. So the appeal for Africana was that it didn’t leach during initial startup and it had huge buffering capacity. It lasted much longer than Amazonia (in terms of buffering capacity) but the tradeoff was it lacked nutrients suitable to grow plants. The latter setback wasn’t too much of a problem for shrimpers as most kept very bare or sparsely planted tanks, mostly consisting of moss, ferns, or other very low requirement plants. They didn’t know that because of Africana’s ability to buffer the water down so low, it created a very acidic environment. In the past, TB were very fickle and were easily killed by everything and anything. Breeders from Taiwan told folks that TB bred in very acidic water (low 5’s). The problem is… at very acidic water, beneficial bacterial cannot colonize and grow. So, on the surface, you’ll have a tank that doesn’t leech anything detectable and buffers the water to ideal bee breeding ranges… Sounds ideal, right? Well… problem is, in a very acidic environment that doesn’t allow any beneficial bacteria to grow plus adding a bioload… is a formula for death. Waste started to build and created an unhealthy environmental. Without bacteria to breakdown the waste, shrimps started to die. Today, we have so many products that assist in creating the ideal parameters for shrimp keeping that we should no longer be worrying about finding the perfect substrate but rather finding a suitable substrate that fits the products we use. In this case, Africana is more suited to be used in combination with straight hard tap water. As a note, I’ve tested my tank with Africana and the pH at the time was around 5PH, which is very low. I didn’t feel comfortable adding shrimps to the tank until the tank was filled and cycled for 8months! The tank has been up since 2011 – 2012 and the grains are still perfect. Additionally, this tank is nearly bare. I’ve only recently added plants. For nearly the entirety of the tank’s life, it’s been bare with only a piece of DW. I keep my own PRL lineage in this tank (a mixture of Nishiki x Feather/Xin) and they’ve been doing fine. I don’t feed often and what I do feed is quickly removed after 1 hour. Again, I wouldn’t recommend folks using Africana. It’s too strong in its capacity to buffer and it’s an ugly yellow color. I’m currently trying to replicate SD’s tanks by keeping bees inside an inert substrate tank (eco-complete). For folks who knows my blogger, I’d suggest reading it and reading my future updates. If the project proves fruitful, my next plan is to convert all new tanks to an inert substrate.