Well, it's been ages since I've lurked the boards, figured I'd post a little "what's new"
Back in March I upgraded from a 10 to a 20g (regular) tank, I basically transfered everything into it. Eco Complete substrate, crypts, java fern and 6 neon tetra. I already had some ghost shrimp in there and I did my best at catching them. I drained most of the water and just scooped up the substrate and transfered it. After I planted everything back and filled it with water, two shrimp were swimming around! These guys were the unlucky two that I didn't see when everything was carried over, but sure enough survived to this day! Three days later I purchased a batch of 10 ghost shrimp, not intending to breed them or anything. However, ever since the migration, my plants absolutely exploded even though I didn't change anything else and the tank turned into a jungle. Lo and behold, couple weeks ago when I was doing a water change, I looked in the bucket to scoop up any snails that may have been sucked up and much to my surprise saw 3 teeny tiny ghost shrimp swimming around! I guess having that many plants, they had places to hide and stay out of sight. I scooped them up and put them back in the tank and immediately thought of my HOB filter that has no pre-filter. Sure enough, there were two poor ghosties that were swimming around in there frantically. So now I have about 6 juvies. It's funny, really, because when I was TRYING to breed them, I had absolutely no luck. Now that I just let nature take it's course, I have a bunch. I've heard all sorts of advice such as they need brackish, they need shallow water, they need perfectly still water with no current, etc. But, I guess sometimes you get lucky by just letting things go on their own.
I have since purchased a prefilter for my pump to prevent any babies from being sucked up, should the female have eggs fertilized. They seem to love it, the shrimp hang on top of it and pick detrius off.
I also picked up 9 cherry shrimp yesterday and I'm actually hoping they will also breed, time will tell.
Water here is on the high-pH side, 7.8 or more. Used to be at 8.4 when I lived outside city limits and I was on well water, now that I live in the city, it's around 7.8 to 8, total hardness of 250ppm (I'll have to test kH and gH, water is somewhat borderline needing a softner in the house)
Here is a complete report in pdf for those of you that are curious
http://www.lincoln.ne.gov/city/pwork...df/water08.pdf
I know some of you are about to frown when reading this, but I do dose my planted tank, I pretty much have to. I have found a perfect balance where both plants and inverts appear to be doing great (shrimp, snails, etc). I don't do CO2 injection, I actually just use the Flourish line: Excel, Potassium and sometimes Trace. I dose on the low-side.
I dose 2ml of Excel (source of CO2) every other day and 8ml at large water 50% water change.
I dose Potassium at a rate of 2ml at water change and then once in the middle of the week.
I dose Trace just because I bought the bottle and shouldn't have, 2ml once midweek
I tried several times dosing with Phosphorous but it always had disastrous results. I once managed to wipe out my ENTIRE invert population in the tank. Snails, shrimp, all dead. Since the plants don't seem to need it, I stopped fiddling with it altogether.
This has worked for me fine so far for a year and half now.
It's Friday and I'm a yappy mood so I thought I'd share
One thing of concern to me is that I was rushed into acclimating the RCS. I used the drip method for an hour just to be safe even though the store water parameters are pretty much spot on with mine. When it came time to introduce them however, I wasn't able to perfectly bring the bag water up to temp, so there was a 0.8 degrees F difference. I trust this won't cause serious issues? It's day two and no deaths yet, knock on wood. Shrimp seem to be as red as ever.
I have a good feeling about this because I came across them through pure luck. I was in the store for other things and I was looking over in one of their tanks for some snails, as I like them. Suddenly I spotted one, two, three cherries that at first I thought were bamboo shrimp fry. The owner NEVER gets them in stock and even placing a custom order both takes time and is rather spendy.
To be perfectly honest, the batch of ghosties were a "test" for the cherries. I got them to see if there were any deaths to ensure the new 20g was ready to house cherries. Since they're not only doing good, but breeding as well, figured it was time. And I got lucky at the store
Wish me luck in breeding them
