My 2 liter Opae Ula project(s)!

[Mustafa]

Yeah...as Ken said, no food needed. There will be plenty of stuff in there for the snails to munch on for quite a while. I'd try throwing a little bit of food in there after about two months. See if the shrimp go for it. If they do, and they finish it within a day or so, you can probably start feeding them every month or 1.5 months until your shrimp population grows...or, unless you have an algae problem.

[hardware_failure]

Thanks for the replies Ken and Mustafa. Not much new to report, shrimp are still a bit reclusive but pretty much all are red now. The snails are fairly active. If all goes well I guess I won't have much to update from here on out.. unless.. I start on the other boxes!

[KenCotigirl]

Dont stop posting. Seeing how your tank is maturing is enjoyable.

Ken

[hardware_failure]

I guess I meant updates wouldnt be as interesting.

At any rate I do have an update, more of a question rather.

After the weekend, I have noticed some very strange (and abundant) whitish... detritus I think it is? Theres TONS of it.

It looks just like rice, just 100 times smaller. Its hard to see its detail with the naked eye (at least my eyes) I captured it as best as I could with my phone camera, but itty bitty minuature pieces of rice is pretty accurate for a description. As far as I can tell from staring at it for a few min, its not alive, at least not moving. Anyway, heres the pics:

Front of tank update. The chaeto is floating now because theres bubbles in it. :-/ I dont really like this look but I dont feel like disturbing the box ATM:


Some shrimp and at the bottom of substrate, the weird "stuff". Snail poop maybe?

[camaronqueseduerme]

I have no idea about your detritus issue but your tank looks great in those pictures, great job

[KenCotigirl]

I think that's shrimp poo. If you observe your shrimp closely you may notice a tube running the length of their tail. If you are patient enough a small cylinder (rice) of waste is produced. If you over feed your shrimp long pieces of waste as long as the shrimp remain attached.

Ken

[hardware_failure]

Yeah its def poo, I have seen it fall from shrimp (and I think snails too)

Small update: I have my first casualty (or a really, REALLY lazy snail)
I noticed that theres one snail thats always on the same rock, in the same spot. Its been like this for over a week. Upon close examination it looks like what happened is that this snail literally got stuck between a rock and a hard place, namely the edge of the box. It might have been my fault, could have happened when I moved the box a little. Anyway, when I look really close I can see that he is jammed in there really well. Kinda sad 'cause he (it, whatever) might have died very slowly.

Other than that the box seems to be doing okay, the shrimp are even more red and are always causally moving about looking for junk to eat. I think I need to top off soon. I noticed alot of salt crusting at the top of the lid. When I remove it, it just comes back. The hydrometer I have requires alot of water to be filled in it and I question its accuracy, so I have a refractometer on the way. Once it gets here I will make sure my salinity is okay and then top off.

Pics - Box front:


Poor stuck snail :

[camaronqueseduerme]

Your tank looks really beautiful, love the red stones. Sorry for the poor snail, but those guys reproduce so fast it will be replaced in no time

[hardware_failure]

Your tank looks really beautiful, love the red stones. Sorry for the poor snail, but those guys reproduce so fast it will be replaced in no time

Thanks for the complement. Your statement of them "reproducing so fast" is in line with a new update...

I have my first offspring! No, not new shrimp but new baby snails! _@/"

Like most people would say - this was bound to happen and didnt take anything special, but its still quite cool to me. The juveniles at this point are about 1/5th the size of the adults, so they must have been around for at least a few days now without me noticing them. I counted 6 in about 2-3 min of observation, so that means that there could be at least double this total. (hiding etc)

Here is something that Mustafa will appreciate - in the pics below and recent past in this thread, you can see there is a ton of poop in the substrate. I have seen a few of the shrimps poop, but I think at least 75% of it is snail poop. I have seen it fall from them many times while they are on the side of the box. The snails have multiplied and are thriving, and the shrimp seem to be doing very well....

So why is this so cool? Because other than the shrimp, snails, and chaeto (and the water they came in + a tiny bit of poop) I have added basically NOTHING to this box. All of the lava rocks and gravel were well washed. I had the box under 24/7 light with tap water for at least a week without the slightest anything growing. I eventually swapped the water out with brackish water via instant ocean, and added a few drops of water from a freshwater filter and a strand of java moss for a while, but thats it. There is obviously bio film and algae growing that is feeding the shrimp + snails. With all of this poop everywhere, Im sure there will be plenty of nutrients in the water to keep things growing. The light that I am using seems to be doing a great job at providing the box the energy that it needs.

One other update - I received my refractometer, calibrated it with distilled water, and to my shock my salinity was only reading at 1.011! According to my big clunky hydrometer it was supposedly at 1.018ish last reading. Im throwing that piece of junk in the garbage. I did a top off with some 1.025 water (very slooowly over the course of about 8 hrs, dripping it in with a pipette) and now the box reads at 1.013. I think in the next month or 2 I will try to slowly get it as close as I can to 1.017ish.

Pics:

Tank + refractometer


Juvenile snails. Its kinda hard to see how small they are without a comparison (theres one below) but one thing that stands out is that they have no algae on their shells like the ones that I received from Mustafa.





Here you can make a comparison. There are 2 baby snails in the foreground and an adult in the background. The adult actually looks smaller than it should since its near the back of the box.


Some adult snails waking up with the morning timer. Note the algae on their shells.


A (presumably) healthy red shrimp. This is the biggest one in the box.

[Mech]

nice photos, looks like a nice large opae ula

[JasonG3333]

Y
One other update - I received my refractometer, calibrated it with distilled water, and to my shock my salinity was only reading at 1.011! According to my big clunky hydrometer it was supposedly at 1.018ish last reading. Im throwing that piece of junk in the garbage. I did a top off with some 1.025 water (very slooowly over the course of about 8 hrs, dripping it in with a pipette) and now the box reads at 1.013. I think in the next month or 2 I will try to slowly get it as close as I can to 1.017ish.

Why would you want to make your tank 1.017 when that's out of the typical brackish range of 1.005 to 1.016? 1.017 won't necessarily harm the shrimp in any way, but if you want to be sure your tank is as ideal for the shrimp as possible, I would keep it within that range. Also, if your tank is reading 1.017 when it's fully topped off with water, as the water evaporates, the salinity is going to go even higher and more out of that range since the salt does NOT evaporate with the water. Some us, including myself, intentionally keep our salinity more on the LOWER end of the spectrum. I recall a post by KenCotigirl indicating that he keeps his salinity around 1.006 in a 10 gallon tank that went from 150 shrimp to over 500 within a few years. I believe he got that idea from somewhere while doing research on these guys. So that may indicate (but not necessarily) that lower salinities are more ideal and may lead to more reproduction. My tank is kept at around 1.010 (maybe a bit lower) when topped off, and so it probably gets no higher than 1.012 or so, after evaporating an inch or 2. And my tank is doing great in every regard, as far as I can tell.

Interesting about the refractometer / hydrometer discrepancy. A while back, I had an aquarium shop test my water with a refractometer, and then I tested that same removed water with my cheap little hydrometer, and the reading matched almost exactly. So, even though refractometers will provide an accurate, reliable reading every time, those little hydrometers can be fairly accurate as well.

[hardware_failure]

I thought that the SG of sea water was at least 1.028, and 1.017 would a good brackish number.

Im glad you replied. I will keep my box at 1.013 and at next top off I will probably siphon out a tiny bit of water and top off with distilled, and go back to 1.012 or 1.011.

Part of my problem with my hydrometer was it took so much of the box to just fill up. I should have gotten one of the small ones that floats. Being able to get a good reading from just a drop or 2 of water is a huge plus for me.

Thanks JasonG3333.

[Mustafa]

Just to confirm Jason's comment...leave the salinity the way it is. It's in the ideal range..whatever that means with such a wide range.

[hardware_failure]

Just a small update, I started my project just under 2 years ago, and everything is thriving. On at least my 4th set of larva. There are shrimp at all stages of life, its pretty darn cool. Im thinking of starting a 2nd box soon. Havent topped off or fed in close to 6 months. I went on a 6 week paternity leave with them out of sight out of mind. Came back and everything was fine, in fact I was a father twice over, more larva.
Thats all!

[Edwin]

That's an amazing set up! How many do you have already in there? They breeding constantly?