mech's opae'ula thread

[Mech]

So i decided to make a topic for my videos and photos, my experiences and findings

Heres a quick vid of my 67litre tank, all busy eating!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwX6UIBHdDs

[mcdaney]

Wow they all look so red! Nice! How many are there?

[Mech]

i have roughly 250 - 300 in the large tank and around 50 in one of my smaller tanks. The plan is to move about 100 between the smaller tanks but one isn't maturing as quick as the other so i have not put any shrimp into that particular tank yet.

i have 1 x 67 litre (17 gallons?) tank and 2 x 30 litre (7 gallons?) cubes, slightly different salinitys in them all, the 1st cube is 1.010 and the other is 1.012.

[Mech]

its been around 2 days since i put some shrimp into one of my 30 litre cube tanks and they are still swimming around all over the place like when you first introduce them, strange... i tested the water and its fine any ideas?

[mcdaney]

Wow that's a lot of shrimps haha!

Hmm as for the shrimps swimming around, give them some more time? Might be they love your setup so much they're happy to swim around Maybe Mustafa might have a better answer by his experience hehe

[Mech]

id of expected them to be sat around eating by now like my other tank so its kind of strange, they are all very red and some you can see the green algae they have eaten inside of them so im kind of lost.

[Mech]

Heres a quick video comparing the 2 tanks, im not concerned but would like to know why they haven't settled down



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_RETY-9ZpE

[mcdaney]

Heres a quick video comparing the 2 tanks, im not concerned but would like to know why they haven't settled down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_RETY-9ZpE

Hmm are you using the heater? If so, is the water temperature the same for both small and big tank?

[Mech]

Yes it's about 22 degrees, they haven't lost their colour or started acting lethargic.

[mcdaney]

Yes it's about 22 degrees, they haven't lost their colour or started acting lethargic.

Could it be that although the temperature of the thermometer is both set at 22 degrees but the actual water temperature varies? Since a larger tank will lose heat faster than the smaller tank? Just shooting in the dark here haha! Some animals are more active in certain temperatures.

If everything else is similar then I don't know what else it could be
My water is just room temperature and I don't use a heater since there's no cold season here in Asia

[Mech]

i have the heaters set to 22, so when it picks up the temp it turns it off.. has its own thermostat. Here in the UK we are about to be in the frozen months which can drop to about -10 deg C so i have to use heaters in my house Some of the shrimp are on the rock eating now but only about 10% of them. i will keep an eye on them, im tempted to net them out and put them in my main tank.

[mcdaney]

Wow -10 degrees

I think they can tolerate a wide range of temperatures anyway haha! Just keep an eye on them.

[Mech]

im going to switch the LED lights off on the tank and see if there is any change after a few days, if not then i will switch the heater off and see if i get any results, whole time im testing water parameters too.

[Mech]

Well ive had the LED lights off all day and about half of them have settled down in one of my small tanks which is good.

also fed a small piece of shrimp pellet in my main tank and the shrimps started to come eat it! its the 3rd time ive tried to feed them and they were not bothered until now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBuMPlky15E


Edit: I left the piece of pellet in the tank for about 3 - 4 hours then removed it, they would of eaten the whole thing if I had left it but I don't want it in any longer.

[Mech]

Last night I went to check on tank #1 (the one with crazed swimming new shrimp) and 95% of them had settled to eat from the rock, so I put their light back on and put some window filter plastic on the lamp to reduce the light coming through by about 70% and added a vial or biodigest to aid the tank incase it's a water issue although I tested the water quality.

Will check back on them tonight when I'm home from work and see if there is any difference. I don't really want to reduce the light too much because of the lack of algae growth so I have different filter strengths to try.