Shrimp Journal

Yesterday was rearrange the shrimp room day!!I had new tanks to set up, I wanted to move the Fluval to the north bench, one of the tanks on that bench to the west bench, the two five gallons to the bottom shelf on the rack. I had three new tanks to set up.

Shrimp Journal

All the tanks are full. I set up the 29 gallon I've had sitting under the bench about half full of water and put one of the new large sponge filters I got last week in it. It's got a bunch of duckweed and salvinia floating across the top. It's still under the bench, but I'll use to to grow out plant clippings and extra plants. I plan on putting some of the neo culls out in the living room tank in there just to help keep the tank clean.

Shrimp Journal

The Wine Red Pintos are here! They got here Friday last week from Blue Crown Aquatics.

Shrimp Journal

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the H2O2 treatments is working on whatever was affecting my shrimp. I've done water changes on all the problem tanks, bringing down the TDS and GH to the minimum acceptable levels. The berried titibee is still berried and her eggs nice and tight, but her tank wasn't giving me any issues. I do have a mustard green berried in the yellows tank, and after weeks of waiting, two berried aura blues again.

Shrimp Journal

It's Christmas day. I've got my first berried shrimp in caridina tank four. That's the titibees/red safari culls/crs/cbs tank. It's one of the ttb's. I've seen the boys get the zoomies three times now, and this is the first berried female I've seen.

Shrimp Journal

They're here!!! I finally got the ghost bees I've been wanting for so long, and they look amazing in this tank against the black substrate.

Shrimp Journal

Water change day today.

Back before I got the RO unit I was refilling distilled water bottles at the grocery store, and I still use them at home. Fill from my RO unit one gallon at a time, add in the remineralizer, and slow drip into the tanks. I got mine from theshrimpfarm.com GH and GH + KH.

Shrimp journal

My jade/aura blue tank is giving me fits. I've had two berried aura blues, and one berried jade in the last few weeks drop their eggs. I was so excited to have those first berried aura blues. It's almost like what ever makes the eggs sticky on the underside of the female shrimp wasn't sticky enough. An egg or two could be seen dangling and in irritation she'd try and flick them off. Next thing you know, she's kicking off most of the eggs as others come loose. Here's a pic of it happening to a blue dream a while ago. You can see the eggs dangling underneath her. 

Shrimp Journal

Somewhere I've picked up muscles necrosis in my blue velvets tank. It's a bigger tank, lots of plants, rocks, driftwood, so it's hard to see all the shrimp all the time. There's plenty of places for them to hide, and when one dies, I can't always find it. I saw one with a very milky colored body the other night right up in the front of the tank and thought, "Oh crap." I started netting out all the shrimp I could see and separating them out. The ones I could see cloudy bodies, or suspected went into a floating breeder box in another tank. The ones that looked clear went into the hang on breeder on the velvets tank. One of the cloudy has already died  after 4 days. There were six left in the breeder box. I moved them into a floating breeder in the cobalt tank and so I could do a 75% water change in the velvets tank. It was time for a water change anyhow, and the tannins were building up pretty high again since it's a dirted tank.

Shrimp Journal 7

The blue dream tank is continuing to do amazing. I finally have everything set for how the shrimp like it. There has been a baby explosion. I have a handful of adults in there, lots of juvie sized shrimp that should be reaching breeding age soon, and I counted like 40 peewee and new borns. That's just what I can see without hitting the tank with a flashlight, looking into every nook and cranny, and what might be hiding in the sponges, behind rocks, and in the plant. I'm so happy with the way this tank is going.

Shrimp Journal 6

I was super excited to start with real caridina shrimp. The aura blues are a kind of an in between shrimp. Scott let me order some supplies on Amazon. I got a couple new lights, some airline connector valves, and my first crystal red and crystal black shrimp. I love these shrimp. My favorites are the ones with more white to red/black, two little white dots on the back of the carapace in the black/red. I only ordered five of each, so it's going to be a while before this colony starts doing anything. 

Shrimp Journal 5

The blue dreams in the fluval tank are doing amazing. They're breeding like rabbits, the babies are growing to juvies and soon some of them will be ready to start breeding themselves. 

Shrimp Journal 4

I got my RO unit. Ryan Curtis at TheShrimpFarm.com helped me pick out exactly what I needed. I got a booster pump. Scott got it mounted in the utility room for me. 

Shrimp Journal 3

I got an API master test kit, but they don't come with

the GH and KH test. I ordered one from Ebay, not realizing it was coming from the UK till after it shipped. In the meantime I tested and found my water is amazingly hard. Like 8+ hard. I had been having so much trouble with my shrimp from failed moults. They were trying to moult, couldn't and dying. I was getting babies in all the tanks though. Walmart to the rescue. I started buying gallons of distilled water and mixing it with my tap water to bring the PH down. I was starting to have babies living and growing. The yellows tank was doing the best. I also won an auction for more orange rili and they were so beautiful. One was berried and finally things were going the way they were supposed to. 

Shrimp Journal 2

The water cleared up. I ordered Matten filters for the 20 and the 10 gallons. Changed the rock with moss in the 20, and slowly started adding plants that were properly treated for insects and parasites this time. The fish left in the 36 were moved to the 10 gallon to help cycle it and I tore the whole 36g down. Cleaned the gravel and more hiking for pretty lava rocks.

Shrimp Journal

This has been such an up and down since I started. It all started with a beta in a jar. As long as I can remember when growing up, my Dad always had one or more fish tanks. I always have been drawn to the water and the things growing in it; aquatic insects, fish, plants. I just love being by the water. I've had fish tanks on and off all my adult life. One of the first things I wanted when we moved out here was another fish tank. We got a 36 gallon bow front. I've had an assortment of bettas living in glass vases, with plant cuttings growing out of the top.

Spring equals the start of free foods

Blossoms on the apricot tree next door 

Winter seemed to hold on longer this year than it did last year. Last year we had green green grass shooting up in the middle of February. That was really abnormally early for us. Every year though, I can count on April to be asparagus season. This stuff grows all over down the back roads where I live. These are actually growing in my backyard.

Minnesota and back in four days

 I'd like to say I'm making a long story short, but I had to suffer through it, so I thought I'd share the whole shitten mess with you guys. The people we went to go help move were great friends who lived next door to us. We helped them move two years ago, and took over the property next door. Life there hasn't been nice to them, and we went to help bring them home to Idaho. They drove the first trip here with the first load of stuff and made it here early last week. We were waiting for another friend to come up from Nevada, so Scott and I took off Thursday morning with the Uhaul trailer and Andrea (the friend being rescued) and Honey (from Nevada) were heading out the next morning.

We were taking turns driving and were going to jest drive straight through for the 24 hours to get there. Everything was going fine and I was sleeping.

Chokecherry jellies and blackberry jams

Just look at the size of these berries. I couldn't ask for better, especially since they were free. I just had to do the picking. I do however recommend, not wearing flip flops when trying to wedge your way into a very old blackberry bramble that has been left to grow unchecked for who knows how long, and is full of thorns.

Finally not a chicken failure

At least not a, letting a hen hatch out some eggs failure. It's only taken four years, but it finally worked.