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. 

The populations in the red tank and the blues were also both starting to grow. Scott and I were talking about making the back empty bedroom into my office to do crafts, set up a couple more tanks. I was slowly finding a tank here, a hood there, another tank, a light, on Facebook and the thrift stores. It was all accumulating in the garage. The spare room needed a complete overhaul. It was my daughter's old room and a very..... Bright green... In order to hasten the hubster along in getting my room started I started taking over the kitchen, setting up more tanks on the kitchen table and the counter. I found a Fluval Chi at the thrift store for $10. I bought another 10g from Petco. I also discovered dirted tanks on the internet, and had to have them. I had a one gallon jar laying around and that was my first experiment in a Walstad Dirted Tank. 

I put in a couple ghost shrimp from the 36g, and some lower grade cherry culls and peewees.  Three weeks later I did the Fluval and the new 10g. 

Work started on the back bedroom FINALLY!! All the thumbtack holes filled, a new coat of paint, benches going up. 

And then disaster struck. Scott was away for the weekend and we had a power outage. The power went out early evening and was out for seven hours overnight. I thought the shrimp would be fine. They ship for up to a week sometimes in little bags with no water movement, and move happily into their new tanks with no problems. I gave the tops of all the tanks a good swish before I went to bed, to break up the water surface. Everyone was fine when I woke up. When I got home from work most of my shrimp were dead! I had one orange rili and three yellows left in that tank. 60% of the reds were dead, one black left alive. I had so many babies in there. All gone. The blues tank was the worst. I was having a population explosion finally. 90% of the adults and every one of the peewees, juvies, and sub adults were dead. I'd lit oil lamps the night before. I had to refill a couple from the last time I'd used them. I had lamp oil on my hands. The blues tanks was the first one I'd swished. I was devastated. I thought I was really starting to get a hang of shrimp keeping and doing everything right.  

I did a massive water change on all three shrimp tanks, hoping I didn't kill the last of the survivors. The Fluvial, dirted 10g, and the 36g were all safe. Either no shrimp yet, or I hadn't gotten my stupid hands in the tank. I called my husband just gutted. It was such a stupid stupid mistake. I wanted to give up and give away all the tanks, the shrimp, all of it. He didn't let me. 

I didn't know it, but knowing passionate and interested in shrimp I'd become, Scott was researching RO systems. He knew I could only stick with neos and not get into caridinas unless I had an ro. He encouraged me to get a few more 10g's at Petco's next dollar a gallon sale, and bid on more shrimp auctions. I won a few for blue dreams, and lime green from people I knew and loved the looks of their shrimp. While at Lowes for more supplies for the shrimp room, he bought me a shelving rack! 

The lime greens didn't look very green. More like a paler golden back with a much lighter colored stripe, but they were having much greener babies. 

The couple blue survivors went into the Fluval with the new blue dreams I won.