GlassWalker
Member
As always, I'm trying to do too much at once.
Tank 125L Fluval Roma, moderately to heavily planted but overgrown, currently running around 4ml/day EasyCarbo although I'm cutting it down after comments in another thread about it having a negative effect on shrimp. Tank is infected with clado. I dose about half strength EI.
Stock: ~20 ember tetra, 4 male bristlenose (to be moved on), 1 unknown pleco or catfish, a load of dwarf ramshorn/pond/MTS. Debating also moving in ~8 copper harlequins and 3 amano shrimp from a tank I want to close.
The shrimp were an impulse buy while I was picking up what would become a marine tank. Seller had another big tank with hundreds of mixed red and black shrimp in it. After a bit of thought, I went with 8 blacks, after reading that reds were harder to keep. Well, I guess the genetics were well mixed in that tank as the babies I've seen since are a mix of reds and blacks.
Water hardness and TDS: Since I have fish I'm not brave enough to run at zero KH. Past measurements are in ball park of 1.5 to 2.0 dKH which gives me a comfortable buffer room. General hardness varies too, between 6 and 9 dGH. I know I need to get more precise at change water mixing, where I keep forgetting that adding EI later will also up GH and TDS quite significantly. Even with targeting change water to around TDS 100, after I add ferts later I'm typically running a TDS around 200+ in this tank. I did try adding the ferts to the change water so it was already inclusive, but that only works for one dose. I'm not doing water changes multiple times a week! Water is remineralised with a tiny bit of general remineralisation salt (either tropic marin or sera) to get some KH in, then the GH is bought up with salty shrimp GH+.
pH: I don't measure this but when adjusting the tank initially, the pH was typically in the ball park of 7.5 even with KH <2.0. I didn't then inject CO2, and this is something I'm thinking of adding this weekend. I have also put some alder cones and indian almond leaves in there which the shrimp love, but doesn't seem to make a significant impact to pH.
Nitrate: I know how test kits are loved around here, but due to the existing bioload of this tank, it is generally low.
Back to the CO2, which when added should help with the plants growing despite the reduced liquid carbon, and reducing the pH some too. I also currently operate an air powered sponge filter in this tank along with two canisters. Will the air filter conflict with adding CO2? While I'm adding CO2 I'm also helping to remove it too? In the past I had trouble with surface algae. I don't understand the mechanism, but the only thing that made a difference to it was running an air filter, and have left it on since. I could discontinue it if necessary.
And finally... the picture at the top is the best photo I've managed to get so far of the ones I originally bought. The babies haven't been in the best position for a photo. I just wanted to double check, these are black bee shrimps right? I'm not so good at telling them apart. My tank was started with 8 of these, and I believe the person I bought it from started his tank population with only 10. So things are likely to be very in-bred. Would it benefit if I source some from other places, purely to try and expand the gene pool a bit? I'm not too bothered about red or blacks, and for now I'm also not interested in getting the high grades.
