jumpsmasher

if i was to do it all over again this is the one i would go with http://www.724light.com/superbright-waterproof-led-strip-bar-393inch-5050-5630-1m-rigid-led-strip-12v-with-dc-connector-p-350:3c670e49535c3322a8e1881701554b70.html Pick the 5630 one - works about around $13 for a 1m strip which uses 15W. It is already in a waterprood housing with can be screwed into the underside of the plywood or if you are using wire shelves, attached with zip ties. I am not sure how they compared to a sunblaster T5HO unit but they use around 1/3 the electricity and like i said in my previous post, the 5630 look pretty powerful on paper. I plan on using two strips on my own DIY 48" strips for my racks so on paper that should be lots of light. Will see how it is in reality soon..

I am setting up a new rack for my shrimps and decided to finally make the jump to using a fish room air pump. I went with the Alita AL-15A in particular but Hi Blow have great reviews as well. As for lighting I am going to test out some LED strip (tape). On paper the most powerful version (5630) seems to be very bright. For looks and ease of installation I decided to order in some aluminium housing for them with a clear cover but you could always just stick them directly to the underside of the plywood. In hindsight, I would have save myself some time and money by buying premade strips (usually come in 1m lengths). It is a bit of a DIY venture though as you will need a power supply (figure out what your total load is and get a waterproof one), some wires / connectors and some wiring skills. Most of the stuff an be found on ebay and here http://www.724light.com/rigid-led-strip-bar-c-4.html Still waiting for my aluminium housing to come in but once they do I will start assembling my lights

Well that is good that you can still get it shipped from Amazon.com so always an option if people are willing to pay a bit more and wait. Wished I pulled the trigger on the Ray 2's I was eyeing last week. It was a great deal for $80 + GST. The same unit would cost me $111.80 USD (~ $128 CDN) shipped now which is around $44 more or ~ 52% more. But to be fair we will now pay the exact same price as our American counterparts, just have to pay a bit more for shipping.

looks like Finnex is no longer available in Canada period now as it is no longer listed on Amazon.ca now as well There is a thread about it on TPT http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=748322

Ya i am glad I had them but the bigger sizes would help in the bigger tanks. The UPS idea was suggested to me by a colleague this morning so I think I will be sizing one for fishroom after I get thru this. A large fishroom style airpump ( ~ 30w) might not last very long on a UPS so it might be a good idea to have a series of smaller ones around to use when this happens. Going to be a pain to carry the UPS up 16 flights of stairs though... So best to plan ahead and do it when the elevators are working.

I got them orgianlly from a shop in Germany but this next order will be my first order directly from them thru Shrimpkeepers Anonymous. We will be the offical distributors for them in Canada (shameless plug :p )

well like most ppl in Calgary's Downtown West community I came home late Saturday to find my neighbourhood in the dark power wise. My shrimp tanks have been fine for the most part as I have Oxydators in most of the tanks (http://www.oxydator.de/english/soechting_oxydators.html). The only tank that seems to have any issues is my tiger shrimp tank - they have a could of mini oxydators in them (but still might be undersized) and a smaller surface area (standard 33G) per volume compared to the other tanks (mostly 10G, 20G, 20G Long). I also did a water change just on sunday which in hindsight mist have not been a good idea if the existing water was already oxygen rich. Most of the Tiger shrimps where climbing up on the Poret foam divider and some of them were even out of the water! I will be installing an 1500VA UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) tonight after work to power the air pump to see if that helps - based on my calculations it should last around 40 hours or so of continuous use. So far i been pretty happy with the oxydators - this is the first real extended test for them but I will definitely be upgrading tot he large size ones in some of my bigger tanks when my new order comes in next week. One of the PRL cull tanks has around 300+ shrimps and so far they seems to be fine. Do any of you guys have a contingency plan for power outages?

All ADA stones are expensive but I heard good things about Manten. Let us know how it goes. Was thinking of using it for next setup as well. You can't go wrong with ADA substrates.. as long you let it cycle fully.

+1 I am a low maintenance guy when it comes to mosses (they grow too fast for me to keep up with pruning) so I prefer something like mini pellia (coral moss) myself but than again I am more of a minimalist when it comes to the decor in my shrimp tank. Just make sure all the rocks you use are 100% inert or else it will exhaust the buffering ability ofyour Aqua Soil (assuming that is what you are using) fairly quickly

AWESOMENESS! You should call just Ron's PRL Comeback tank : P So asian - but when it comes to shrimps that is a good thing :P the only thing you need now is those japanese "Vortice" spiral lights that all the PRL breeders love for some reason : ) Nishiki-Ebi's PRL tanks Will be interesting to see how low your pH get and how Frank's PRL do in them. For my first Taiwan been tank I used 5" of 50/50 Africana / Amazonia my ph got as low as 4.5 - 4.8. And while they survived just fine, they never really thrived. I think most of my tanks that used a Africana / Amazonia mixture are now around 5.2-5.8 now (even though I like to think they are around 6.0 - 6.4). Good to see that I am not the only one that sift my ADA but Starphire baffle? that a bit overkill :P And i thought you didn't really cared about how the Benibachi Zero plate looked :P But big congrats Ron - I am sure you are going to enjoy this very much as you been talking about getting some PRL since your first Ebi-Ken order! Take it from me, nothing is more satisfying than a tank full of PRL. I dosed my PRL cull tank last night with some breeding liquid and it was quite the sight seeing hundreds of PRL's dancing around the tank. I wished I filmed it as it will be another 2 weeks or so before i can dose it again. Btw, I lowered the water level on some of my tanks by 3-4 inches... pointing my straybar straight down seem to cut down the amount of evaporation. Shrimps seems to like it more but hard to tell. Have fun and enjoy the ride!

Too bad you're not in Calgary - I would trade it for some used ADA Aqua soil / Akadama. Would be prefect for my new Sulawesi setups

From my past postings you can probably tell that I am a shrimp guy although I am getting into snails more now as well my current breeding projects: PRL Crystal Red Shrimps (Nishiki-Ebi / MananaP bloodlines) Mosura CRS (SSS+) Taiwan Bee Shrimps (BKK / Panda / Red Wine / Red Panda / Blue Bolts) PBL Crystal Black Shrimps Golden Bee Shrimps Orange Eye Blue Tiger Shrimps Black Tiger Shrimps (Orange Eyes) Pumpkin Shrimps Painted Fire Red Cherry Shrimps Red Ramhorn snails Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails Orange Rabbit Snails Dark Orange Rabbit Snails Yellow Antenna Rabbit Snails Towuti White Spotted Rabbit Snails

I have a couple of LED strips that died on me recently - but both were the AC adapter as they both started "flashing" instead of staying on when they are turned on. I have a replacement AC adapter coming so will see if that fix it

you know, the only thing i measured after it was up and running was my pH which was at 7.2. I didn't measure anything else as I wanted to see if i could adapt my tiger shrimps to water seeing how it looks like they have adapted to warmer temperatures this summer. I do expect the substrate / Seiyu stone would change it a bit but thinking they might also cancel each other out - I believe Amano commented once that the Aquasoil would counter the effects of the Seiryu Stone. I did setup a tank many years ago with FSS when I first got the Seiryu Stone. I remineralized RO water to around 180 TDS and after 3 month the tank's TDS was around 250 or so but not sure how much of that was due to the Seiryu Stone. I just measure the TDS now and it is around 118ppm. Straight tap water is around 156 ppm so the substrate is lowering it a bit. pH is now at 7.5 and temperatures hit 27 C today. So far no deaths or sign of bacteria infection.

Ya there are some exciting thing coming down the pipe for LED lights. WiIl be interesting to see where they land in terms of pricing - the Ecoxotic E-Series has a nice combination of power and features but they are pricey http://www.ecoxotic.com/e-series-led.html If they come out at the same pricing as the current Ray II they would be a big hit; only wished they have a better mounting solution for hanging them. That being said, I ordered a couple 5m rolls of LED strips to test out for my new rack

Amazonia + Seiryu stone should result in a ph of around 6.8 - 7.2. I did a spot check the other day and it was sitting at 7.2 but that was with tap water and used Amazonia + FSS - should be lower if you use RODI and new aquasoil. This tank is more of a experiment of what i can get away with versus recreating the ideal parameters from scratch. I put in some of my blond OEBT the other day and so far i haven't seen any deaths. I believe Manten stone will be around 4-5x the price of Utah Dragonstone because it is ADA.

yes once the dust settles on my current batch of projects the next big thing will be a 75 Gal shrimp tank. I might need to bring in a crate worth of Manten Stone from ADA or Utah Dragonstone as I heard both are inert (as opposed to Seiryu stone), Did you get your PRL tank up and running yet? I should have all my new custom tanks for the new rack from Concept by the end of next week.

Thanks! You should be as to get seriyu stones at most ADA dealers like Pisces or angelfins. Still resisting the urge to plant it but we will see..

Wow that post was almost two years ago! Suffice to say it was one of the many lessons I learned over the years

Was my first time ever at an aquarium club meeting of any sorts last night as well and even though I was hiding in a corner for most of the night (much like I do on AA), it certainly looked like a fun bunch. There was definitely some great deals to be had at the auction. Looking forward to future meetings - might have to bring out some shrimps to the big auction or future meetings!

My Black Tiger Shrimps have always been one of the favourite species in my collection; they breed true unlike Orange Eye Blue Tiger (OEBT) shrimps and since mine has some Royal Blue Tiger genes in them most of them has a nice blue sheer when view against the light. Theory is they came about by selective breeding the black stripes to be thicker and thicker in regular tigers until eventually they cover the whole body and appear be be solid black. Royal Blue Tigers were the result of crossing back with OEBT to achieve the blue base color. From what I tell around most my offsprings look like Royal blue tigers but one they get older they shell get alot darker so generally don't consider Royal Blue tigers unless they stay more translucence blue. The downside of having royal blue genes is you do get the occasional black tiger with less than ideal black coverage and look like they are regular tiger stripes albeit it is harder to tell as they get older as they turn black but normal juvies generally look lighter in color compared to dark OEBT juvies as they have a nice translucence blue body. I hope one day to get a seperate, more pure strain of BTOE without the royal blue gene. Another reason why they are one of favourites is the females that i have left are some of oldest and largest dwarf shrimps in my collection. My "Big Mamma" as I like to call her is around 3.5-4cm and even my oldest male is 3+ cm. They are generally quite shy and too active to get a good shot but last night after I fed them, they were quite social and hung around in the open for a bit so I grabbed my camera and decided to try my hands at shooting some video. Enjoy the shrimp porn! Best viewed in fullscreen at 1080p : ) My "Big Mamma" A couple of the other younger females and some juvies - warning very long video :P forgive my choppy camera movement, didn't have a very good tripod and still figuring out how to focus quickly and edit videos (there was lots of sections where it went out of focus or out of frame than i should have removed) Hung

Thank Blink! I also like how it looks now as is as the rocks have a decent scale to them so I am not in a rush to get it planted. Next step for me to in some shrimps - a carpet full of shrimps and leaf litter! :p

yes i used the hagen one to dechlorinate - forgot the name but it is the standard one you can get everywhere. Also added some Bacter AE and Speed Sand to help get it going.

Today I decided redo my Mr. Aqua 12 gallon long. I had this tank running for a while but haven't really done anything with it lately. In its glory days it was covered with a nice rich carpet of HC but it has fallen into a neglected state as of late; the HC was overgrown and there was quite a bit of algae. I ripped out all the plants including the HC, removed all rocks and shove all the substrate over to one side so I could set up my standard UG pipe as an intake for my canister filter. Once that was done I went to town with the box of seiryu stones I had lying around and moved the substrate back over. Tank: Mr. Aqua 12G Long rimless (36" L x 8 1/4" D x 9 1/2" H) Substrate: ADA AS Amazonia Powder + Fluval Shrimp Substrate Filter: UG + Ehiem 2211 Lighting: Finnex FugeRay CO2: GLA Paintball CO2 w/ Atomizer Diffuser (not being used right now) Hardscape: Seiryu stones Plants: None I filled up the tank using ro water and added Bee Shrimp GH+ almost instinctively but than after thinking about what kind of tank i wanted, I decided to do something different from my usual shrimp tank set-ups and do a tap water shrimp tank so I drained it and refilled it with tap water. I also decided to keep the tank plants free including moss at least until I figure out what plants I wants but i am leaning keeping it as is with no plants and maybe add some leaf litter. This is the look I planning to do with a future 75G shrimp tank so in a way this would be my prototype for that one. As for livestock, i added some snails for now to clean up the tank a bit but once the tank stabilizes I plan on just throwing in a bit of everything I have in terms of shrimps and seeing how it goes.

Glad they have recovered - no more vacations for you!