BigWater

Now I am kind of a newbie when it comes to the use of RO water. I know that it may adjust your pH but I also assumed that it would lower the GH aswell because the minerals should be filtered out by the RO unit.

Now I filled up one of those reusable water jugs from Safeway and added it to my shrimp tank, obviously I added prime as a precautionary measure. I took out some water from the tank split the difference and 5050 tank water / RO. so far I have done this the last few days to not change things too fast. BUt the GH is not coming down.

So i decided to test the RO water and it is as hard as nails. Am I looking at this wrong or is the RO unit at Safeway not working very well?

I will read more on this but I was hoping that someone on here may have ran into a simialr issue and has a solution.

THanks

I'm pretty sure if you talk to the right people you can find reefers in and around Bonnyville/ Cold Lake. Look for the two guys standing outside the convience store in trench coats listening too a boom box. Kinda like Jay and silent Bob -roll-

2 year olds can lead to over feeding of fish. Every time Lauren walks past my yanks she God fish yums. Her way of telling me to feed

Weren't you banned on this site when your name was 55gallon????

You should have writen in you "what I've learned" section that clown puke comments get you banned.

:boxer:

No you should be fine, our platys clean up hair algea aswell.:thumbs:

To me it sounds like something is stuck in your in take hose. The pump is pushing out the same amount of water but not being able to recover enough from the intake to balance out the system.

If your gaskets were gone you would see a leak as small as a drip would do it, but your no seeing that so i would say you are clogged up.

Silver tips are aggresive in my experience and will keep chasing until they kill off your other fish one by one. Also, I have found that chinese or siamese algea eaters become aggresive as they get larger.

From what I've seen ehiem still can't touch the amount of media you can put into a FX5 and the self priming feature is worth having incase your power goes out.

Stopped in there today, they just got a new shipment of plants and some really nice ones too some really nice red ones that I havn't seen before, too bad my tank isn't bright enough.

But I must say you all should check them out...

Legally I don't think you can take rocks from crown land. If I'm not mistaken you can't take trees from crown land to plant in your yard. So taking a rock or 10 falls into the same category I think.

That being said there are some really nice rocks out there to be found . I think the law is more or less made to stop hordes of people from going out and taking everything and leaving nothing for nature.

Everything in moderation lol

Well I am new to the use of sponge filters. I like the idea of them as an additional biological filter as it's main role and mechanical as secondary. In all the tanks I have sponge filters in there is another mechanical source of filtration. The sponge filters I have currently in my shrimp tanks but am not sure at the frequency of cleaning them or would you clean them?

I ask" would you clean them" because the shrimp just continuously graze them picking up larger pieces of debris and the biological end of the filter should take care of the finer small debris?

So what do you other users think :smokey:

My Crystal Red experience....

I got my 6 Crystal Red's from Big Al's a few months ago. Initially, they were in my established 30g low tech with tetras, corydoras, cherry shrimp and amano shrimp. Filter was AquaClear 150 and I use 2 sponge inserts and 1 layer of bio rings. There was also an airstone. I had a gravel bottom, malaysian drift woods and different plants and mosses(not a planted tank by any means but a few). I do 45-50% water changes every week with de-chlor tap water and the shrimp were eating tetramin sinking pellets and any flake food that fell to the bottom. The tank temperature at that time was 79F and I keep lights on for about 10 hours. . No pH adjustments, no other special considerations.

I have moved them over to their own 5g tank a couple of weeks ago. The filter is just the small one that came with the tank. It has some measly looking biomedia which I plan to ramp up a bit with some bio rings and I also added a small sponge filter. I bought the Fluval black shrimp substrate, put in a few mosses, some ground cover, 1 plant and some drift wood. I also lowered the tank temp to 76F. I also changed their diet to Fluval shrimp pellets, Critter Crumbs and blanched zucchini. I feed them 2x per day in small amounts. So far they seem happy but initially, I was worried about the environment change and new substrate. This is a brand new set up. I did not use any biological filter or water or anything from the other tank. I just added Prime for de-chlorinator and Stability bacteria starter for 7 days.

Yes, the tank was uncycledwhen I added the shrimp. Don't rage on me, please....Apparently, with this special substrate, you don't need to cycle the tank. I'm still doing water testing just to make sure of coarse.

Everything is looking great so far. I just wanted to share this info to show what I'm doing and maybe it can help someone out. I think the main thing with these shrimp is that they like really clean water, temp obviously isn't as important and they eat everything I give them. I decided to get a bit more finicky with their food and temperature because I'm hoping to breed them. I was looking at them really closely the other day and I think they are all FEMALES, d-oh! LOL, well I guess I'll just have buy some more and wait and see what happens. As far as keeping them, they have been comparable to my amano and cherry shrimp as far as requirements goes.

Good luck fellow shrimpers!

Wow, thats a lot of great information, filtration filtration filtration. You have to remember these little guys originally live in streams in Japan, and asia. CRS need a little lower temps around 23- 25C to happy, although you can go cooler. There is tons of information on the net just start surfing and reading.:thumbs:

I often sit on the open end of a water change bucket. Hurts like heck but worth every minute.

Try flipping the bucket :smokey:

Yeah im from vancouver island aswell and elk lake is bad, but im not planning on introducing a new species here just trying to raise a local fish indoors not some alien species

my understanding is they do not want you to just dump something in any lake or pond you see fit. be like dumping our fish in a lake and having them take over elk lake on vancouver island is full of perch cuz some one put some in there and there is nothing to eat them.

You don't get it man, it's layed out quite clearly by one of the previous posts. It is illegal! There are no loop holes, you just can not do it. There has been so many problems in this province when it comes to our lakes, with illegal stockings it just shouldn't be tried.... Besides even though you say your not going to relocate fish, doesnt mean you won't. Why not look and get a gar or something it kinda looks like a pike, and has a nice toothy grin for yah

:beer:

You should check the alberta fishing regulations before doing so. I believe there is something in about game fish, I am not positive but I don't think you can legally do it. That being said years ago my brother and I caught a small burbot while at the lake. We brought it home, and after a month or some it went crazy and died. Probally an ammonia spike because we knew very little about what we were doing.

As for keeping walleye, good luck most lakes in alberta you can't keep them legally anymore, so keeping and catching a small one would be illegal, and the same goes for pike there are size restrictions.

Try a blanched piece of zuchini placed just before you turn off light when you wake up for work pull whats left out hopefully with your snail friends on it.

Well my wife just witnessed our assassin snail kill one of our cherry shrimp. Well I guess here is a warning to ours that may consider using them in a shrimp tank. THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!

KInda bummed out because we lost another one a month or som ago, but just thought it died. Hmmm makes us wonder if that was the first victim.

Not sure what BA's is selling them for but they go from that price to hundreds of dollars for a single CRS in SSSS+ grade. Not much of a market for the high end CRS here, very popular around the pacific rim.

BA's had them for 6.99 grading them is kinda wierd the whiter they are the more money but also the more fragile they are due to the inbreeding they require to reach there color along with different patterns that become prevailent along there backs and tail section.

Well, yesterday we just picked up some CRS from Big Al's . Pretty cool little guys. They had probally 50 or so left so if you want them they are there.

They are obviously not SSS but they are close to a B lol still really nice colours.

Thats great

Thanks Ron I never knew that about the molting and movement of the eggs, really cool stuff.:thumbs:

The females will develop the appearance of a saddle on her back ( green or yellow) the same as a cherry red shrimp female. This will happen just before she has eggs undernieth her abdomen. And also you can use it as an indicator that she will be dropping her eggs soon, because a saddle will appear days before this occurs.

This is the easiest way in my opinion to tell the sex of the shrimp. They will constantly breed so she will constantly have eggs or the saddle. Also, the females are usually brighter and bigger.

Hope this helps

Cool nice tanks :thumbs:

you may wanna move them to your2.5g tank and salvage your colony. They will move all over your tqnk when they have no predators. Right now I'm sorry to say they are scared I can only assume. lol

lol worth a try, these shrimps are kind of addicting lol, the variety of colors really adds to the fun of keeping them. Its just something different. Its kinda funny though you never do know which one you may come across next.

Bah wanna bring some to etown lol