It had to be done.....

Another decision has been made! My Dennerle Nano 60L is making way for another TMC Signature but this time a 45X60X30. This will give me 80L where I had 60L before but more importantly the shape is far more appropriate for shrimp. At the moment I am using the Dennerle for my blue Ramshorns and to get moss and biofilm growing on the wood which will be transferred to the new tank later this week.

The intention is that the new tank will become home to my PRLs when they arrive in a couple of weeks or so. I will be installing under gravel filtration which I have modified to take a JetLift and I will also be using an HMF Mobile. I reckon that should do the job. The substrate will be Red Bee Sand which happens to be as I am already using in the Dennerle. I will use a decent amount of the existing substrate to "seed" the new whilst the foam HMF is getting to work. It will be interesting to see how quickly the new tank stabilises.

I made an interesting discovery at the end of last week. Well, not really a discovery as I had read that the Oxydator, top left picture, would prevent or reduce hair algae. My Taiwan tank had suddenly started to develop algae and from my koi experience that is the last thing I wanted. Within 36 hours of popping the Oxydator in the tank the algae had disappeared. A disadvantage with the Mini Oxydator is that they do need topping up every 7 - 10 days. The advantage is that they are very discrete although, as you can see, they are hardly unattractive anyway.

Of my three new Scaper tanks, two have Red Bee Sand and one has Environment Aquasoil. I will provide my monitoring figures  in due course. All I can say at the moment is that the EA initially dropped the pH to 5.3 and is now running at 5.6. The tanks with RBS are running at 5.8 and 6.0.

 I couldn't resist popping in a few photographs of my Taiwan tank. Although I am not yet satisfied with the quality of photos I do reckon that some progress is being made.

I had originally thought that ring flash might be the answer but think that I may need to go for two conventional flash units. The lens is cracking being a Leica badged Macro on my Lumix GX7.

This little camera is a marvel. I have in the past used Canon DSLRs but found the bulk prevented me from using it regularly.

So, the TMC arrives Thursday and I will get that going and I am hoping that 15 Red Tigers and 15 Royal Blue Tigers will put in an appearance later this week.

My ever helpful and friendly supplier tells me that the RTs aren't of the quality he was hoping but have a lot of potential with selective breeding. I quite like that as a project.

Following my honeybee catastrophe I am holding an auction of all my equipment at home this coming weekend. Lots of equipment and 10 colonies to go so I hope that is a success. I will miss them though as beekeeping is fascinating and they have become part of the landscape. Just a pity my reaction to stings is a little extreme!

Breeding tanks nearly done!

Dennerle Scapers

This is a trio of Dennerle 50L Scapers. Flushed with success from successfully stocking one of my TMCs with F1s and another with Taiwans I decided I should get ahead of the game.

Everything crossed that I don't get a major setback!

My hope is that these will become my breeding tanks in due course. Taking my lessons learned each of the tanks has an HMF Mobile ProfiLine. Each filter came with two jet lifts but I couldn't get the water flow I wanted so I removed one of the lifts from each filter. Each filter also has two bags of Siporax in the central column.

Again Mont Morillonit powder was put on the base of the tank followed by a centimetre or so of substrate, then a sprinkling of Bacteria Bee3 and then the final covering of substrate. The left and right hand tanks have Red Bee Sand and the centre one has Environment Soil. It's cheaper than most but has a good pedigree so worth a go. It will also be interested to see how the parameters work out on a direct comparison.

Probably not the best location, under a window, but it faces north east and I can always close the curtains. You might also notice an Oxydator in the photo of the central tank. This is a clever little gadget which uses hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst to produce H2O and O2. The logic to me is that in trying to replicate natural conditions os much oxygen as possible is needed in the aquarium. Thanks to Keen Shrimp for this trial.

Original tank - Dennerle 60L

I couldn't find anywhere in the UK which had these tanks available so I ordered from Aquaristik in Germany as they had loads. All arrived quickly, safely and a little cheaper than the UK price even including delivery. A discovery of this set up is that I have finally found a genuinely quiet airpump made by Osaga. All my other pumps are by Tetra as they were reckoned to be quiet. All of these are now in sound deadening boxes as the buzz was getting on my nerves! This will probably reduce the working life of the pumps but at least I now just have the sound of water in what is, at least some of the time, a working environment.

I have decided that as my original Dennerle Nano 60L is devoid of livestock that I will take it apart and rebuild it with an undergravel and a foam filter.

Finally a cheapo ring flash arrived on Saturday so I am playing with that and a few of the first photos are below. I have tried keep the colour balance neutral so the shrimp are shown pretty much as they are in the flesh.

So to summarise 5 tanks now mature with F1's in one, Taiwans in the second, the third and fourth awaiting PRL and PBL, the original tank to be rebuilt, and the three new ones settling in.

...still alive

24 hours on and I am delighted to say that everyone is looking good. I kept a few neocaridinas when I first started and had terrible trouble. These little boys and girls are far livelier and just constantly grazing.

Perhaps it is just that I have learned, the hard way, how to keep stable water conditions.

I have also been trying to get to grips with macro photography and more particular how best to light a tank so that I can use a small aperture, for depth of field, and a reasonable shutter speed to stop the action. I really need to invest in a ring flash but today I have been improvising by using a very powerful flashlight with tissue paper over the lens so that I get some diffusion. Far from perfect but a bit of an improvement on previous efforts.


All photos were taken at f11 but i am yet to get the shutter speed I need and I really need to get down to f16 or thereabouts.

They're in!

I have to say, in my completely inexpert opinion there are some really nice Taiwans. Here's a little selection. Please excuse the very poor quality photographs. I really need to get lighting sorted, and learn how to use the camera!

Likewise the F1s

Taiwans acclimatising

An Exciting Day at Shrimp HQ - a.k.a. My Office

Delivery by 1300 it said on the email from Keen Shrimp. I know what I've ordered but Alan has perhaps got other ideas. I am expected a couple of dozen F1s, together with KKs, Wine Reds. I've done my water changes this morning, about 12% on each tank, checked the TDS and Nitrate (149 and 145 on the recipient tanks with ZERO nitrate, yipee) and got my slow drip siphoning things ready.

Come on Mr Postman!

It must be Christmas, the nice man from DPD has just delivered the Mobiler HMF Reaktor ProfiLines for my new tanks. They certainly look up to the job. I may yet also put an undergravel in a couple of the tanks. The taller one will go in my Dennerle 60L the next time I change the substrate.

So my new shrimp have arrived and are now getting the drip treatment. The set up does look rather Heath Robinson but it works. I have little clamps on the siphon airline to give me a drip rate of about 1.5 drips per second. You can also just put a knot in the line and tighten it to adjust.

I haven't yet had a chance to properly see the new arrivals as I wanted to make the transfer as stress free as possible. After al,l they have probably been banged around quite a lot. I will hopefully get some photographs later as there are some specials.

Alan asked me to take some moss photographs as he is keen to see how it's all doing. Unfortunately i have yet to sort the lighting and it is impossible to get any kind of depth of field.

Just out of interest here's a photo of a little bit of moss and one of the snails. If anyone had asked me a couple of months ago what I thought of snails my answer probably would not have been repeatable!

And so it begins!

Dennerle 60L

It's May 2014 and I've just bought a Dennerle Nano 60L. If you have read the "Why" you will know how I got to Stage 1. I have all the kit. An Eheim internal power filter, Dennerle substrate, lots of plants, bits of wood and so on.

All set up in my study and left to run. My water test kit is one of those strip things which looks as if it will do everything I need. We have plenty of rainwater so I use that rather than tap H2O. Smart thinking I reckon.

After a couple of weeks i am running out of patience and pop down to my local emporium and buy 12 Cherry shrimp, they're easy I'm told. As I used to keep tropicals and koi I follow the same procedure I always have and floated the poly bag in the tank and casually added a bit of aquarium water every few minutes. After half an hour of messing around I decided it was time to tip them in to the Dennerle. Over the next week those that weren't sucked in to the filter die.

A major lesson learned I researched on the web and dismantled the tank. This time I used Oliver Knott substrate as that was all I could get locally and put everything back together again. It was about this time that I spoke to Dane Frampton and learned more in 10 minutes than I had in several days research.

Following the old mantra, if a job is worth doing well etc., I ordered Ebi Gold substrate, Bee Shrimp GH+, Mont Morillonit powder, Bacteria Bee 3 and a proper test kit. Also on the list was a TDS meter, I'd now learned a little bit about the relevance of total dissolved solids. This was all also on the basis that I wanted to head towards a pH of 6-6-6 for CRS, Taiwans etc.

The rainwater I had been using was run off from a stable and as that was due to be re-roofed after storm damage I also bought a reverse osmosis unit rather than risk contaminated water. This was all working on the basis that if I controlled everything which is controllable i would stand a much better chance of success.

I felt pretty confident that i was now heading in the right direction. The MM powder was sprinkled on the bottom of the aquarium followed by a cm of substrate, then a sprinkling of B3 and finally a good depth of substrate.

Oh dear, the old patience was running low and a couple of weeks later I could not resist the temptation of introducing some livestock. This time a dozen Sakura were bought. This time they were carefully transferred in to a glass container and tank water was left dripping in for 2 or 3 hours until their macro environment was 7 or 8 times the original water volume. And in they went.

The following morning, with some trepidation, I had a peep and they were still alive! A couple of weeks after that I was again chatting to Dane and he offered to send me some reject PRL to double check that everything was ok. The danger being that there could be something in the tank, perhaps from plants, which might cause a problem.

The PRLs were fine although they are now in my new tanks as the photograph! But I'm getting too far ahead.

Flushed with success, I was really getting in to this shrimp thing and ordered four TMC Signature tanks. The Dennerle was and is fine but cubes are really too tall for shrimp and do not give a great surface area to volume ratio. The TMCs are 45cmX45cmX30cm tall and are therefore much better suited and still notionally 60L.

The interesting thing is that whilst the TMCs are OptiWhite glass there is not a huge difference in clarity.

It was about this time that I ordered some stuff from Keen Shrimp and got chatting to Alan McCormack. Ramshorn snails followed and an incredible collection of mosses. What Alan doesn't know about shrimpiness and mosses probably isn't worth knowing.

The 2 pairs of TMCs installed and running nicely. We're now getting pretty up to date with proceedings. The original Frampton reject PRLs are in the new tanks and this Thursday I have a delivery of Taiwans and F1s from Alan.

Oh yes, one final thing, I've ordered 3 Dennerle Scapers! Did someone say that this is an obsession? Dane, Alan it's your damn fault!

I nearly forgot to mention, the PRLs and PBLs should be with me late July!