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!