60L Daisy's Ricefish Tank

I have two thriving colonies: one is in a 5 gallon densely planted tank and the other in a 20 gallon densely planted community tank. Red neocaridina in the 5 gallon and orange in the 20 gallon. I add Bacter AE twice a week and Dennerle Shrimp King complete three times per week.

That's interesting, Matt. I too have had much better luck with amanos than with Neocaridina. Can't keep them alive more than a few months, and have never had them reproduce. Amanos, on the other hand, live dang near forever. Something in the water, I guess.

I think I misunderstood--I thought you were worried about your shrimp devouring your crypts. Should have read the thread more carefully.

WhistlingBadger said:

I thought you were worried about your shrimp devouring your crypts

Click to expand...

Cyanobacteria is already ahead of the game in that respect. That damm tank is full of it.

I just want one female shrimp to breed successfully that's all I want I've bred fish, snails, and even rhabdocoela but never shrimp!

I'm good at breeding cyanobacteria.

Hi

Love that new tank at the top o f the tread very creative

I've decided to leave this tank alone apart from small weekly WC's. Plant growth has been really really good so I don't want to disturb it. All the stems are doing really well even the Rotala Nanjenshan which was unexpected after it did so poorly in my 90L. I'm thinking of letting the stems get to a tall height before the first trim so any gaps can be filled if needed. As for stocking, I've lost 4 of the new shrimp sadly all seemed to be failed molts. The ricefish also saw the corpses as an easy meal. The 5 RCS that I introduced from the 90L seem to be doing very well. It seems that the more naturally coloured shrimp are doing much better, as the 4 that died were orange and red coloured. The Bolbitis in the center of the tank also seems to be a shrimp hub. They love it in there



In other news, I have some Ricefish fry currently in a 10L tank which is also home to spare plants and a growing Daphnia colony. I've been pulling any eggs that I see out of the 60L and dropping them into the fry tank. So far I've got 2 hatched fry and around 4 eggs that haven't gone fungal.

BABIES!

The tank is doing really really well. The only issues have been the algae on the Bolbitis and one or two shrimp deaths. Fish are very healthy and spawning daily allowing for the collection of eggs. I've added in some Hygrophila polysperma 'Rosanervig' as another background stem. The Bacopa caroliniana is looking like a failed plant sadly. There has been minimal growth and a lot of melting of older leaves. The Amplexicaulis on the other hand is thriving, almost as tall as the H.polysperma. The L.hippuridoides is doing much better than I'd thought it would do at this early stage. Quite a bit of melting on the lower parts of the stems so a trim and replant will be due soon. And the Rotala speaks for itself really.

I had a surprise the other week from one of my newer shrimp. EGGS!

Sadly this shrimp did dump the eggs. But it's a good sign that breeding is potentially possible in this tank.

Some great news on the fry tank. I'm now at 7 fry! Every few days new fish have been popping up which is great to see. I might become overrun with Daisy's however . The other day while performing some tank maintenance I cleaned the sponge off the internal filter and found 14 eggs scattered around it, all of which have been dumped in the fry tank. So the possibility of 21 fry is there!! I do expect at least 1/3 of those eggs to hatch. I only wanted 5 more to add to the current stocking not this many!!!


This is what I'm feeding the fry currently. I simply squeeze out a dirty aquarium sponge into a measuring jug of clean dechlorinated water and give it an hour to settle, then voila! Infusoria

A few snaps using my new macro lens






Stentors!

Sweet! What camera and lens are you using?
I am looking at getting a used Canon R10.

Camera : Nikon 3200D (2012 model)
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S Nikkor VR II DX Lens + 52MM 0.45x Wide Angle & Macro

+

I've heard good things about Canon's but have never owned one. That macro lens I have only cost me £10 and it's worth every penny for what I use my camera for.

Had to do some work on the driftwood today. It became detached from the cobble it was superglued to. So a small piece of slate with a stainless steel screw was used to weigh it down. It is still a bit buoyant but hopefully, within the following months it will become fully waterlogged. Some of the foreground area has changed too because of the driftwood changes (Buce & hardscape). It has actually given me more planting room for stems. I'll be looking at other stems to try from online stores. If nothing fits what I want I'll just fill in with trimmings.

It's been really great watching this tank grow and its unexpected surprises every other week. Recently I've trimmed the Rotala and replanted the trimmings along with the L.hippuridoides in an attempt to create a more bushy look when they grow in. I've been contemplating switching out the lighting on this tank. My LFS has just got in some Twinstar Light A-Line II's which look great and fit my budget. The only downside is that my current lighting runs very cheaply with it being a 10W 6500K LED flood light compared to the Twinstar lights.

In the end, I did add some new plants which I've had to quarantine due to them being treated with buprafenzin. I had them in a bucket with a bag of carbon and a single pest snail as a way to determine if it was safe to add to the tank. After 3 days the snail was still alive so I added them in today.
Rotala Macrandra & Cabomba Piauhyensis. The Cabomba is quite damaged so I've not planted them in the substrate just yet. I've weighted them down with some sponge and lead weights on top of the sponge filter so they are closer to the light.


Here are some pictures I took today


I found this one in the process of molting this morning. I was fearing the worst as I thought it may have had WROD but luckily after an hour, I found it had successfully molted with the eggs still intact somewhat.



Now onto the fry tank. What a week it's been with this little 10L tank . I might rename it to the cloning machine as it's a nonstop baby fish-making tank.

I've not done a full count of how many there are but the most I've counted is 14 at one time. The fish are fed crushed NT labs Micro crumb which they go mad for. I did transfer the two largest fry today into the 60L. It didn't go 100% to plan as the adults kept chasing them around the tank . So I had to set up a temporary breeder box, as I cant put them back in the fry tank as they have been chasing the smallest fry around too.. Just over 1cm in size which I thought would have been big enough to introduce them to the adults without issues.

This is their temporary home for a day or two. Depending if I can get a bigger breeder box as the width of this one is only 8-9cm.


Some more pictures from the fry tank. Stentors and a developing egg.

STENTORS! Of course! I had those in one of my tanks years ago and never did figure out what they were. Thanks for letting me check that mystery off my list.