# My Fishless Cycle with Raw Shrimp



## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

I started my first fishless cycle with raw shrimp and thought it would be nice to make a journal.

I decided to go for this method because a hardware store near me doesn't sell pure ammonia. Most stores only sell ammonia with surfactants which is soap. I spent $1.25 + tax for five pieces of shrimp. They were weekly 50% off special :smile2:
Tank size: 8.8g
Substrate: Fluval Plant and Shrimp Stratum
Raw shrimp : One big headless shrimp in the shell


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

*Day 1 (12/16)*


It was the day when the substrate and plants were delivered. I rinsed the substrate a couple of times and dumped in the tank. Then I filled the water treated with Seachem Prime. The substrate made the water "inky" but it got better after four hours or so. I let the bagged plants floating in the tank for a few hours before planting.


pH in my tap water is 7.4. The substrate lowered it to 6.6
My tap water contains 0.25 ammonia.


My preschooler son was excited to see a picture of red cherry shrimp on the substrate bag. I assured that he would see a shrimp in the tank soon...just not live one which I didn't mention.


Squeezing from my cycled tank was added into the filter. It's a compact canister filter, so I could add enough squeezing. Then I tossed in a raw shrimp around 9pm. I finally got a shrimp tank! The other shrimp went to a freezer. I used a fishing line to tie the shrimp to the filter hose. The heater was set on 74. The water seemed getting cloudy again. But whitish this time.


I turned on the LED for a few hours for the plants.


The water was cloudier when I went to bed. It was not "inky" because I could see millions of particles were pushed around in the current.​


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

*Day 2 (12/17)*


The water was cloudier in the morning. It was even cloudier around the shrimp. My son was excited to see the "shrimp" in the tank...lol I don't think he expected to see dead shrimp. But it still made him excited.

A big piece of shrimp! It looked much cloudier in person.










I tested ammonia. It was up to 0.5
The shrimp was doing a good job...releasing ammonia slowly. I was afraid that shrimp might smell horribly. No smell so far. Just not yet.



I turned on the LED for a few hours, off for a few hours, and on for an another few hours for the plants.



After googling more, I decided to raise the temperature to 77. Benefitial bacteria colonize best at 82 - 84. Since I already have plants in the tank, I decided to go for 77. It was too late to know that fishless cycle was much easier without plants. I wouldn't have to worry about the light or boiling plants. Oh well.


The water looked a bit less cloudy at night.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You can actually raise your temp up to 85. Plants will thrive in anything pretty much, even 90 and above typically. And light just has to be on a minimum of 6 hours a day and you're good. You can have it on longer if you like, that's fine too.

I recommend putting the shrimp in a bag like the end of some pantyhose that you cut and then tied the shrimp in. It will dissolve and make a complete mess soon and it will be hard to clean. Putting it in a mesh bag of sorts will help upon removal.

Squeezing out water from your cycled tank will do nothing for your new tank. The bacteria (the ones we want anyway) do not reside in the water but in the media and on items. So, if you took part of the sponge or some piece of decor from the old tank and put it into the new tank, that will help tremendously.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

I forgot to upload...a close-up picture of the shrimp!












You can see the water is cloudier around it.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

lilnaugrim said:


> You can actually raise your temp up to 85. Plants will thrive in anything pretty much, even 90 and above typically. And light just has to be on a minimum of 6 hours a day and you're good. You can have it on longer if you like, that's fine too.
> 
> I recommend putting the shrimp in a bag like the end of some pantyhose that you cut and then tied the shrimp in. It will dissolve and make a complete mess soon and it will be hard to clean. Putting it in a mesh bag of sorts will help upon removal.
> 
> Squeezing out water from your cycled tank will do nothing for your new tank. The bacteria (the ones we want anyway) do not reside in the water but in the media and on items. So, if you took part of the sponge or some piece of decor from the old tank and put it into the new tank, that will help tremendously.


Hi lil, thank you for taking care of the mess in my thread 


At first I put the shrimp in a red pantyhose I bought at after Halloween sale years ago. Then I decided to remove because it might release something chemical in the water. The water already have Ammonia 4.0, Nitrite 0.5 and Nitrate20 today, so I removed the shrimp. Did I have to leave it in the water until it decayed?? I'm leaning toward to switch to using pellets as ammonia source.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

To successfully cycle the tank, ideally you want to keep ammonia below 5.0ppm if possible. That means, you should leave the shrimp in but do a water change to lower the ammonia. It will be some trial and error until you get down how much water to change. Pantyhose do not have other chemicals in them typically if it's the normal nude colored one, those are safe. Use a new one preferably versus old one that has been washed.

I don't particularly like using shrimp or decayed food as an ammonia source because you end up getting fungi in the tank which can lead to infections of Saprolengia in your fish. But if it's the only thing you have then you just have to work with it is all. There is no guarantee of infection, just more likely is all if fish is stressed out.

Will this be housing fish or something else in the end?

Usually if it's just a Betta fish tank, it's easier on the fish to cycle with the fish. I know it seems contradictory but if you use an ammonia source that gets up to 5.0ppm then you will have a huge bacteria colony. Bacteria grow and die with how much food they have. So if they have lots of food then they will have a big colony. Betta's only put out small amount of food for the bacteria which means, you will have many die off when you stop the cycling and add your Betta. Fish-Less cycling is good for if you have lots of fish to add right away. There will be lots of food to keep your bacteria happy. This is not to say that Fish-Less can't be done for a Betta, but I would keep your ammonia lower at around 3.0ppm, no higher than 4.0ppm ideally and you should be okay.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

Oh I see. I've been searching online and didn't know what to do with the shrimp and water change. Some people said they kept the shrimp until the end, others said they removed it. Some say no water change at all, others say do partial water change. That's why I thought I would use pellets after the shrimp.


Unfortunately, there is no ACE hardware near me  That's why I picked up the shrimp method. I'm going to google more to see if I can find pure ammonia somewhere else.


My goal is to have a shoal of nano fish in the tank; CPD or chili rasbora. I like Neons and they are OK with fish-in cycle. But they require a bigger tank  
I'd want to have heavily planted tank before getting any fish, so it will take some time. Thinking about this, I started thinking I'd better getting pure ammonia...


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

*Day 3 (12/18)*


I was not mistaken. The water is clear! The benefitical bacteria from the other tank was definitely colonizing.




Water test at 2pm. *The colors are a bit off. It's a new camera and I'm still figuring it out. 









Ammonia : 2.0
Nitrite : 0.25
Nitrate : 10


Cycling started!


pH was lowered to 6.4 because of the substrate.




Ludwigia Red is not doing well. I love this plants. This is the third time I've tried them. Algae problems destroyed them at last two attempts. If I lose them this time, I'll go for other red plants. Anyway, I decided to pull them and Rotala out of the substrate. Instead, I put plant weights on them and let them lay on it. Hope it can work.




I tested water again at 6:30pm.


Ammonia : between 2.0-4.0
Nitrite : 0.25
Nitrate : between 10-20


Is it only me who always have hard time seceding which levels these results are at? 




The water got crystal clear by 11:00pm.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

I haven't posted on this journal for a while. 


*I removed the shrimp* on 4th day (12/19). When we went out to see Christmas lights, we stopped by at ACE Hardware and bought pure Ammonia. Dollar Tree sell pure ammonia, but it is not pure but contains surfactant. That's what someone mentions in the reviews. 
Things were going well for the first 10 days or so. Then Nitrite went so high. It reached 5.0, probably more. At that point, I saw hair and thread algae growing in the tank and tried a 3 day black out. It weakened the plants but most of algae was gone.


I dosed ammonia pushed up to 3.0 on 12/30. 


*12/31* 
Ammonia 0.5 
Nitrite 5.0+ 
Nitrate 160


I thought something was wrong. What worried me was high Nitrite. It must have been higher than 5.0. I did some research online and found out it could be better to do some water change, so I did. The Nitrite in my tank was way too high. A few partial water change didn't do anything. I did almost 100% water change. It didn't do anything. Later that day, I did another 80% water change with 1/3 of deep substrate cleaning. It didn't change the reading much. The nitrite was built up so high and it concentrated into the substrate. It was 01/01.


It's 01/02 today. I did 50% water change again. Nitrite is still over 5.0. I inserted bio-rings from the cycled tank into the filter and added a bit of Ammonia to 0.5, just to feed bacteria. I had to discard some plants, so the tank looks simpler. 


*01/02*
Ammonia 0.5
Nitrite 5.0+
Temperature 80F

I'm going to a 50% water change tomorrow again to see if it can reduce Nitrite. To be honest, I have never thought fishless cycling this difficult. 

My betta got fin rot. Don't know why. The water parameters were perfect; Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 5.0. Maybe it's because he wanted stayed on the bottom after I got more plants in his tank?? I treated him with a 30 minutes Methylene blue bath for four days. It did not work. Now he is being treated with API Fungus Cure in a hospital tank. It seems fin rot is gone (hard to see in the greenish water) but he is biting fins. Oh well. I'll definitely go back to plakat next time I get a betta. My son and I got food poisoning (my fault!) and spent miserable New Years Eve and New Years Day. Sometimes life sucks :crying:


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

The 5.0 nitrate could be the problem. If I'm not mistaken, you want everything to be 0/0/0.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

No matter how many times I did water change, Nitrite would raise to 5.0+, so I decided let it be.


When the tank is cycled, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0 and there will be very high Nitrate that require water change. Nitrate never will be 0.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

So...as I stated above, I gave up to lower the Nitrite. It's just impossible. I did a 100% water change twice yesterday. From now on, I'd just add Ammonia 1 - 1.5 everyday to see how it goes. It's also time to stop wasting water.


What I've learned online;
1. pH should be 6.5 or up to cycle. Otherwise it will stall. pH in the 7's is best.
2. Bacteria eat KH. Don't let KH to be 0.
3. Nitrite 5.0+ can stall the cycle.
4. Ammonia can burn plants. Ammonia 1 is OK with cycling with plants.
5. Bacteria live in substrate, filter media and such. Water changes wouldn't disturb tank cycling unless they were touched/cleaned.
6. Seachem Excel kill bacteria unless they are fully colonized. 


I do have ammonia consuming bacteria. The Ammonia turns 0 next day. I read that there were two kinds of bacteria that consume ammonia. One is toxic one that raise Nitrite. The other is benefitial bacteria that turn Nitrite into Nitrate. The Toxic one is faster to grow. Thus the Nitrite spike. Once the benefitial bacteria grow and catch up, they will turn Nitrite 0. 


One very positive thing about water changes.
No more algae in my tank! It's so clean and I love it!


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## Hopefish (Feb 9, 2016)

Just read about the food poisoning. Been there, done that, got the postcard. No fun!!!


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## Hopefish (Feb 9, 2016)

Oh, I wanted to ask -- what kind of tank is it and where did you get it? I am going to be looking for one about that size. I've been scouting around and had no luck so far.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

It's a 8.8 gallon High Clarity Glass tank from Aquatop. Unfortunately, it seems they discontinued this line  I was looking for a bigger size in this line. All they have are more "unique" ones; high top tanks and wide and shallow ones. 


I know ADA makes beautiful tanks, but $$$$...


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

I found that the tank got biofilm this evening. When I skimmed the surface, white fluffs sank into the water. I adjusted the spray bar to gave more surface movement. Biofilm must mean dead bacteria...? I assume I'm not feeding enough ammonia. Dosing more ammonia means there will be more nitrite, so I won't for now.



The Nitrite is still 5.0+. Not sure about the Ammonia level because I finished the Ammonia tester. New one will be here by Friday or so. I'll just dose same amount of pure ammonia as I did last few days. Beauty of fishless cycling is I do not have to worry about harming fish.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

The Nitrite is still 5.0+, the Ammonia is below 0.25 in the evening.


Brazilian Pennywort is doing great in the tank. It has grown 8.5 inches in the past 4 weeks. This is truly the easiest plant I've ever had.
Hitchhiker pond snail babies are surviving. They are so tough. Pest snails and algae are the easiest to keep in aquariums for sure. 


I applied a black back screen on the tank. It wasn't easy. I failed my first attempt and had to threw away the screen. The second attempt went OK. Had my first attempt been successful, the rest of the screen was supposed to be on my Spec V though... If I ever start another tank, I will apply back screen when the tank is empty and dry!


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## BettaStarter24 (Mar 24, 2014)

Nitrates I believe are ok at 5 ppm. You want no Ammonia, and no Nitrites. you're going to have Nitrates as thats where the cycle stops. That's what water changes will do, the changes will remove most of the nitrates but you're going to have some. 5 ppm are okay.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

What I had is not NitrAte but 5+ ppm NitrIte. I know these two words are confusing...:wink3: The Nitrite 5+ ppm can stall the cycling.


Anyway, I did another 90% water change and did not dose ammonia today. I'll see if the Nitrite level stays lower tomorrow. If it stays under 5 ppm, the cycle process should resume and fasten up this time. Well, this is what I think (& hope)!


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## BettaStarter24 (Mar 24, 2014)

Yeah you don't want Nitrites. From what I recall with cycling you get the ammonia spike, then the nitrite spike and then ammonia and nitrites will go to 0 and Nitrates will be present.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

I'm hoping the cycling will resume soon and be done by the end of this month.


What amazes me is that nothing has killed the baby pond snails, even 160 ppm of Nitrate. Wish they come in rainbow colors so that they would make great and easiest aquarium pets for kids!


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## BettaStarter24 (Mar 24, 2014)

Pond snails can't be killed. I have an infestation in my 20g and trust me I've tried to get rid of them.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

Finally...FINALLY I see the light!:grin2:


The 90% water change did lower the Nitrite! 
It was 5.0 at 10:00 am.
I did the big water change then. No Ammonia dosing. 
The Nitrite was 2.0 or so around 2:00 pm.
It was 0.25 at 10:00 pm


I'm going to add 2 ppm of Ammonia tomorrow morning to see if it drops to zero within 24 hours.


The cause of sky high Nitrite spike could have been a FULL DOSE of Seachem Excel when I did a 3 day black out. Someone who is specialized in tank cycling on a different forum mentions that Excel could kill bacteria if they are not established enough. At least that was true for me.


More things I learned about fishless cycling.
1. Some plants can't tolerate high Ammonia level. It's good to dose 3 ppm Ammonia only. 
2. Bacteria can survive 3 days without feeding Ammonia. It's one of the things you can do when the Nitrate gets sky high.
3. 100% water change does not affect fishless cycling. I did almost 100% w/c twice and a 90% w/c once. It did not affect the cycling.


I'm going to receive a pair of LED raiser & some plants tomorrow. Since I got a very bad algae bloom last time, I went for a 6 inches raiser. I'm going to get more plants and then have fun dreaming about what nano fish I'll get.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

So...I tested water this morning (01/13). 


Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0

Hooray!!:welldone:


I added 3ppm of Ammonia and pinches of baking soda to raise KH. 


The plants from plantedaquariumscentral.com arrived this evening. So did the pair of LED raisers. The raisers are not from Han Aquatics that some members recommended on this site. I'm going to post a picture when I make the canister filter desktop. 
The plants from PAC are healthy and generous as usual. It was the fourth time I've ordered her plants. This is absolutely my favorite store. Although I wanted to buy more plants, it seems I've already got enough. 


I'm thinking about getting Celestial Pearl Danios or Chili Rasboras. Wondering if I can have six each...well, could be too many in my tank. I'm also interested in Crown Killifish. They are so pretty.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

01/14 10:00 am


Nitrite 0!!!!!!!


The tank is cycled now! I didn't even bother to test Ammonia. I'm going to dose Ammonia a couple of more days to see if it's really cycled. I'm 100% sure though.


As I mentioned, I received the plants last evening. I removed the bag from the shipping box and left in room temperature for one hour, then floated the bag in the tank for a couple of hours. I only planted Italian Vals. Rotala and Mermaid weed came with weight, so I let them sit on the substrate for now. Monte Carlo mat is so easy to place. 


My tank shot of today.










It will look better once I planted the currently anchored stems. The Brazilian Pennywort is just one stem floating. It has grown double length in the past four weeks. I highly recommend this plant for all beginners. 


Unfortunately, Ludwigia Red didn't last. There is one short sad stem on the left, but it's dying. AR Mini is surviving. I'd love to get more red and pink plants. Not sure if I will. 


The filter was moved behind the tank. It is a desktop now. The black background is doing good job hiding the filter.


A close up shot of my LED risers.










They are size 6 inches. I really like them because I can remove the original attachments and use these. If interested, here's the site.
https://www.elevateshrimp.com/colle...-planted-ray2-fugeray-etc?variant=10421342341
He also makes risers for Finnex 24/7 Planted+.
...and this is a Youtube review that made me decide to go for them.






I need to make a cover with LEXAN Polycarbonate Sheet. I'm not a DIY person, so I'll probably ask someone at a hardware shop to cut for me. I have a feeling I'll still have to buy a $5 cutting tool though.


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## RussellTheShihTzu (Mar 19, 2013)

What are the LEDs? I may have missed it if you gave the brand.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

RussellTheShihTzu said:


> What are the LEDs? I may have missed it if you gave the brand.


Finnex FugeRay Planted+ 20" and my tank is 18" long. It is an aglae growing fixture without CO2.


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

OK. It's official. My tank is cycled!


I did a 90% water change on Monday (01/16). Before the w/c, the Nitrate was around 100 ppm. The reason it was not that high is I had done some w/c including big one while cycling. 


Another big water change (about 80%) was done today (01/18). The Nitrate got as low as 10+ ppm. 


My dearest Ludwigia sp. Red didn't last. It was my third time to try this plant. It's time to accept the fact that it's not a plant for me. Rorala Green is barely hanging there. It should be a matter of time it'll be gone. The Monte Carlo mat is doing well. So is Rotala Rotundifolia and Italian Vals. Mermaid Weeds started dropping leaves. When introduced into a new tank, they would drop most of old leaves. AR mini is doing pretty well. The floating Brazilian Pennywort is thriving. 


I'm still dosing Ammonia (6~8 drops/day) to feed bacteria. 


I decided to use the filter as HOB again. It's behind the tank now. 


Now it's time to make a cover. I wonder if a Lexan polycarbonate sheet is easy to cut with the cutting tool...


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

It's been a while since I updated this journal last time. Some new changes happened.


I stopped dosing Pure Ammonia about 10 days ago. I thought it would be OK because I have plants in the tank, so decaying parts of them would produce ammonia. I still did big water change sometimes. 


I got mixed moss from our member ao. It's tied onto a moss ledge and placed in the tank. I got this moss ledge as a free gift from ElevateShrimp when I ordered the LED risers. To be honest, I thought I would never have an opportunity to use it because I'm not a moss person. Well, it looks pretty good actually. If loose moss doesn't float and sink around , it would be even nicer. Well, it's not moss' fault. I just didn't tie well enough?!


I do love red and pink plants. I think I wrote that I had tried Ludwigia Sp. Red three times and failed. I'm a challenger when it comes to things I really like. This means I decided to try it one more time! ...and failed again! This time, it's all my fault. I tried a bleach bath method before adding in the tank. It damaged the plants. They are so beautiful but delicate. They dropped most of the leaves. Maybe it's better than drop leaves and rot little by little. I also got 3 AR mini from the same seller. I hope they will grow. 


RussellTheShihTzu recommended me to grow worms as fish food. I took her advice and purchased MicroWorms and Grindal Worms from a seller Russell recommended. It's been a week since I started cultured them. Both of them are easy to grow. I never thought I would ever grow worms. Seriously, I always thought people go to stores and buy worms in a cup that are ready to feed. 




This happened this evening (02/03).


I finally got fish!!!!! There are 12 Celestial Pearl Danios in my tank!!!!  
It's been five hours. I can tell two of them are shy and hanging around on the bottom behind the plants. Eight or nine of they are less shy and swimming open area. I can't find one more. I hope it's just hiding. They swim "zigzag" and the LED is off, so it's hard to count. 


I got them at Nature Aquarium in Santa Monica which is 5+ minutes drive from my place. It seemed they recently got a new shipment of CPDs. There were a lot of them in a tank. I asked the owner to choose active ones although all of them seemed active. Unfortunately, there were only a few Chili Rasbora left. They are supposed to get a new shipment of Chili and Strawberry Rasboras next week. This place has many kinds of nano fish. They also sell ADA stuff, good assortment of healthy plants, unique driftwood and stones (seiryu, ohko, etc). This is where many aquarists in So Cal go. 


The CPDs they sell are tank bred. Chili Rasboras are wild caught. Wilds are more sensitive and delicate. The pH of my tank is 7.2. I should lower it to 7.0 or a bit under. 


I'm going to feed CPD MicroWorms tomorrow. My son will be so excited to see them eat worms :-D


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

Here's the newest picture from earlier this week.










I had to got rid of Brazilian Pennywort, Mermaid weed and Monte Carlo Mat due to Cyanobacteria and diatom attack. It was unfortunate although it gave me an opportunity to get more plants to try! I really wanted to have Crypts. Six kinds of them are in the tank now.


Salvinia Minima and two ramshorn snails that I got from colledgebettas is doing great! Salvinia Minima will be double within two weeks. The ramshorns are doing amazing job cleaning up diatoms. The older leaves of AR mini (the pink plants) were covered with diatoms in the picture. The ramshorns cleaned up and polished! I really like them. They are better algae cleaner than Nerite snails in my opinion. Bad news is they are already laying eggs. I already removed two egg sacks. It's not a big deal. Controlling snail population is pretty easy for me.




Unfortunately, I got hydra. When I first saw them, I thought those are the dead bodies of Microworms. Then I started seeing more of them. No matter how well I vacuum cleaned, they never went away. When I had a closer look, I realized they were hydra! Yikes. I treated them with Seachem Paraguard but had to stop when I got the ramshorns. There are still some but not as many as before. I turn off the filter when I feed the fish. No more Microworms which must have been feeding the hydra as well. 




Finally, my fish!


I lost two CPD's. One is from fungus and the other jumped. The rest of them are doing great and already breeding. It seems I have four or five males. It's hard to see because of the way how they swim. They use the moss as breeding bed. I saw three fries this morning. 


I haven't been able to get Chili Rasbora yet. My LFS hasn't received the Chili shipment for a while and they don't know when they will. Their supplier is out of the Chili :-( I might have to look into a different kind of fish...


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