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A few months after the female tiger endler died (leaving me with one sole male), I decided to give the male away to a friend (who only had female tiger endlers - could be hybrid with blue/red grass since they are kept together in his tank) in hopes that he will be able to repopulate the numbers.
Luckily, I managed to get a new trio of wild endlers (red chest - Class N) from a friend along with some boraras brigittae (very hard to find these days) 2.5 weeks ago. To my surprise, I saw two little endler frys zipping past the tank. It looks like the endlers have comfortably settled in their new home now ... I hope the continue to populate so that eventually, we'll have an army of these beautiful creatures ... :)
Planning to downsize my aquarium numbers to prepare for my move ... yes, temporarily decommissioning one more nano tank. I may end up selling the entire tank if there is anyone that wants it. Else, it should all be in preparation for the house moving ...
After months of trying, I finally decided to end my Sulawesi shrimp adventure ... why? Well, my last batch of 4 surviving (with one berried) cardinal shrimps just decided to move on ... sigh. I was so looking forward to seeing cardinal babies but unfortunately things just went downhill a few weeks after the cardinal got berried. The shrimps started dropping mysteriously one-by-one until none was left.
When I finally decided to decommission the Sulawesi tank, much to my dismay, I found a LAVA ROCK hidden deep within some of the other rocks tied with moss. I guess that last lava rock may be the one still quietly leeching some poison to kill the remaining shrimps ... sigh. Well, after so much investment (both time and money), I am just going to chill for a while ... keeping hopes of possibly trying again in the future ... when both time and money permits.
YES!!!! You read the title right. :) After months of trying, I finally spotted one berried Sulawesi shrimp. It has been a while since I last updated this blog and the reason was there was nothing much to update. :)
I almost gave up a month ago when I was down to my last Sulawesi shrimp due to the lava rock poisoning. Luckily, Johnny wanted to give up on his shrimping hobby and sold me his remaining 3 Sulawesi shrimps (since they did not reproduce even after more than 2 months in his tank) with a few CRS. Much to my surprise yesterday night, I saw my last surviving Sulawesi shrimp berried. I guess I must have a female shrimp and Johnny's shrimps are all male. One of the CRS was berried as well last week but dropped quite a few of her eggs ... I guess maybe because I did not have a chiller.
Hopefully, both the Sulawesi shrimp and CRS will give baby shrimps soon ... I'm so excited ... :)
As luck would have it, my recent batch of Sulawesi shrimps started dying again after a few weeks. At first, they look to be quite stable but all of a sudden, they started dying again ... up to 2-3 shrimps a day. :( I was determined to save them this time.
I initially thought it was my water conditioner as I got the cheap water conditioner for all of my tanks. After changing the water conditioner to Tension Gon, the problem still persisted. Luckily, J-wing suggested that it could potentially be the lava rocks that I put into the tank as the lava rocks could be leeching some poisonous metals like copper or sulfur. Since I had nothing more to loose, I decided to remove all of the lava rocks and amazingly, the deaths stopped. However, it stopped a little too late as it already dealt a great blow to my Sulawesi shrimp population. I've also reduced the number of ramshorn snails in the tank so that the bio load remains low.
I've also since started to ensure that the top up water parameters is matching as closely to that of the tank. I've setup a bucket with coral chips in it and have the water in that bucket treated for 1 day with Mosura Shizhen before adding it into the tank to top up the evaporated water. It has been going well for the past few days now and I hope the situation continues to stay that way ...
Hooray!!! A new batch of Sulawesi shrimps arrived yesterday!!! This time around, I originally got 15 cardinal shrimps. However, 4 of the cardinals arrived dead in the bag when Ken (from Aquatic Paradise) delivered it to me. The seller was nice enough to offer a substitute for the dead shrimps ... Sulawesi harlequin shrimps. He gave me 3 harlequin shrimps (which is what he has left alive) and offered to refund me the money for the 1 shrimp ... thanks Ken!! :) However, after looking at it further, I think the 3 shrimps are not harlequins ... and a little googling revealed that they are actually Sulawesi Red Tigers (Caridina sp. Tigri) ... looks just as nice as harlequins.
When I got home yesterday, the shrimps do not look to be in good condition as they are not very active, losing color and I can even see some jumping frantically once in a while. Instead of the proper acclimatization techniques usually used to accustom new shrimps, I decided to dump them straight into my tank. Hopefully I made the right decision. FYI, I tested the water that the shrimps came in and its pH was over 8.8 (beyond what my test kit can measure) and that was what prompted me to act.
No dead bodies yet as of this morning but since I bought so many this time, I've lost count of the shrimps since they are all mixed up with the rest of the Brown Camo shrimps. Here's the count that I should be having (yes, some of the Brown Camo shrimps died :( ...):
Cardinal Shrimp (Caridina sp. "Cardinal"): 12
Brown Camo Shrimp (Caridina sp. "Matano Red Orchid"): 7
Red Tiger Shrimp (Caridina sp. Tigri): 3
