Blue Velvet babies

T

thecarl

Member
Too small to photograph but the news is exciting anyway! My 4 gallon seems to have one thing going right in it. I started with a colony of about 11 blue velvets, now I'm down to only 3 adults as they keep dieing off. Tank has a massive thread or hair algae bloom that I gave up on and just let go. Today I observed several small blue velvets with color, they're all about 1-2mm long but alive and foraging. I had 2 berried females in there for a few weeks, one of them died today, the other is still alive and no longer berried. They are so hard to spot among the algae and hair grass that I suspect I probably only see a quarter of the number of babies in there.

I've decided I will no longer remove any of the algae for now and just let things happen. Lots of really tiny organisms in that tank at night too so I suspect there is no shortage of food for the tiny guys. Any recommendations or suggestions for getting them to mature successfully?

Also was wondering if anyone has had luck keeping these guys alive longer than a few months. Tank is 77F, PH is 6.8-7.0, no nitrates or nitrites, KH is about 60ppm, GH is around 100ppm. Substrate is ADA amazon soil on top of a thin layer of black fluorite sand. dwraf hair grass for plants and a finnex 10" light. I'm wondering if it's a light thing or an oxygyn issue. I have a tiny hob filter on the tank.

Anyway just wanted to share the news, I'll have to come back and post an update in a few weeks to tell if they got bigger or vanished.
 
Gizmo

Gizmo

Active Member
Congrats! I've heard a light dose of iodine helps them molt. You'll want to Google it, of course, but I noticed in Utah, on very hard water that was either 1.) 20 degrees GH/KH or 2.) softened and high in sodium thanks to the salt backflush in the water softener, the shrimp would get chalky white and often died before they molted, but were nice and healthy looking after I started dosing iodine.

There are also shrimp mineral rocks that help provide nutrients by slowly dissolving into the tank water, and cholla wood (some sort of cactus I think) helps them as well.
 
T

thecarl

Member
Did some googling on Flourite and shrimp, a lot of what I read is sometimes there's enough copper leaching from the flourite to cause problems. Although more posts than not have nothing but success with shrimp and flourite.

However, copper issues sidetracked into another possible source. Houses with copper plumbing I am reading cause problems for shrimp and the place I am living at has copper plumbing throughout. I'm using an inline filter on the tap water for my water changes that removes most heavy metals and chlorine but I don't know if it removes copper or not so maybe that is a source of my problem.
 
Livebearer

Livebearer

Member
Get your temperature down! Slowly they don't do well over 75o so 72 to 74 is perfect for these Neo's.
Let the algae grow on the sides of the glass for baby food and get some "real shrimp food" with calcium for them...
Hair algae is unsightly for us but "they" don't really care! Try going to Safeway and get a 5 gallon drinking water jug, fill it with the stores R.O. water at the refilling station in-store and heat it up in a fish-safe buck of water first for top offs sall water changes (I didn't say full water changes as I don't do this for my shrimp tanks) just top them off mostly.
I add in "Carib-Sea BufferPlus" with Calcium and get the P.H. to 7.4 as this product will raise it a bit.
My Red rili 2.7 gallon tank has been up and running for 2 years now with an average stock of 40 to 70+ shrimp.
I have an occasional one die on me but it's healthy and still going well... Keep us posted and good luck!!!
 
T

thecarl

Member
Interesting, I read everywhere that they don't like to breed in anything colder than 75F. I could kill the heater and let the tank sit at room temp which is about 68-72F. Tank is getting R.O. water. They also get shrimp food with calcium. I've found that the die offs seem to happen if I feed them regularly, so maybe to much or not enough food or something. There's lots of tiny critters in this tank now too that I can barely see with the naked eye.
 
pbmax

pbmax

Active Member
I've bred tons of neos for years in the upper 70s (including BVs); your temp is fine. Your PH (as others have mentioned) is too low - bump it up into the mid to upper 7s and you should be golden.
 
T

thecarl

Member
I picked up some cherry shrimp tonight at the GSAS auction, I put them all in my 20 gallon which is running a much higher ph, 7.6 or so. Shall see how they do. It's really hard to get any of my tanks above 7.0, I suspect the only reason my 20 is doing so well is because there is a lot of crushed coral in the filter (1lb or so) and I never change the water on it.
 
pbmax

pbmax

Active Member
Boosting PH is easy - dose appropriately with baking soda or another product that adds buffer. I use Seachem Alkaline Buffer in all of my tanks; I calculate dosage to the tenth of a gram depending on the KH (carbonate hardness) of the tap water, my target KH (10 for platy tanks, 7 for others) and how much water I add to each tank.
 
hose91

hose91

Member
Sigh. I live on a community well in Kitsap County, and my water is 7.6 out of the tap with about 8-10 dH and kH. I would like to have a similarly easy way to bring the pH and hardness down just a bit for my Geo's and tetras (and plants). I'm sometimes a bit envious of the Seattle water. Although the Africans and platties love it.
 
pbmax

pbmax

Active Member
Unfortunately there really is no easy way to effectively reduce PH without negatively affecting other elements of water chemistry (phosphorus for one). And I know of no way to reduce GH. KH can be reduced with a ton of acid, but that's tricky and problematic.

Using distilled or reverse osmosis water mixed with tap is the best solution here. RO systems are getting cheaper... but they do take space and complicate water change logistics.
 
T

thecarl

Member
Well to give an update, no more blue velvets have died. The babies have been growing to a pretty good size now, a couple of them are almost a half inch long already. Water is pretty much un-changed for parameters other than no heat. (Just room temp around 72F.)
 
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