Recent content by pbmax

Nice; congrats! :) And good luck!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One person's trash is another's treasure. :)

2nd Ken's veggie sticks with calcium. I'm lazy, it's easy, and the shrimp thrive on the stuff.

Funny, I didn't realize HI had established Neocaridina populations; nice find! :)

Congrats! I don't think the number of "strains" really matters. If you've been continually adding stability regularly, then I'd slowly taper it off and watch the ammonia and nitrite levels closely.

Increased nitrates are an indication you're cycling. :thumbsup

I'm a low-brow fish keeper. When I was breeding celestial pearl danios I fed the fry golden pearls of varying sizes. That did the trick for me - cheap and easy. :)

Haha, nice. :) And welcome back!

Given the large number of replies, I'll relate my useless experience. :) I have no idea. I've had the exact same problem multiple times (the little ones all die), and from what I've read it really shouldn't be all that difficult. You're using super shallow water too...that would be my only...

I'm a bit late to the party, but yes - all american crays are banned. You can find details in this thread: http://www.wafishbox.com/forums/threads/forum-rules-on-illegal-plant-and-animal-species-state-and-federal-laws.7948/ It's a shame... :(QQ

Those would probably be fine with adult shrimp, but I'd still worry about babies. This isn't a problem if you don't care about breeding, I suppose.

I keep mostly platies (panda, neon yellow, blue), panda corys, and a few kribs (p. pulcher). I'd wanted to get another cory species at some point, but life has been to busy. :( I've been working on reducing the number of tanks I have these days... I'm down to 8 from a peak of 12 (all 29g and...

Any fish that can fit shrimp babies in their mouths will most likely eat them, apart from corys and plecos and the like. Some smaller fish are nasty enough to even tear adult shrimp apart :( It really depends on the personality of the fish involved. I safely keep shrimp with corys and that's...

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...

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)...