Never saw notifications for these posts, sorry.
I just realized your in Central Jersey... How far are you from Piscataway? That's typically as far south as I go since I work there =) I know someone already suggested NJAGC you don't have to attend meetings but we do recommend our community to be active in our private forum. I'm anti-social with the best of them but I do enjoy our merry band of misfits. We do have a few DIY'ers too which is always fun to follow. One of the meetings this year is for an acrylic tank build which should be interesting. Give us a shot and if they disappoint I'll give you a refund in cyrpts =)
Enough promoting I have a few C. spiralis from a pot I recently redid if your in the area. BTW Love the tank but I think the large crypt species you have will be a challenge when completely mature.
Piscataway is as far SOUTH as you go? lol I'm about 45 mins south of Piscataway. NJAGC looks like a great club and I'm so lucky to have so many clubs to choose from in my "area" (within 1.5 hrs anyways) but at this time I still don't feel like clubs are a good fit for me. You're crypt refund sure is inciting though! lol
Yeah the Usteriana could be trouble, it's already sending runners all over the place. It's by far the hardiest so far (nearly no melt ever or algae) which just means it's gonna be a monster lol. This is the biggest tank it will ever see in my house so it'll have to do. (The 72g is coming down soon cause people want to have a normal living room, whatever that means!)
Well, there you go Jen, a built in club with JAY973 as sponsor. I hope you live close enough! My club is awesome, I highly encourage you to go if you can...at least sometimes. You can't beat JAY's crypt refund policy, lol.
I can vouch for them all being good folks too.
Perhaps a group road trip to Rachel's in the future would help to sway you?
Excellent points! I do consider joining a club from time to time so I'll keep considering it but that's all I can promise.
Onto what brought me here! As of today, maybe yesterday, I have successful breeding (release of shrimplets) of RCS in this tank. And all 4 RCS are still alive here. Also want to note I have not fed this tank once since adding the RCS and even before that too. I note this not only for the obvious reasons but also because the snail population is ridiculous! The whole "large snail populations are a sign of over feeding" is not holding true here, not at all. And I am pretty good about removing any dying leaves and keeping the tank "clean" so they obviously don't need much to thrive. So you want to see my clean tank?
What not clean enough for you!?
Yeah I left the glass algae this past week cause I knew the baby shrimp were coming and I like to give them some extra chow. Even if they don't eat algae as newborns I feel the bio-film gets scrapped off as well. But you can see that the balansae is all but gone after that weird melting episode, which stopped right after my last post. I think I have some ideas on why that happened too. 1- more plant growth needs more nutrients and I was dosing such a small amount to start with that maybe I hit a critical point and the plants started to suffer. 2- snail eggs! I was removing whatever globs I saw but there were a lot.
And here is a shot to show the snails. It actually looks like the population has gone down a bit in the past couple weeks, thank goodness!
Highlights for this chapter!
- Not signing up for a club ATM but perhaps in the future.
- Usteriana could pose a problem in the future but I'm keeping it for now
- Successful RCS breeding in this tank (now to figure out the other tank)
- No food in almost 2 months, shrimp are fine and snails still breeding away
- Melting stopped but left my balansae pretty bare
- Not mentioned above but I am now dosing about 4.5ml of metricide
