Fish Village Update

The recent algae outbreak forced a decision to move the whole fish rack again.  The rack is now no longer in front of the windows.  The flooding of direct sunlight and the shop light T8 tubes, even with a reduced photo period to seven hours per day, was just too much light.  The photo period has been raised again to nine hours per day.  There is still some residual algae on the lower part of the aquarium glass near the substrate.  This can be easily managed by the addition of some Olive and Tiger nerite snails.

The move caused a significant White Cloud Mountain minnow fry die-off.  This was totally our fault.  There was not enough water left in the tanks as we moved them.  Sad about the loss of fry and will be more careful in the future.  So the remaining population are all at least 1/4" to 3/4" long and there are four in the 10g:redux Shrimparium, four in the 10g:view planted tank, plus the three original parents in the 10g:view.  Not bad for our first fry, especially since they were totally unplanned for.  We also lost one of the three neon tetras.  Not sure why, it died two days after the move.

The nice surprise just after the new year was two berried American glass shrimp as we posted earlier.  They have been moved to a five gallon aquarium with one male.  They survived the move, seem not to have dropped any eggs, having been in the five gallon aquarium for a week now.  They are due to hatch shrimplets anywhere in the next week or two as best as we can figure.  This is very exciting as these are the babies we actually wanted.

A new camera is wending its way to us but it may be as much as two weeks before it arrives therefore; no pictures at this time.

Tanked Cam

We are taking the lazy post way today as it is Sunday and we are moving fry and cleaning the nursery tank. We are preparing the nursery tank for two for two American glass shrimp we think are berried. American glass shrimp are not the easiest shrimp to breed in captivity, nor are they the most difficult.

When we cleaned out the 10g:view of all the algae mess, we found a blue tinged American glass we had not seen since it {she?} and four of her tank mates had been tasked with feasting in the algae crops. Upon observing it, we noticed it had gotten bigger and fatter? We looked and looked, finally hauling out "shrimp-view" but it was difficult to tell.

While futzing around with moving fry, we decided the alpha-fry must go into the parent's planted tank, the 10g:view, to learn to be a good citizen of fish-village. So off to school alpha-fry went. We have been holding our breath all morning. So far, so good, nobody cares about the lone small-fry in the tank. We think the Neon Tetra shoal provided caviar yesterday for a snack today anyway. We did a fast count of the fry we and came up with 11. That is a pretty consistent count over the last two weeks or so. The 10g:redux /shrimparium/plant grow-out is home now to some as yet, unidentified fry. We are going out on a limb and returning to our original guess; White Cloud Mountain minnows. Moving along to today's featured site . . .

TankedCam.com

We are generating a Listorious list for aqua-culture; while working on that list this morning we ran across a cool idea for anyone who spends more time away from their aquariums than they would like. It is not a new idea to the Internet; in fact the idea has been around for ten years or so. TheBlowfish who promotes the idea, updated "remote control over the net" to include an iPhone app, very clever. He can feed his fish, turn on or off, the O2 bubbler, lights and a few more things.

You an control some of the features of his TankedCam either via iPhone or on your PC @ www.Tankedcam.com. But wait, it gets better . . . control your own tank via www.WaveJam.com!

Yeah, if there is any cash Santa Claus did not have time to drop off, we may just investigate further. However; do not wait on us, get your own tank cam.