shrimp on the riverbank Particularly after a water change, the shrimp like to collect on the river run shelf. I’m not sure what they’re after here, but this is a consistent behaviour of theirs. This is the kind of thing you’re not going to be able to observe without a shallow flowing water component to […]
Read more →I’m becoming more fond of Cryptocoryne as submersed aquatic plants. They come in a wide variety of colours, sizes and textures, tolerate low light and are pretty much maintenance free. I always plant these after cutting off the emersed leaves to promote faster Cryptocoryne adaptation to submersed form growth whilst avoiding ‘crypt melt’. Cryptocoryne walkeri […]
Read more →Three weeks after the first sighting of a new baby shrimp we seem to have arrival of the next crop. These guys are really tiny which does suggest the earlier one had been hiding out for a week or so before debuting. There was a 50% water change today – the usual story with EI […]
Read more →Baby cherry shrimp and friends All those white things zooming around in the water column whilst the baby bloody mary cherry shrimp hangs out on one of the roots of the Java fern (Microsorum pteropus ‘Windelov’ ) are copepods! Unintentional yet still welcome residents of the Shrimphaus, copepods are a form of zooplankton. Like their […]
Read more →There’s a new citizen in the Shrimphaus! Recently a juvenile bloody mary shrimp has started openly exploring. It seems strange that there is only one so far, but there was a mother shrimp that dropped most of her eggs and maybe this is one she held onto. The new shrimp has already successfully moulted and […]
Read more →‘Pangolino’ from Dennerle is thought to be the anubias with the smallest leaves and thereby very suitable for nanotanks. I’ve been looking for this plant for a long time but it has been consistently unavailable until very recently when I noticed some in stock at Horizon Aquatics. As a bonus Horizon is also a sponsor […]
Read more →The Marsilea hirsuta has been a wonderful carpeting plant, but it first went into the Fireplace Aquarium nearly 27 months ago and has started to become problematic. Over long periods of time the marsilea can build up into a mass, I think as newer individual stems try to outgrow the existing carpet layer, so there […]
Read more →The goal is to get epiphytes such as Anubias or Bucephalandra to grow emersed in the open-topped Shrimphaus exposed to normal room humidity. There is a lot of internet opinion, most of which says “forget it”, but some people have managed to make a go of it. My first try was Anubias nana ‘Coin’ which […]
Read more →The initial concept for the aquaduct of the Shrimphaus was for water flowing over slate with epiphytic plants and mosses clinging to the slate under the water with leaves growing up out of the water. That didn’t work out very well. The underwater rhizome of the Anubias nana ‘Coin’ slowly rotted away, killing the plant. […]
Read more →Following on from the disastrous experience of adding new cherry shrimp to the Fireplace Aquarium I decided to give the shrimp their own aquarium with no predatory fish! I built them their own customised Shrimphaus and after a couple weeks of equilibrating the water chemistry and biology I added some Bloody Mary shrimp sourced from […]
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