You’ll see a lot of mention/discussion about ‘total dissolved solids’ (TDS) in the hobby. I must say, I’m not a fan and have said so publicly. In the general case the feeling usually goes that ‘high TDS is bad’, particularly for sensitive(?) species like Caridina shrimp. I understand the intent here (mostly) and how that […]
Read more →Category: Science
Evidence-based systematic investigation using experiment, scientific literature, and/or first principles to explain and predict outcomes.
Shrimphaus has highly unorthodox water chemistry, yet successfully breeds both Caridina and Neocaridina freshwater shrimp. Modern water chemistry analysis shows what really matters and what might be hobby-lore myth. Let’s dig in. Really important: low alkalinity and low copper Low alkalinity: around 1 dKH / 20 ppm CaCO3 equivalents Shrimphaus water is prepared by hydrochloric […]
Read more →Alkalinity is an important parameter in a planted tank because alkalinity directly sets the baseline pH of the water. Some plants and animals are sensitive to pH levels, for example because higher pH increases the possibility of ammonia toxicity. Getting a rough alkalinity measurement is reasonably straightforward and in addition to abundant aquarium hobby alkalinity […]
Read more →It is common knowledge that copper is bad for shrimp, but it’s hard to find actual numbers on that. Let’s dig in. Tap water contains significant copper Your water report will tell you how much copper you have in your mains tap water. My water report, which is pretty typical, shows a minimum value for […]
Read more →A drop checker is a brilliant addition to a CO2 gas-injected planted aquarium and is an equilibrium method for reading out the amount of dissolved CO2 in the water column. Drop checkers rely on the pH indicator bromothymol blue in a solution of 4 dKH alkalinity . ‘Hoppy’ (Vaughn Hopkins) popularised the mechanistic underpinnings of the chemistry […]
Read more →It perhaps will not come as a big surprise that the hobby sometimes ascribes common names incorrectly to species names. Tangerine Tiger shrimp are a case in point. Tangerine Tiger shrimp are almost universally described in the hobby as Caridina serrata, but actually they are Caridina cantonensis (much more on that below). Does it matter […]
Read more →I love my shrimp! It’s great fun watching them zoom happily around the Shrimphaus. The conventional wisdom in the hobby is keep different fancy colour morphs of the same species separate, so they don’t cross-breed and revert to “boring” wild-type colouration, but it is fun to experiment as well and if you’re not too fussed […]
Read more →Statement of Significance Freshwater aquarium shrimp breeding relies on empirical knowledge about which species can interbreed, but quantitative predictions of compatibility remain limited. We used molecular phylogenetics to measure genetic distances between 17 popular aquarium shrimp species and calibrated a breeding compatibility scale using well-documented hybridization outcomes in felids. Phylogenetic distances within Caridina ranged from […]
Read more →Stable pH and transient pH changes To get started, let’s discuss factors that apply universally to planted tanks. For simplicity we’ll work under the assumption that aquarium hardscape and substrate is pH inert. Then there are two main ways pH can change, transiently, usually on a day/night driven cycle, and stably which operates more long-term. […]
Read more →I’ve been playing around with the relatively new Dust LLM (Gemini also helped a lot, GPT5 made code more robust) and decided to have it work through bicarbonate pH buffering in an aquarium. At equilibrium, the pH in an aquarium is determined by only two factors: the concentration of CO2 in the air over the […]
Read more →