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Pictures under the microscope

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 17:03:57 GMT

A few months ago I bought an old lab microscope off of ebay, so I could get a better look at the organisms inside of the aquariums.

After setting it up, I realized that I didn't have a way to record video through it. There was another model which was was trinocular and would have allowed be to easily attach a camera to the top, but I wasn't able to find a definitively working one for sale. I ended up 3d-printing this mount for my phone.

Here are some highlights! I took a few samples from both the filter of my larger tank and the mulm that was accumulating at the bottom of my shrimp tank:

Mite:

Various stentors:

Nematode (I think):

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As promised, pictures of the shrimp

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 17:52:41 GMT

I'm only like 3 months late lmao

The shrimp have been doing pretty well so far. They're relatively low maintenance, I just top off the tank with distilled water and throw in a piece of broccoli every now and then and they seem to thrive. I wouldn't recommend them as a first pet (It took me three tries to get the water quality right), but once you get everything dialed in they seem to be happy on their own. I've already counted at least 3 generations of shrimp, and there are at least 30 in the tank now. I'll probably go back to cuboid to get some different colors of shrimp (and maybe some ricefish) in the future, now that everything seems to have stabilized.

Here are some pictures that I said I would post in September:

Closeups

Eating Brogle

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The shrimp tank gets some new inhabitants

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 01:47:55 GMT

The shrimp tank has grown a lot since I last posted. The plants have grown significantly (especially the water lettuce and dwarf sag). Some plants I didn’t even know I had started showing up as well, like duckweed, which is a pain to remove. The pearlweed unfortunately melted away, leaving me with a cooked-spinach like goop on the bottom of my tank. Thankfully the snails and copepods made quick work of the mess.

Before I even had the chance to add shrimp, animal life had started to appear in the tank. Copepods were the first to show up, and soon I began seeing Rhabdocoela, a type of flatworm. Without any competition or predators, their populations exploded.

The plants I got also came with some unexpected hitchhikers - 6 tiny ramshorn snails, barely bigger than a pinhead. They were a welcome surprise, and quickly dealt with most algae in the tank.

There’s also this weird floating mass of what looks like some kind of fern. Hopefully I can ID it soon!

After testing the water (and ensuring that the Kh was correct, something I learned the hard way), I picked up 5 Red Rili shrimp from Cuboid Aquariums. They’ve got a great selection of fish and plants, as well as some really neat display tanks. Really worth checking out if you’re in the New Hope area.

Three of the shrimp were berried when I got them, and soon enough I found tiny baby shrimp all around the tank. Unfortunately, a few days after this, I noticed two dead shrimp in my tank. I suspect this was because I topped off the water in the tank too fast. As of now, I suspect that there are 3 of the original shrimp remaining, but one has been MIA for a couple of days now.

The babies have grown a lot since they first hatched. Most of them are around a centimeter long now. I’m trying to feed them more so I can hopefully get an established colony soon.

[UPDATE: as I was writing this, the final two adults have unfortunately perished. The babies however, are thriving]

Will attach pictures soon :)

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first update!

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 18:45:06 GMT

If I'm going to track my progress, I've got to establish a baseline first. Here's what my aquariums look like as of 7/30/2024. I've got a bunch of updates planned including:

• More plants
• New stocking (Corydoras!)
• Auto top off, water change, and fertilizer systems

Future Shrimp Tank:

Community Tank:

As you can probably tell, they need some work (especially the community tank). I'd like to do both in a more jungle style with lots of plants.

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