Believe it or not, but this piece of African bogwood used to be completely covered by black brush algae (BBA). I got my act in order, and have been routinely dosing the tank for the past few months, cranked up the CO2, and added some extra Amano Shrimp and Zebra Nerite Snails. As a result, I’ve literally witnessed a daily receding of this BBA as the algae crew have fed.

What’s very interesting is that I still feed the catfish in this tank veggie wafers, but I guess either the catfish aren’t sharing, or the shrimp/snails prefer the BBA. I honestly believe that it’s the zebra nerites that are doing more BBA eating than anything else in the tank. I had never previously realized that zebra nerites had such an affection for BBA, but I’m quite pleased that the latest crew seem to enjoy it.

As I mentioned, I regularly feed algae wafers to the catfish in this tank. While the shrimp and nerites don’t seem to go after these provisions, the Malaysian Trumpet Snails cluster around the wafers. Today I watched one MTS slither over the back of a Red Lizard Catfish who was also yearn for some veggie goodness.

The take away is that in my tanks, algae is inevitable. I’m going to get lazy on my dosing, CO2 is going to run out, or I’ll let a filter go slightly too long between cleanings. It’s good to know that when this happens, I’ll get some help from Amano Shrimp and Zebra Nerite Snails to keep things looking decent. My laziness is their gain!

I wanted to share a few pictures that I took this afternoon in my fish room. I was experimenting with a new macro lens and flash that I got a couple months ago, which is why a few of the shots are obviously unrealistic. In any case, the blue tiger shrimp are one of my new favorites, with their black bodies and bright orange eyes.

Of course, when you’re breeding these shrimp, you’re never going to get 100% solid black bodies. Some of them will come out as “blondes,” or shrimp with transparent bodies with the signature tiger stripes.

Otherwise, these don’t seem to be too difficult to keep. They’re slightly smaller than cherry red shrimp, but similar in size to crystal reds.

Mine are all housed in my 12G GLA bookshelf aquarium, where they graze on a little bit of beard algae that’s snuck into that aquarium.

They also love to hide in the short Eleocharis sp. ‘Japan’ hairgrass that makes up the foreground in this tank, picking at whatever tiny goodies they can find.

In my 50G aquarium, I have a breeding colony of bristlenosed plecos. Their are several generations cohabiting the aquarium, which are constantly working the driftwood and glass.

I caught one such pleco hanging out on the front glass. I like to think that I keep my glass pretty clean, but I guess she’s finding something of value there.

Finally, I snapped a quick shot of one of my beautiful angelfish, which really are the most personable fish I’m keeping right now. When they’re hungry, they follow me from end-to-end of the tank, begging me to drop in some tasty morsels for them to devour.

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my latest shots. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve enjoyed these same creatures for yourself…

It’s been a few weeks since I replanted the 50G, and as you can see the plants have been growing quite well. The tank is definitely due for a trim right now, especially the Ludwigia brevipes on the left, and the Limnophila repens var. ‘Mini’ in the back left. I do have two notable additions to this aquascape. In the back-left, I added a number of Blyxa aubertii plants which were previously in my 75G aquarium.

Also, I was fortunate to get in on a fantastic group buy that GWAPA conducted to add 15 crystal red shrimp, and 15 crystal black shrimp to this aquarium. Below is a picture of one of the red ones, which I believe is a “tiger-tooth” because the one red band looks like two teeth coming down. I don’t know very much about grading the shrimp, and really don’t care, as I just think they’re quite striking inhabitants in a planted aquarium regardless of the grade.

So, hopefully, these shrimp will start a little breeding population in my 50G! Elsewhere in the aquarium, the hairgrass is starting to spread in the corners where I transplanted a few plants, and I’m generally pleased with the direction that it’s headed. I’m waiting on the stems on the right side to grow out a bit more and multiply, so that I can really focus on trimming them into new compact bushes of plants. Comments/critiques welcome!

Last weekend, while I was trying to get pictures of the Apistogramma baenschi “Inka” in my 20L, I also snapped a few shots of the Nerite snails and Amano shrimp while waiting for the Apistos to come out of hiding. I wanted to share a few of those shots.

Olive Nerite Snails are by far one of the best algae eaters you can add to your aquarium, but many of them are quite pretty as well. I love the spiraling parallel lines patterned over many of their shells. I thought this guy (above) looks pretty good against the orange tones of the rock.

One of their key attributes is their willingness to slither along the glass, cleaning it of green spot, or other tough algae. You can see that this particular snail’s shell is slowly eroding away due to the lower pH and hardness of my water. This is fairly common in planted aquariums, especially when CO2 is injected as the carbonic acid is hard on their shells. I’ve known some hobbyists who used reef epoxy to fill in these holes, prolonging the life of their invert inhabitants.

Amano shrimp are the other must have invert in nearly every aquarium. They can clear a field of hair algae in a matter of days, if added in proper proportion to the size of the tank. (That, by the way, is probably roughly 1 shrimp/2 gallons.) Too many, with too little algae, and they will start eating your moss fronds, or other delicate leaved plants. To minimize that, I feed mine algae wafers. The largest Amano in the tank usually swims right to the wafer, and holds it captive until he’s eaten his fill. Then the rest of the invertibrates in the tank swarm the leftovers. A day of the life of an invert.

I was sitting across the room, watching some television, which I noticed a huge mass of cherry shrimp, all congregated in the front of my 75G aquarium. The 75G has been close to algae-free lately, so I have been feeding extra algae wafers for the plecos, but hadn’t really paid much attention after doing so. Apparently, the population of cherry shrimp was quite interested in the algae wafers, and called of their friends to join them in the feast.

Of course, with that many shrimp in one place, all of the rainbowfish in the tank wanted to see what was so interesting. They dove in and out of the population of shrimp, but didn’t seem to bother the shrimp any by doing so.

Finally, the Ancistrus sp. ‘L279’ bristle-nosed plecos realized that I dropped in algae wafers, and stormed into the middle of the shrimp. In some instances, they swam in fast enough to a send the shrimp flying out of the way.

All in all, it’s pretty entertaining to watch these critters interact with the rest of the tankmates. As you can tell, the cherry shrimp have had no problem breeding in my 75G aquarium!