Loaches Online Forum

looking good

That really looks nice!!
I'm sure the hillstreams will love it.
I seem to have the best luck with shrimp in my hillstream tanks, so, as Shari said, you'll probably have plenty of cherries before you know it.
Are those the regular white clouds or the Vietnamese type?

Ah, well. We went out specifically looking for the vietnamese type and went to several stores in the process. Most shops only had pale, lifeless looking white clouds but when we got to the final shop we noticed something a bit strange. There were two tanks, right next to each other, labelled as white cloud mountain minnows. Except in one tank they were all pale and the other tank much darker. The darker ones didn't look nearly as dark as I've seen the vietnamese ones but darker than the other tank all the same. So we just went for it and got ten.

I'm just wondering, the two close-up shrimp pics I've posted, are they both plain old cherry shrimp? The colour pattern is quite different.

Just looked up how to tell the difference and ours are definitely white clouds.

Impressive pictures!!!

That tank likes you.....

The reason I asked about the white clouds is that they didn't look quite like most of the regular ones I see.
I am wondering if yours are the kind that develop tails and fins longer than the regular variety but less than the the veil tailed. They have really nice colors and it takes a bit of time for the tails and fins to develop.
As for the shrimp, I think they solid colored one is a female and the marbled one a male.

There was a tank of long-finned minnows too but we didn't get them. Now that you mention it though, when they flare their fins they are bigger than I expected...

More than you ever wanted to know about shrimp:

http://www.planetinverts.com/shrimp_species.html

shari2 wrote:More than you ever wanted to know about shrimp:

http://www.planetinverts.com/shrimp_species.html

that is shrimp pornography.

i love it.

so much i want and so much i cant have

*sob*

Great looking tank Dave!

I love the setup with the powerheads. I guess you guys are not joking about serious current for the Hilly tanks!

I'm falling in love with those Hillies, but I've never seen one in Florida and I'm not sure I could afford to keep it cool enough for them without a chiller.

My tanks will stay at 81 all on their own 9 months out of the year with my house kept at 79 and that costs enough to keep it that cool.

Thanks for posting pics!

Cheers BotiaMaximus.

Yeah the flow is a bit extreme in there. We're having some trouble with shifting sands. Think we'll have to take some of it out and replace with fine gravel.

Caught a couple of white clouds sneaking off under a rock together for some alone time earlier, so hopefully we'll have some little ones soon! Although with the tank as bare as it is at the moment, I expect they'll either end up squished or eaten. Same goes for any potential baby shrimpies.

That's too bad about the sand moving around on you. I really like it. It goes great with the big stones and is a nice change from just gravel or regular white sand.

Any chance of getting a well placed deflector stone in front of each of them to keep the sand put or raising up the powerheads a bit? Just hate to see you have to give it up - it looks so nice.

You must have everything else going on right if they're already lovin' it up in the tank! - Congrats!

What a beautiful stream you guys made there
just a little advice from my side....the javaferns will defenitely do better if you get the rhyzome (spelling ?) out of the sand, maybe tie it to a rock.
Otherwise love it, defenitely an inspiration piece

We're not going to take all the sand out, just shift some of the stuff at the far right which is banking up.

Thanks for the plant tip. We'll probably start shifting stuff like that around once things get established and we get to a store with better plant selection!