Photoburst: Moar Bees

Girlfriend is back in town. Spent the weekend hanging out with her after picking her up from the airport. It's nice to have her back. She'll help me greatly with this blogger. I'll give her a few days to rest then ask her to help me with my articles. 

I managed to get a few photos in during the week when I was at my parents for dinner. Hope you guys enjoy!!

Cheers!

Shrimp Spotlight: Japanese RedBees

This is an observational update regarding the status of my Japanese RedBees. It's been roughly 3 months now since I've been back from my Japan trip and my Japanese RedBees have had 3 months to breed and grow inside my tanks. The adults survive the journey from Japan to USA and have bred successfully inside my tanks. I’m very happy to report that I am officially out of the “Red” or danger zone. Now that spring is in full swing, both my J.RedBees and J.BlackBees have kicked into full breeding mode. Both bees inside my 25G cubes are very active happy. All of my original female adults are berried.  Their ovens are operating at maximum efficiency although I have to comment that my J.BlackBees is just crushing it! My J.BlackBees colony has undergone a population explosion. The tank is FILLED with babies and young adults.  I feel like my J.RedBees need to play a little catching up if I want to have a strong population to cull by the end of fall 2015.

Observation:

I've made note that J.BlackBees are all born with EXCELLENT colors, whereas the J.RedBees are born with exceptional whites but the red is a bit more of an orange color. At first I was curious and worried about the off-red color that I was experiencing BUT as they grow and mature their colors is darkening and becoming a more crimson color. I don’t know if this is a common thing amongst J.RedBees. Additionally, I have observe that the J.RedBees mature VERY quickly. What I mean to say is juveniles at 3 months are roughly a third of the fully mature adults. This isn't something that should be taken with a grain of salt as J.RedBees is much bigger, on average, than PRL. I don’t know what it is, but it would seem that their genetics dictate their growth to be fuller and bigger than your typical PRL. I have PRL roughly around the same age as my J.RedBees and they look nowhere near breeding size.  Breeding Size? Yes, I am saying breeding size because in the adjacent tank housing my J.BlackBees, babies of 3 month old have started mating and becoming berried.  Babies making babies, yo!

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

Photoburst: Japanese Bees

Shrimp Spotlight: Orange Eyes Blue Tigers (OEBT)

I did it! I finally devoted some time to my OEBT and got pictures of them. I've been making promises and was finally able to deliver. Sorry for the poor photos and low numbers, I'm still getting accustomed to taking photos in this new lighting enviroment and the awkwardness of the tank. I never realized just how difficult it was to take photos of shrimps inside a 20G long. Darn tank is so shallow the flash either penetrates the shrimp's flesh completely or the image is too dark!

A pale male

Babies & Adults feasting!

The Orange Eyes Blue Tiger tank is growing and growing at such a rapid place. I had forgotten just how prolific OEBT can be. I just love how active they are and have aggressively they feed. Having been keeping Crystal for so long, it's a refresher to keep Tigers and seeing their quirkiness. I love these little characters!

Moment of Truth - I feel like these guys could have MUCH better colors had they been living with me at my own place rather than at my parents.  Being unable to care and monitor them on a daily basis has really left them looking poor. These guys are overly neglected and it really shows in the way they look. To address this and hopefully fix it, I have since created a schedule for my parents to follow that I feel will help them recover some of their colors and reach their maximum potential.

I'm returning to my parents tomorrow to do my weekly waterchanges for my other tanks there and will give a 2nd attempt at trying to get photos of my more heavily berried females who are keen on hiding from me. They prefer to hang out in the back near the sponge filters on most occasions and so it is very difficult to take pictures of them. I'll try to lure them out with more food.

For folks interested to know about this tank. The OEBT are kept inside a 20G Long with an insert substrate (Eco-Complete) and is fully leveraging the Shrimpy Daddy Revive Bianco Mineralizers. Being that OEBT prefer a more basic water range, I used Reive Bianco Gamma to increase the KH thus increasing the PH of this tank.  I know folks have kept OEBT in a buffering substrate (ADA AS) and in more acidic parameters with a lot of success but I'm pursuing the inert substrate because I wanted something that could basically last my forever and never require substrate swapping. So far, the method is working and the shrimps are reacting positively. 

Future plans is to cull very heavily and aggressively to keep a OEBT tank with mainly blue - dark blue colored OEBT. One of the main reasons I decided to go with OEBT over Royals is because - 

1. OEBT were more widely available. 

2. OEBT costs much less and since I haven't kept Tigers in a long time, I wanted to get my feet wet before getting the more expensive Tigers.

3. OEBT with German bloodline will become rusted as they mature. 

I really like the rusted OEBT and since they're less commonly kept now than before, it was more appealing. I do plan on getting Royals or Black Diamond Tigers in the future, but I'm very happy with my OEBT currently.  Shoot me email if you are interested to know the exact parameters the OEBT are kept in.

Until next time!

Cheers.