Now i've started to see my Opae Ula venturing out from the shadows on a regular basis I thought i'd start a thread and explain how my tank experience has gone so far.
Initially I wanted to try growing a green patch of dwarf hairgrass within the tank. It's known to have some brackish tolerance so I thought it may work. I knew that there would definitely have to be some sort of fertilisation in order for the dwarf hairgrass to grow so I decided to use some ADA Aquasoil in part of the tank where the hairgrass would be planted.
I left the tank like the last picture for a few weeks to give the hairgrass a chance to grow itself in before fully immersing it. Using a high powered LED lamp and periodically misting the hairgrass so it wouldn't dry out too muc i'd hoped it would flourish! Despite my efforts there wasn't much growth... I decided to fully flood the tank about two weeks later, and then slowly added marine salt over the course of another few weeks. After about 3 weeks of the tank being flooded, and about 1/2 of the salt I needed added to the water, the dwarf hairgrass didn't look very happy at all so decided to remove it.
Some unspecified amount of time later I decided to add the rest of the marine salt and some Chaetomorpha (it's no dwarf hairgrass but it'll have to do!) , and a day after that I put 10 Opae Ula in. I saw them swimming around for around 24 hours, but then I didn't see any for about a week! After days of no shrimp I succumbed to the urge to remove some rocks to make sure they weren't all dead... I found out they weren't! I was worried they may be hiding due to high nitrates or due to the fact I used tap water though so I added a bag of purigen to be safe. I was also worried about the salinity of the water and suspected my hydrometer was not giving me acurate readings so got the water checked at my local fish shop. The salinity was fine! Although there was a weird layer of salt at the bottom of the tank for a bit which I mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=189 . No sign of that anymore.
So after a month they tend to avoid the bright LED during the day but they have started coming out during the evening a lot more. I can actually watch them now!
Here's how the tank looks now. Not the greatest pics, sorry!
Two little red dots in there somewhere!
Hope this post helps someone. I'll update this thread if anything changes!
Initially I wanted to try growing a green patch of dwarf hairgrass within the tank. It's known to have some brackish tolerance so I thought it may work. I knew that there would definitely have to be some sort of fertilisation in order for the dwarf hairgrass to grow so I decided to use some ADA Aquasoil in part of the tank where the hairgrass would be planted.
I left the tank like the last picture for a few weeks to give the hairgrass a chance to grow itself in before fully immersing it. Using a high powered LED lamp and periodically misting the hairgrass so it wouldn't dry out too muc i'd hoped it would flourish! Despite my efforts there wasn't much growth... I decided to fully flood the tank about two weeks later, and then slowly added marine salt over the course of another few weeks. After about 3 weeks of the tank being flooded, and about 1/2 of the salt I needed added to the water, the dwarf hairgrass didn't look very happy at all so decided to remove it.
Some unspecified amount of time later
I decided to add the rest of the marine salt and some Chaetomorpha (it's no dwarf hairgrass but it'll have to do!) , and a day after that I put 10 Opae Ula in. I saw them swimming around for around 24 hours, but then I didn't see any for about a week! After days of no shrimp I succumbed to the urge to remove some rocks to make sure they weren't all dead... I found out they weren't! I was worried they may be hiding due to high nitrates or due to the fact I used tap water though so I added a bag of purigen to be safe. I was also worried about the salinity of the water and suspected my hydrometer was not giving me acurate readings so got the water checked at my local fish shop. The salinity was fine! Although there was a weird layer of salt at the bottom of the tank for a bit which I mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=189 . No sign of that anymore.So after a month they tend to avoid the bright LED during the day but they have started coming out during the evening a lot more. I can actually watch them now!
Here's how the tank looks now. Not the greatest pics, sorry!
Two little red dots in there somewhere!Hope this post helps someone. I'll update this thread if anything changes!
how is the temperature?
