I tire of the day by day history, let us get to the good part.

My 25 gallon tank is now full of cycled tea colored water and a variety of plants. The water is reverse osmosis and I maintain a ph of about 6.8. The color is from a large piece of mopani  (boiled for 4 hours and 8 water changes) and Indian almond leaves

I started with 12, including 2 very young (about 1/8th inch) 2 weeks ago. 2 have died from unknown causes. I have not seen the very small ones in about 5 days but I think they are probably still alive somewhere.  They are all very dark and like to hide on the sponge filters or in the mopani wood.

The water is tested daily and the ph is very stable, the nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels are all non existent.

They share their tank with two oto cats, and 8 neocaridina heteropoda var. orange (ie orange “cherry” shrimp).

I added the IAL (Indian Almond Leaves) 4 days ago and since then all the shrimp have been far more active and tend to hang around the leaves as well now.

My 55 gallon tank which has normal tigers (with otos, black kuhli loaches, guppies and African dwarf frogs) has 2 female normal tigers who are close to hatching a batch of young) I plan on moving them to my Blue Tiger tank after the hatch (they have been netted off in the main tank) after the hatch until they are berried again. At which point I will return them to my 55 gallon. I hope that I can eventually get all of my Female tigers pregnant by blue tigers so I can get the blue tiger gene into my tiger population and hopefully in a few generations I can be pulling blue tigers from my tiger tank on a regular basis. This is particularly handy because the tigers in the 55 gallon tank have more competition and are generally extremely healthy and hardy by the time they reach breeding age. (the weaker ones tend to disappear, it is rare but it does happen).

I may be buying a second batch of OEBTs today, I will keep you updated.