Right I'll try to answer. lol
Ostracods tend to show up in most tanks, we just don't see them in tanks with fish as they get eaten. In invert only tanks they do better. Odd looking things, like little white round things that swim and crawl around.
I meant tadpole snails, that's what happens when you type too fast without reading what you typed thoroughly before clicking submit. lol
Not got any pics of my palmata, although not for lack of trying! To describe them mine are a sort of beige colour, with a beige stripe down their backs. They look a bit like wild type heteropoda really. Mine (really by middle daughters. lol) were tank bred, so no orange parasites in them. I'm sure once I have had these longer I will see more colour morphs showing up.
The snowballs are gorgeous, and look great in a planted tank. They are as easy to keep and breed as cherry shrimp, although a little less timid in my experience (more likely to squabble with each other). Can't be kept with cherry shrimp (probably best not to keep with other neocaridina either) as they hybridise to produce dull and sterile mutts. Here is a pic of one of my females for you:-
They really are lovely little shrimp as you can see. Bad news is there are only a few of us breeding them in the UK as yet (not such bad news for those of us breeding them though. lol), I had to import mine from Germany. I you can keep cherry shrimp though you can keep snowball shrimp. In Germany (where the white variety was first created, there is a wild variety and a blue variety as well) they are probably more popular than cherry shrimp
I'm reasonably sure that the problem with the TPN+ was a compounded problem between the copper levels in the water around here combined with the copper levels in TPN+. Separately they aren't a problem, but with the higher dosage of TPN+ I tried the levels just reached the point where the lanchesteri weren't happy with them, my cherry shrimp became touchy (hiding, losing colour and breeding less) as well but didn't lose any of these, lanchesteri would seem to be very intolerant of copper at even trace amounts. I still use TPN+, but now at 7mls a day instead of 11mls a day, which seems to be enough for my plants without upsetting my shrimp (although I am going to have to dose potassium separately, as the reduced dosage of TPN+ just isn't providing enough K, and I am getting pin holes in the older leaves of my ammania senegalensis, a classic sign of K deficiency).
I am a bit mad about inverts, especially shrimp, money and space are my biggest limiting factors.
Given space and funding I would happily fill a room with racking and tanks to breed as many of the harder to obtain species as possible.
Ade