How many ways can we kill shrimp not related to anything todo with plants and rule those out as the causes here?
1001 at least...............
Rather than doing that, I have Cherry's and CRS's, they breed and are berried.
I dose EI in these tanks, they have been set up for 1 years or more now, ADA AS, semi soft water, KH is about 30ppm, or about 1.5. GH is about 3-4.
Temps vary, but are warmer than many.
Now with high trace dosings, higher temps, a wide range of plant species, high CO2 during the light cycle, good feeding, good routine maintenance/water changes, I can rule out a lot here. Now this puts me once again into direct conflict with avoid shrimp myth promoting folks
But that's hardly an issue for me, been there done this many times with many myths.
Old hat and I have seen this same sort of mob myth making occur numerous times over the decades.
Plants, fish, algae, shrimps.........Nice thing for me is that they are easy to breed and I end up with plenty to play around with for testing. Since we assume them to more sensitive than fish, they make good test subjects. I have good renewable source so .........
One thing I've haggled about recently is the genetic quality of the shrimp themselves.
How inbred are thy?
Very very inbred and often times those sources you get them from have bred their sisters and brothers several genetations. Sick rat bastages
How could you?
Fish folks can inbred to select for certain traits, these where as well, but............then when other folks get them, they are not as selective as a knowledge person/breeder trying to selectively bred them. They just keep breeding them over and over without any outcrossing to keep them healthy.
So some will die, some will do okay then die later. They are weaker and this explains why my shrimps are tougher than other folks, I have 5 different sources of the genetic stock. So the brood will be tougher also. Many are too cheap to buy from several sources, they buy all from one group and then that's it. They have no idea the quality of the stock they bought.
Sellers are not going to charge an arm and leg for CRS's then tell you, "oh yea, BTW, they are even more sensitive because I inbred them too much", they will only say something like " yes, I used several groups to ensure some outcrossing to help them have resisntence to environmental changes."
I've ruled out things like Temp, NO3, K+, Fe, Trace dosing, ADA AS , you pick any plant species etc(this has never been shown in an aquarium for fish or inverts to date).
I'm left with some folks that claimed high grades they had where more sensitive, so I asked where the genetic stock came from, they had been inbreeding with no outcrosses at all, culling only the ones with reds and selecting only for whites, then breeding those again.
I'm not breeding for high grades really, but without knowing the past breeding history, I cannot in honesty say either way. I can buy some of the high grades and test those or if I breed some that turn out to be high grades etc...........and place them in my tanks and if no losses occur, then it might very well be all baloney.
Still, it brings up the breeding quality issue.
Fish folks are good about this, shrimp folks much less so from what I've seen.
Regards,
Tom Barr