6+ dead shrimp at once....

[BigTom]

Hi all, first post so go easy on me! I added a few plants on Saturday morning that my sister had given to me (came in from far east). these had been soaked for over a week and then added to my tank. within an 1-2hours all of my RCS were dead or dying, pink, on side with a inverted curvature of their back, some still kicked for a short while, put them in an aerated 2nd tank with fresh treated water i was using to spur on some Riccia.

My opinion is that some nasty lingering pesticides were used on the plants and caused the mass die off on my RCS.I have carried out a 30% wc every 2days since, turned up the heat a bit, added carbon to external canister and increased the light. reading from an earlier thread this can help speed up the breakdown of some of the chemicals. Is there an easy way to know when the coast is clear to add shrimp again? about half were all saddled and hoped they would breed, but the die off obviously put pay to that.

Any advice?

Ryan

Hi Ryan.

Really sorry to hear that, I;ve been through the same thing myself.

There's a very informative thread here from a few months ago where we discussed this in depth - Wipe Out | Page 6 | UK Aquatic Plant Society

I would be doing repeated 100% water changes, and running as much absorbtive media as possible (carbon, purigen, cuprisorb, polyfilter, whatever you can get). That's what I did when it happened to me and eventually got the tank safe again.

When you're ready to test the waters there's not much you can do except put in a test subject... you could try with other inverts like daphnia and snails first but at some point you'll need to put a shrimp in. Good news is the symptoms come on very quickly and are extremely obvious, so if it still toxic you can net him out again straight away.