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Amano Shrimps & New Tank

shangman

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Joined
13 Jul 2020
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Location
London
Hello again!

So I have a 60L rainwater tank, which has some fish (a few otos, kuhli loaches and finally some sparkling gouramis) and shrimps in it, with a pH of 7.2, and test results at 0/0/0, I change 40% water a week, no CO2.

At first it had 15 locally-bred red cherry shrimp, but I've noticed that they have slowly disappeared over the past 2-3 months. The cherries they hid a lot (even when they were alone in the tank) so even though I had about 15 I'd only see a few a day, and now I haven't seen any in a few weeks. About a month ago I also bought some Amano shrimps (I still had cherries then), which molted fine at first so I thought were ok, but in the past 2 weeks 3 had died. I thought my water is too soft (it has a pH of 6.6 straight form the waterbutt), so I added some cuttlefish bone and some oyster shell grit when the first one died, but they've continued to die. For almost all the cherries I've never found bodies (I think maybe the Kuhlis could have eaten them?), with the amanos I do find bodies with the white ring of death on most of them. I have 4 left.

So I've bought myself a new tank just for them on my desk, a 30cm cube (couldn't fit a bigger one in my flat). It's going to be good old-fashioned London tap water, and with my remaining amanos, some nice cherries and a few snails. As my amanos are already dying, I think I want to put them in almost immediately, as they'll die anyway in my current tank. If I did water changes every day for 3 - 4 weeks, then tapered off to every other day, and planted very heavily from the start, do you think I could get away with this? I just want them to not die. I won't add any other livestock for at least 6 weeks (usually I would wait 6 weeks to add anything, doing this currently with another rainwater tank). I think I could wait 2 days to plop them in, but it seems like every day counts! I was going to put it all together this weekend.

Has anyone done this, and do you have any advice?
 
Well, when I transitioned back into the hobby from "no tanks for a few years" two years ago, I actually had a 2 gallon bowl on my desk in which I was growing out Amanos.

I was able to buy them very small- they were no bigger than a Crystal shrimp when they came to me, was told they were bred in-house by the LFS but I don't know if that claim was truthful. Yours may be quite a bit bigger than the ones I had. I discovered weeks after I moved them to a larger tank that my tap water was extremely high in nitrates.

There was a new sponge filter in the bowl. I added hornwort to help with nutrient uptake. I was not yet ready for a scape at that stage. I did a couple of PWC but mostly left it because I had the idea that a PWC would kill them (I'd never owned shrimp before that).

I still have most of these Amanos- have only lost two in the time since I did this. One died in the bowl when I decided adding H2O2 was a good plan (it wasn't, there was not enough space). The other died about a week ago in the large tank after a long life. The others are still in my 90 liter and are enormous.

I tell this story to illustrate that IMO, Amanos are nearly bulletproof, so I'd go for it if they were mine. Just make sure you feed them, because hungry Amanos have been known to prey on anything smaller than they are.
 
Fabulous, thank you for the advice and story! I've been quite worried about how bulletproof they are as they keep ying on me, but fingers crossed with lots of fresh tapwater they'll do ok :)
 
Hello again!

So I have a 60L rainwater tank, which has some fish (a few otos, kuhli loaches and finally some sparkling gouramis) and shrimps in it, with a pH of 7.2, and test results at 0/0/0, I change 40% water a week, no CO2.

At first it had 15 locally-bred red cherry shrimp, but I've noticed that they have slowly disappeared over the past 2-3 months. The cherries they hid a lot (even when they were alone in the tank) so even though I had about 15 I'd only see a few a day, and now I haven't seen any in a few weeks. About a month ago I also bought some Amano shrimps (I still had cherries then), which molted fine at first so I thought were ok, but in the past 2 weeks 3 had died. I thought my water is too soft (it has a pH of 6.6 straight form the waterbutt), so I added some cuttlefish bone and some oyster shell grit when the first one died, but they've continued to die. For almost all the cherries I've never found bodies (I think maybe the Kuhlis could have eaten them?), with the amanos I do find bodies with the white ring of death on most of them. I have 4 left.

So I've bought myself a new tank just for them on my desk, a 30cm cube (couldn't fit a bigger one in my flat). It's going to be good old-fashioned London tap water, and with my remaining amanos, some nice cherries and a few snails. As my amanos are already dying, I think I want to put them in almost immediately, as they'll die anyway in my current tank. If I did water changes every day for 3 - 4 weeks, then tapered off to every other day, and planted very heavily from the start, do you think I could get away with this? I just want them to not die. I won't add any other livestock for at least 6 weeks (usually I would wait 6 weeks to add anything, doing this currently with another rainwater tank). I think I could wait 2 days to plop them in, but it seems like every day counts! I was going to put it all together this weekend.

Has anyone done this, and do you have any advice?

Cherry's and Amano's need a GH of around 6 and upwards, and critically require Calcium in the water column to aid in shell production. Your rainwater likely has almost zero calcium, and so would certainly be contributing to the deaths and the white ring which is indicative of moulting issues. You can remineralize with a product like Salty Shrimp GH+, or raw salts, or as you have suggested use your tap water either neat or cut 50/50 with your rain water.
 
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