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Major shrimp deaths, feeling like giving them up :(

Hi Folks,
That sounds very relevant to @Nick potts' tank setup. @LondonDragon, what was your 'old OK soil'? Is there something in it that the blue shrimp may have been eating? Is @Nick potts using the same soil? Is it the Tropica stuff?
OK stands for Oliver Knott ;) the soil has been in there since 2012 at least! has a large bunch of Anubias that I did not want to disturb so in the end capped it with sand, since then the other shrimp I have in there which I got from the Shrimp King himself Chris Laukhaup at Vivarium in 2011 have since thrived also, they were not breeding that much and now there are hundreds of the little things which I have no idea what to do with them because they are not that interesting, I have a photo on my instragam account!
 
i wouldn’t worry about all that stuff.

cherries are as hard as nails given a clean tank.

to give you an idea on a sub 100L tank I usually do one massive water change followed by another. Often a few on a nano tank.

ive rescaped 30L tanks with fresh tropica soil and bunged the shrimp straight back in.

They donot mind fluctuations.

The important thing is a clean tank. Remove all the Fluval stuff, it really is horrible stuff and I think there is a lot of waste there. That is where your issues lye.

Add some soil. replant and get the shrimp back in. Large water changes daily for a week. The only caveat is donot do this with ADA Amazonia!

Just get in and do it really, donot feed them and let them do their stuff, your only job is to remineralise the fresh water somewhat and keep the tank clean. They love freshwater! The more plants the better!

Don’t overthink it. 😃

Thank you Siege.

I have just done a larger WC and had a good hover of the substrate.

As for the soil, I am going to remove completely and replace with sand, the tank is 99% epiphytes anyway.
 
VIDEO

Video of one of the survivors.

Is that fungus, infertile eggs? Of just my poor eyesight :)
Hmmm could be a few eggs quite hard to see. They’re in the right place to be eggs. I think once you up the cleanliness in this tank you’ll be able to get the numbers to rebound quite quickly. The things are like cockroaches when they get going.

cheers

conor
 
I had no luck with the different coloured shrimps. They all died on me as well. Then I purchased some red cherry shrimp from a guy locally with the same tap water as me and since then they won't stop breeding. Must have 50+ easily now.
 
Im also not too sure where this myth has come from that cherry shrimp are super sensitive and can’t hack water changes.

Me neither. I agree it's a total myth that keeps coming up, not sure why. I've kept cherries for probably over 8 years now, always with large water changes every week, more like 70%. I think when I started I was told the same, not to do large water changes on a shrimp tank.....:rolleyes: I am glad the shrimp do not read internet. Mine are tough and breed like rabbits. I only started with 5 shrimp and I have had hundreds since, kept the same way. Plants, lots of water changes and oversized filter is the combination that works for me. They also love the pre-filter sponge of the external and keep it spotless. The babies stay in the little sponge holes.
 
I wonder if different sources have different hardness? Or earlier high-grade strains being less tolerant? I'm planning on keeping cherries soon, so am watching this thread with interest.
 
Hi @sciencefiction
They also love the pre-filter sponge of the external and keep it spotless.

My Amanos are the same on an air-driven sponge filter. Shrimp seem to be 'at home' where there are optimum conditions for microorganisms (infusoria) to develop. And, there are a few liquid food suspensions, which promote this. Bacter AE seems to be one of them but I've used something called Roti-Rich. And, I think some people use Liquifry No. 1.

JPC
 
Thanks all again, you've all been a great help. Hears hoping these changes etc make a difference.

Also, there is a sponge filter in there, only there really for a feeding station as the HOB does the heavy work.
 
Well, things don't seem to be much better.

Since the last posting, I have brought water parameters up to more standard values of GH 6 KH 5 TDS 240, all other params as before.

Added some new shrimp from my LFS, only three to test. 4 days in another death and 1 I can't find, it may be in there but hidden. The 1 I can see appears good, browsing the leaves and woodwork.

Really not sure where to go from here, do I just give up on the shrimp as they are kind of sucking the fun out of things now :( More annoying is my dad's tank is barely maintained at all and never gets a WC but he has shrimp in there doing fine :banghead:
 
Hello Nick,

just wanted to sympathise with losing the shrimp. I’m gutted for you. I can’t really bring anything to the table that the very experienced guys on here have already but having read the whole thread I would humbly offer the following if for no other reason than at this point than by my reckoning you have little to lose; (This from a guy that can’t grow plants, that collects different genera of algae like football stickers but has a seemlingly healthy and gently growing community of blue neos for now by luck more than judgement). Caveat emptor.

1. I too am deeply drawn to Marks ST vids and methodology however his rigs are about as far detached from my little tank as almost could be the case - RO, he has plants but not many and almost always Sußwassertang or mosses, predominantly but not exclusively Caradina rather than Neocaradina, sponge filters on Aquel Pat Mini powerheads, cull tank etc. Rightly or wrongly I decided that I would do bigger water changes, like 40-50% as at this point in my knowledge and experience I see the sense in refreshing water in such a small closed system to replicate the mineral refreshment of nature to some extent. I was worried they would not react well but made sure to use water that was within 0.2 c of the water I was taking out. Sometimes it sits for a bit, sometimes not, always dechlorinator , in this case API Tap Water Conditioner. I think they’re fine and I can’t observe any adverse behaviour in any given subsequent 24h period having changed only this single parameter at a given point. I‘m increasingly of the belief they’re pretty tough little things and some of the turbidity I generate in weekly tank cleaning must push a lot of stuff through their little systems. I’ve even once or twice done a further 30% water change within an hour of the first if I think I need to. Marks’ Caradina I would suggest are far more demanding.

2. I also dose Bacter AE the way Mark suggests. Really to offer the babies something extra that’s mobile.19ltr tank. I just measured it out - equivalent volume of ten grains of Tropica soil powder i.e. the small grained version or half what I think looks like a rice grain. Half filled API test tube from kit in tank water, shaken, poured in return flow of filter pump, which remains on (although I see the logic of not doing so). Daily. The critters show little interest in other food sources I offer so I’m guessing they’re not starving. If I thought it was an issue though or there was a crisis and I was looking to alter a parameter I would cut that down or ditch it without fear. Wait a week, offer some of that nettle mix you have (guessing it’s MST stuff or similar)in a glass dish (so that the spread is contained and can be removed, syphoned out) and see if they’re interested. If not and doing their usual thing of nipping away at surfaces then the Bacter seems unnecessary. Mark himself warns of many people running into issues with it. Not sure if this is significant but the only time I’ve had a bunch of babies die on me was a day that I forgot to remove the glass dish rather than whip it out after 2-3 hrs and I was trying a brand and variety of snack food I had not before (and purely out of suspicion ) I never will again. Could be the leaving it down or the snack....or because the sun shines in the east. We can only be guided by as near to a systematic approach as possible and hope we’re not an outlier.

I really hope you get a handle on what’s going on and get a thriving community going. I totally get how you would be reticent about repeating this as I would be too. You are doing your best though and have the input of a group of very knowledgable people above. Good luck.
 
Really not sure where to go from here, do I just give up on the shrimp as they are kind of sucking the fun out of things now
If you've excluded the water chemistry/food/filter etc then you will need to change the tank. I've had one tank (bought second hand) that I couldn't keep shrimp in, no matter what I tried. I suspect copper leaching or something.

Or try some shrimp from your dad's tank also.
 
Thanks @Big G

If you've excluded the water chemistry/food/filter etc then you will need to change the tank. I've had one tank (bought second hand) that I couldn't keep shrimp in, no matter what I tried. I suspect copper leaching or something.

Or try some shrimp from your dad's tank also.

Hi mate. The shrimp tanks were brand new. I have no idea if a new tank could contain copper in its manufacture, but test results came back negative on copper tests.

I currently have 3 tanks sitting, I plan on leaving them for some months and trying one more time with shrimp.

Trying with a few of my dad's shrimp is a good idea.
 
G'day, very new to the group but just a suggestion I heard a while back was the incorrect silicone used in the tank construction. Some are branded "aquarium safe" etc but are not entirely so.
 
I experienced similar to you. I bought 10 really nice bloody mary shrimp and slowly these died off one by one. I then did a good clean of the tank, bought lots of things I read about, tested everything, added another 10 bloody mary and again they died off one by one. I spent hours drip acclimating them and trying to get everything perfect but it didn't seem to help.

My issues I think was that my water was too hard. My GH is 12 out the tap and I think most of the shrimp I was buying were bred in water that was around GH6. I was often seeing the white ring of death.

I bought yet another set of 10 shrimp and ended up down to my last two. I was just about to give up when I started seeing babies. I now have 50+ in the tank and they are thriving.

I did a couple of things but basically I think the key was stability and feeding:
  • Cut my tap water with 1/3 RO (I started off with distilled water from Tesco) to drop my GH to 8
  • Started doing water changes via a drip method. I have been doing about 2l a week and I started just using air line and a little tap to drip the new water back in
  • I have started regularly feeding GlasGarten Mineral Junkie (and I think this was a big factor)
  • I added an oxydator (I don't think this really made much difference in all honesty but I was grasping at straws)
  • I added some mulberry leaves every so often
I have thought about getting blue shrimp at some point going forward and if I am to do this I would start off by trying to match the parameters they were bred in. I would then very slowly change the water to my parameters. I think the main thing is that shrimp don't cope well with change.

I suspect you are experiencing different issues (I am dosing copper in my ferts) but just to highlight that I was down to two shrimp (luckily male and female) and loosing 28 shrimp. Something seems to have clicked and now they are doing great. My advice would be take things slow, hopefully the shrimp will settle down and start breeding. Once you get there then you can start tweaking the paramaters.
 
It's easy to overcomplicate shrimp keeping, speaking from experience
This is true but it's hard to understand multiple repetitive shrimp deaths (unexplained) unless you have experienced it yourself. I have vast experience in this matter in the range of $1000 worth of shrimp. I simply gave up as I couldn't find the variable that was responsible.
 
I have found that certain species of shrimp tolerate different water parameters better than others too and you must cater for each species needs.
Recently I had my red cherry shrimp population disappear for no reason, I have this colony going since 2012, and they have been doing great and always had around 50-60 shrimp in the tank, over the space of a couple of weeks most disappeared and no changes in the maintenance of the tank, so a little bizarre.
 
This is true but it's hard to understand multiple repetitive shrimp deaths (unexplained) unless you have experienced it yourself. I have vast experience in this matter in the range of $1000 worth of shrimp. I simply gave up as I couldn't find the variable that was responsible.
Discounting unknown factors, which definitely can and do occur, the point I was trying to convey was to cut back on adding anything to the water...in the example from this thread, I'd try to reduce as many factors as possible down to key qualifiers such as TDS, water hardness and so on, as a good footing to solving the issue.

OP, as others may have said, I'd test TDS, water hardness firstly, then nitrates; though in a shrimp tank bioload never should really be an issue if managed properly, still worth testing. You can then hopefully match up your water parameters accordingly with your chosen shrimp type
 
That looks like a 0.1 reading to me!
1605773955412.png

hoggie
 
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