Well THAT sure was stressful...assisted molting
 

I was changing out the spraybar in my OEBT tank when I noticed some activity. Looked down and one of my OEBTs was stuck in a molt. I noticed her because two others ran to her 'assistance' (if you call assistance trying eat her I suppose). I don't have but a handful of OEBTs so even one death makes a huge dent in the population. After some fancy finagling I managed to scoop her out into a bowl. With shaky hands, a LOT of swearing and a kabob skewer and plant tweezers I somehow managed to get her out. I tried for a good 10 minutes when I finally got the front legs (the molted legs, not her good legs) and grabbed with the tweezers and shook her back and forth a few times and she fell right out of the skin, got upright and swam around. Of course, now I pray she makes it through the stress and that I didn't injure her further in my attempts to help. She looks ok...just very tired. Good gravy that was nerve wracking. Now to try to figure out why she ran into issues in the first place.

*hug*

You are the crustacean midwife supreme!

Haha, I don't know about that! I got into shrimp to relax and enjoy and it's been sooooo stressful lately! Dang things!

Nice job! You should try and figure out if there's a reason why she almost failed to molt.

Yeah, that's my main concern right now. Shall be testing params tomorrow. I've been trying to get the GH lowered and have gotten it down from 9 to 7 last I checked. I'll check tomorrow and see where it's at. But I've been lowering it because they seemed to be having more molting problems when my KH and GH got high. Before I had KH at 0 and GH at 6 and they weren't having any issues molting that I saw. Trying to do a gradual lower but just started doing it last week so might not have been enough time to begin correcting anything yet.

Hope he or she makes it, sounded stressful for both of you!

it will make it, I did that with 2 of my OEBT months ago. One seemed to be missing a leg or 2, but next molt was fine. They live and are still going strong I found mine to be low GH, so I raised my TDS up a little and made sure my gh was no less than 5. never had this issue since. I also thought I might have been giving a little to high of a protien diet so I also feed calcium suppliments in spinach more often, and dose with Calcium Mont every water change. A nice size pinch.

Great job.! I would have probably killed the shrimp trying to help.

I needed a drink in the worst way when that was all over. LOL! She's still ok today though very still on a plant...no doubt just cause she molted. It AMAZED me how quick those other two were on her. She couldn't have been stuck long when I found her so it wasn't like she was dead. She was just stuck and those two made a beeline for her. I had to knock them off of her to get her out.

What's your KH if you don't mind me asking? I think my issue was/is a combo of GH and KH both high. I'd like to get the GH back down to 6 since everyone was molting great then and get that KH back down to 0 or 1. I also think they just aren't too keen with my tap water so I'm going to be switching that tank over slowly to remineralized RO. I feel like I have a lot more control over that than the tap anyway.

Jaime, you have such STRESSFUL tigers! Lol. I sware they are doing this on purpose to you lol.

clay's on the way. :)

check out the gh of the water

I hear you about the purported soothing properties of having aquaria!

*was recently anxiously peering into her own tank looking for the ninja-like hidden berried females that used to parade so shamelessly before her eyes*

GH is still 9 just check it an hour ago. Got the KH down to 4..GH isn't budging. Going to do a heavier water change tomorrow and go lighter with the minerals and see if I can't get a bigger drop on the GH.