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21 Feb update to the saga...I'm about ready to quit trying shrimp...

13K views 126 replies 36 participants last post by  dthb4438 
#1 · (Edited)
I don't get it. My parameters all fall in line With everybody's advice and I still keep losing shrimp in the 10 gallon tank. I just got 6 nice Blues from a local LFS and they're all gone in a week. Out of the 2 broods of Cherries I had, there are only about 10-15 juvies left. I have 1 Bee and 2 "Black Cherries" left out of 4 of each. The Bee is finally saddled and now I don't even have a mate for her. I can grow snails reall well...:icon_roll :angryfire

Tommy
 
#5 ·
1. High % of shrimp from LSF that are wild caught like the blues will die.
2. Ammonia spike because overfeeding is not detectable. You might be feeding too much.
3. List your parameters, ph, kh, gh, nitrates, nitrites, temperature, water change frequency.
4. Is it tap water, well, water, RO water?
5. Do you use a water softener
6. how long has your tank been setup?
7. what brand of food do you use?
 
#12 ·
I feel ya, Tommy. I've given up on shrimp for now....Too many other things to worry about anyway. Personally, I think its my tap water, so I may give them a try again in RO water. Very Frustrating for me.Hang in There......:proud:
My Tank's also a shrimp killer.
My plants never looked better,
my fish as happy as can be,
but shrimp never last more
than a few weeks with me :icon_sad:
so I just gave up on them.
 
#8 ·
hey man I was the same way with shrimp in my 10g I couldn't keep them alive I've bought from multiple sources and still all dead. but now all mine are now berried and soon to have babies. wanna know what saved me. I cleaned out my 30g and used it for shrimp only. some told me the larger the tank the more room for error you have ;)
 
#10 · (Edited)
Here's a breif run down on my situation:

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/shrimp/45957-has-anybody-else-noticed.html#post408990

I'd would like to know what the issue is---but I don't think I am going to figure it out.



It was a 29g tank with less than 100 RCS at any given time. They would saddle, berry and reproduce---but I still got die-offs. The tank was planted.


Perhaps you have copper piping that's leaching into the water.
In my case I don't think that was it. The only copper plumbing that I have is with the Hot water heater. I got die-offs even when I only used cold water.

Maybe Tommy has copper plumbing though....Tommy?
 
#15 ·
Hi everyone! I just signed up here. I am an official assistant at the petfish.net Shrimp forum and have been breeding red cherry shrimp for over a year.

Original poster, in addition to the info the other people requested, here is other stuff we need:

1. Do you use Ammo Lock? It messes up your ammonia tests giving you false positives.

2. Do you use Prime? May cause problems in some tanks. My personal theory: Prime combines with some unknown chemical to make a chemical toxic for shrimp. 2 other people on Petfish, both who use Prime, also have problems with shrimp. That's why I use the KISS method.

3. Do you use test strips? These expire after 6 months of being opened. They may give you false readings after expiration. Use drop tests instead.
 
#18 ·
planted low tech
nitrates 5
nitrites 0
ammonia 0
ph 7.4
Gh 0
Kh aroiund 6
Copper tests 0
I'm not overfeeding, I'm barely feeding. I can keep shrimp in my 58 forever until the Discus eat them, they just don't do well in the 10 gallon shrimp only tank.

The last 2 deaths were the day after a 35% H2O change. Prime is used, as is Stability to try to keep nitrates down as I aaoriginally had high nitrates and thought that was the problem.

??????

Tommy
I quit!:icon_wink
 
#21 ·
Kinda strange you have Gh=0 with a 7.4ph and a Kh of 6. Are you sure that test kit is working? I would not recommend stability to lower nitrates. This might be a temporary fix to the problem. You can lower nitrates by adding plants.

Also, i would not recommend so large water changes in a small tank like a 10G. 20% max water change is enough.

How long has this tank be setup?What temp do you keep it? is there a big difference in the temp of the water you are pouring in with the one in the tank?Do you fertilize this tank?

Thanks
 
#20 ·
Yer not kiddin'. I've never had so much trouble trying to keep any kind of livng thing, even "rare, hard to keep" fish. :icon_ques

Tommy
 
#25 ·
Just wanted to post a clarification from Seachem on the Shaking of Prime:

The bottle can be shaken before use and it is fine. The does not have to be shaken for effective use. The contents in Prime are in solution and will work fine in either case. Prime can also be added into the water without having to do it slowly.
The link to the thread is in the Post (#24) above.

HTH
 
#26 ·
Just wanted to post a clarification from Seachem on the Shaking of Prime:



The link to the thread is in the Post (#24) above.

HTH
This is not what I as told when I emailed them about adding prime to my tank and my guppies going haywire and dying. They emailed me back saying to make sure I shake the bottle and to only add the prime to the water slowly and to make sure there was plenty of aeration. I know if I called back I would get a 3rd answer but I was told this and actually threw that bottle away. I even asked them if the solution could go bad after a certain time and they said No but I wasn't taking any chances.
 
#27 ·
Hi sunmiztres,

I'm not challenging You or what You said. I have come across other instances of seachem telephone support saying things different from what's online. Wish they would get it together in that respect.

I am just trying to clarify Seachem's position on this issue, because nowhere on the bottles does it say to shake the stuff. I've had issues that could possibly be explained--if what they told You was accurate.

We're on the same team......:proud:
 
#28 ·
NO problem :) I didn't take it personally. I just wanted people to know that something with Prime can go wrong. They had no clue why it did that. They told me to shake and all that good stuff. They even said to send them a portion of it so they could test the prime but by that time ( 2 weeks later ) I had thrown the whole 2 liter ( lost allot of money on this one ) away. It was a new bottle to. That';s why I had asked them if prime can " go bad " and they said not that they know of.

Yes we are on the same team :)
 
#30 ·
KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid. Don't use chemicals there is no proven need for. Don't use water conditioners, you don't need them. Just use a chlorine and chloramine remover.

And I'm not saying Prime kills shrimp. My theory is Prime may combine with a 2nd chemical, forming a 3rd compound which is bad for shrimp. My point: if you have shrimp dying for some unknown reason, and you use Prime, stop using Prime.

Also, if there was any copper based med used in the tank before, any time in its history, that could be leaching copper into the water and killing shrimp.

All my shrimp tanks are brand new and I've never used a copper based med, so I don't have problems. However I do feed them foods with copper sulfate, and have never had a problem. Copper sulfate must not be toxic to shrimp, it must be the elemental copper that is bad for them.
 
#31 ·
I know this is not helping, but I have a "tank of death" too.

I kept cherries once, they breed like crazy, and in a couple months time I had hundreds. One day I overdosed my CSM+B and they all died within 2 days. That was a year ago. I have tried adding cherries again three times this spring and they all die within a couple days. I have done 52+ water changes since the OD that I think caused the original die off. I have ottos and BN plecos in the tank along with mollie fry and angel fry. All the fish are fine, there's never ammonia in the water, its a densely planted 20 long. All the cherries always die within a week or two. I will not try it again.

Funniest part- I have two healthy happy bamboo shrimp hanging out in the tank no problem... I've stopped trying to figure it out.
 
#32 ·
Another unhelpful comment, but I have had no issues whatsoever.

I have put some of my shrimp through hell and back with ODs (excel, planttabbs/nitrates/phosphates, etc), huge temp changes, 4+ hour car rides, adding water straight out of the tap, etc. In 3+ months, I have had only one shrimp death. That was the day I moved them 4+ hours (~250 miles) and added cold (low 60s) water straight from the tap (old copper pipes even).

Why haven't my shrimp died? *shrug*
 
#33 ·
Well, I'm gonna keep tyring at least once more. I just got a fresh bunch of juvie Cherries From Evan that were definitely tank rasied, so I'm gonna keep at it for a little while more.:proud:

Tommy
 
#34 ·
Tommy,
Your tested parameters look great. Shrimp should do fine just based on those parameters. But there could be variables we haven't talked about.

Does anyone ever spray anything in the fish room? Like air freshener, glass cleaner, dusting spray, insecticide, bug repellant, or anything else? Those mosquito blocks (BT bacteria) will also kill inverts like shrimp.

My suggestion, just buy a brand new tank from the store. That way you can be sure it is virgin, with no chemicals put into it (hopefully). Sounds like there is some variable we just can't think of and you need a new tank.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Update 27 May 07-

There hasn't been any more "mass" deaths, the Black Cherries are doing fine, the newer Cherries from Evan seem to be doing fine, one of them was berried and she's not even done hatching out the eggs and she's saddled again. I have only seen 2 of the newborn, but they're SO small and light colored who knows how many there actually are. I got some $.30 Ghosts last night. I just noticed 2 of them are berried. One's eggs are REALLY green and you can see little eyes in them. I'm gonna assume they'll hatch any day now. So far, so good. I think I may have been doing too much. I've been just kinda letting things go, and keeping the H2O change down to 20%, not dosing anything, and using a 1/2 dose of Prime on WC's, as the label says to do if the chlorine/ammonia is low.

Tommy <9))>>{
 
#37 ·
You shouldn't keep too many variety of shrimp in one tank. One is bound to out compete the other. I think in the long run, your ghosts shrimp will out compete the cherry shrimps.
As for the water changes. Try adding your tap water into a buckett dose your dechlor there, and then add the water in to your tank. With that much water change (I mean %40) it's possible that the chlorine/chloramine may do some damage before your dechlore can take effect.
Also, some water municipality double dose your tab with chlorine once in a while to combat sudden grown in bacteria from the water resevoir. This can be the result of big rainstorm or spring time.
If possible, you may opt to dechlor with Chloram-X. Which you can dose at 1 1/2 without any harmful side effect. I usually do this when I think my tap water have a stronger chlorine smell than usual.
You may want to add a few leaves for oak leaves into your tank. Make sure there's no pesticides in it. Almond leaves is another good choice, but you might want to hold that option off untill you have cyrstal shrimps.
Your gH looks rather odd too.
 
#38 · (Edited)
Conduct- I rotate foods. I give a few pieces of the Hirabi (sp?- I'm at work & don't have the packages for reference) Crab Bites, 1/4 of a copper-free algae wafer, or a teeny bit of Tetra color bits.

Zebrapl3co-
I only have 5 Ghosts, and at least 10 Cherries. I always add the Prime to the bucket, not the tank. I may have remembered the Gh/Kh wrong. I haven't been keeping a strong tab on that. I've gotten lazy. I haven't had to keep tight tabs on the 58 for so long as it runs well by itself.

Tommy <9))>>{

EDIT- Hikari Crab Cuisine...
 
#39 ·
LS6 Tommy,
I read you are feeding algae tabs. While probably not harmful, that may not be the best thing for them. I did a survey of algae tabs at the pet store in Jan 2007. I could not find algae in the first 3 ingredients in ANY brand. That means they are mostly corn or wheat filler, sometimes fish meal. I have noticed my RCS do not care for corn or wheat. However last year I did find some algae flakes in bulk, which they did seem to like. Bulk flakes were repackaged by LFS.

Oops, another thing. I try to limit my population to 10 RCS per gallon max. That's 100 shrimp in a 10g tank. And I do weekly 50% water changes. I put the tap water in a bucket, add dechlor (for chlorine and chloramines) and then put it in the tank.
 
#40 · (Edited)
LS6 Tommy,
I read you are feeding algae tabs. While probably not harmful, that may not be the best thing for them. I did a survey of algae tabs at the pet store in Jan 2007. I could not find algae in the first 3 ingredients in ANY brand.
Oops, another thing. I try to limit my population to 10 RCS per gallon max. That's 100 shrimp in a 10g tank. And I do weekly 50% water changes. I put the tap water in a bucket, add dechlor (for chlorine and chloramines) and then put it in the tank.
My food is Omega One Veggie Rounds. The ingredients are Whole Kelp, Spirulina, Whole Salmon, Cod, Whole Herring, Seafood mix (including Krill, Rockfish, Squid, Clams Salmon eggs and Octopus) Wheat flour, Lecithin, some vitamins,blah, blah blah. They seem to like them a lot.

As for my population, I currently have under 20 shrimp total in a 10 gallon.

Tommy <9))>>{
 
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