First off this isn't my first planted tank, but this is my first massive fail!
I'm so fed up.....

Background.

This tank has been dry started for 7 weeks. then filled for about 2 weeks before I rescaped and filled again for another 2 weeks.

Until 3 days ago I didn't have many fish or shrimp in the tank. 3 Amano to clean amd 2 Oto cats to clean

Levels were checked every few days and read normal through out the last 2 months.
Eater changes and dosed ferts, and low level of co2 pressurized.

Problems in the last week....

Plants are melting and or getting holes in them
I returned them to my 5 gallon tank, they were fine. Put them back few days ago, same problem! They start to die....

2 days ago I tore down my small tank as I'm selling it. And so I transferred all my baby shrimp and 5 neons to my current tank

Literally over night, insist cloudy water, so I checked levels. All super high, like off the chart readings..WTF

Now I can't get it under control. Lost 15 baby shrimp,so far 2 Cory cat fish.
Done 3 50% water changes and it has not helped.

Useing prime, and slime coat additive as well as a small amount of cycle.

Help!
I feel silly asking since I should probably know what I'm doing wrong!

I'd post close up pictures of plants.

Also one part you mentioned cory cats, so guessing you moved shrimp/cories/ and neons to the high tech tank? How many fish did you move exactly.

Shrimp are pretty sensitive to change of parameters and it sounds like you moved shrimp from a low tech tank to a high tech one. Ferts alone can be bad for shrimp, co2 can easily gas shrimp so you'd need more aeration. Co2 also changes water parameters so they might not like the changes when co2 is off/on. Also best of drip acclimating shrimp, so theres a number of things that could of killed them, not just the crazy parameters.

If you had the tank running fine for 2 months I'll assume it did actually cycle, but the addition of fish from the other tank was too much for the beneficial bacteria in the tank. Doubt this though since you barely added anything but with rotting plants and additional fish it could be a possibility.

Sorry I should add that not all plants are doing badly
Havering issue with staurogyne and my bylxa only


I'm just surprised the levels spiked so suddenly, and should I keep doing large water changes to lower the levels? Or be adding a chemical to lower the nitrates nitirtes and ammonia?

Thanks!

Isolate shrimp then do that. Or do it at a slow and steady rate.

Totally agree. Juvie shrimp can easily live in a bowl or jar without filtration for a week or more. Give them some moss to hang onto and they'll be fine.

Also, a knee-jerk reaction is to keep doing massive water changes, which can cause all kinds of additional problems from parameter swings, mini-cycles, etc. I had that issue a year ago and wound up losing all my shrimp. The water changes just made them die faster.

So no more water changes? how long a few days? Just let the tank do it's thing then?

It's late here but if there are shrimp in there in the am it's my day off ill retreat them to a jar, hope they live

Managed to save 15 baby shrimp...
So do I continue doing water changes? Or let the tank get and see if it fixes itself?

I would leave it be for a few days and test again.

Other odd thing..maybe.
The water is clear when Initially change water. But then in like 30mins very foggy within a hours I can't even see through it now!