[stonedaquarium]

help!!! sudden death with PFRS

hi guys... i know there are alot of more experienced people out there who are great at shrimp keeping... and i would like to solicit some advice... recently i have taken an great interest at shrimp keeping... started out with a small colony of Fire reds. was ecstatic that last week several of them have berried. then this past two days... they all have been hiding and not eating at all... which was kinda odd... all seem normal till about 2 days ago when i planted some new plants into the tank. and i guess it created a bit of a stir in the tank. but other than that things like usual.

I do my normal routine.. standard EI dosing, 50% WC at the end of the week. NH4 @ zero,
Nitrates at 15ppm as its planted. and i use prime for my water conditioner. AFter each wC i dose a good 20 ml of stress zyme to replace the beneficial bacteria lost in the WC.

I am saddened to have lost one very red berried shrimp. and now all of them are hiding by the sides of the tank. and have not been eating.

I did a partial WC today to see if it would stir things up a bit or change things but to no avail... I have seen on of the berried shrimps losing her eggs... i dont think they hatched as i have not seen any shrimplets in the tank...

What should i do? i dont want to lose any more... or is there still a way for me to turn things around... I would appreciate all the help...

Thank you in advance​

 

[soc200]

Shrimp are fairly sensitive to changes in water parameters. I don't think you'll find many people that recommend more than a 10-20% wc...once a week...or a little as once a month.

My first question would be where did you get the water? Have you checked the water to see if the parameters are similar to the tank water? In my local, the tap water changes drastically throughout the year...which ultimately forced me to use ro/di and reconstitute the water to keep stability. My water would vary from ph of 7-8.5. My shrimp did something very similar to what you described as they started dying.

My suggestion would be to stop doing large water changes and investigate your tank parameters and water supply for toxic conditions. keep any eye out for odd looking characteristics with your shrimp too...parasites, fungus, etc. Also, shrimp have a very small bioload. There should be no reason to add stress zyme. The bacteria colonies are in your filter media...not your water. Something like Prime should be all you need if you are getting rid of chlorine and ammonia.

Before I got an ro/di unit to get pure water...I was using $0.67/gal of distilled water from kroger. It was very cheap since I only wc 10% every 2 weeks or so. If you use distilled water, you need to reconstitute it with something like fluval shrimp mineral supplement...Mordalpus sold me a bottle for around $5-10 that will last years...you buy the stuff on Amazon and other sites as well.

Hope that helps.

 

[stonedaquarium]

I dose fluval shrimp mineral supplement too every time i do a water change. my ph is fairly constant from my tap... its just weird that they acted this way... what stuff should i look out for....? I just tested my water and the nitrates are at 10ppm as its a planted tank... NH4 is at zero. so do you recommend me reducing the frequency and amount of water changes then? one main reason why i do major water changes was part of the EI dosing regime... that you are supposed to d a big WC after the end of the cycle to reset the parameters.

 

[GeToChKn]

The fluval stuff is really only needed for RO/DI water. If you're using tap water, you don't need to add anything else to it.

 

[HolyAngel]

Oh no, check that gh/kh! If you've been dosing mineral supplement with tap water that's a big no-no and your water could be hard as rock right now. Also, are you dosing excel with that EI or using co2?

 

[RandomMan]

No need to be dosing stress zyme. A water change isn't going to hurt your biological filtration.

When you are doing the water change, if you also move stuff around, or just agitate the substrate too much, you might create a short ammonia spike. It might last a few hours, but it can be enough to take out some shrimp. Shrimp are also very sensitive to quick temperature changes. So that's something else to watch out for when doing water changes.

And lastly, there's always a chance you had some lotion or something on your hands when you did the change, and that got in the water.

 

[stonedaquarium]

Oh no, check that gh/kh! If you've been dosing mineral supplement with tap water that's a big no-no and your water could be hard as rock right now. Also, are you dosing excel with that EI or using co2?

Ok i might do that... I have not tested the GH or the KH... I am also dosing EI and CO2. i have cut back on my EI dosing today to observe them... today is already day 3 of them hiding and if this continues on... im afraid i might lose my whole colony.

what happens to cherries if the water gets to be too hard?

 

[GeToChKn]

Could be the CO2 as well. You can have shrimp in a fully planted tank with CO2 to some extent, but if you really want a tank to show off your shrimp, no CO2, no Excel, no ferts, no real plants other than floating and some mosses. I found its more of a 1 or the other.

 

[stonedaquarium]

i might cut back on the CO2 then... but right now what do you suggest i would do? Getochkn, hows the water out there in ontario... here in BC its pretty soft... as far is the last time i checked. but it was funny you mentioned the CO2 coz most of my colony had been in the tank for more than 2 weeks now and it had been running with CO2 eversince no problem... its just these past 3 days which have caused the shrimp to act up. I just did a partial water change last night... and i wonder if i should do another water change in the next few days or let them adjust to the water... i might stop EI dosing right now and see what happens...

how often would you guys change your water in shrimp tanks?

 

[HolyAngel]

well for crs and the like i only change maybe 10% every two-four weeks, just depends on if the nitrates/tds builds up to warrant more/sooner. Otherwise just top offs with RO water.

 

[stonedaquarium]

what is RO water?

 

[HolyAngel]

reverse osmosis, basically totally purified drinking water, it's cleaner than Distilled

 

[stonedaquarium]

will try to keep that in mind... right now what do you suggest i do to turn things around in my tank? hopefully i dont lose anymore...

 

[GDP]

reverse osmosis, basically totally purified drinking water, it's cleaner than Distilled

Actually you have that backwards. Distilled is the purest form of h20 as it is collected steam. RO water has a TDS of about 30 I believe and distilled is 0.

 

[HolyAngel]

Edit: Hmm my bad, you may be right and I was mistaken

 

[stonedaquarium]

ok guys... i managed to change a few things with my tank i dropped the temp down to below 80 degrees. its about 75F right now... and i tested my GH in my tank it read about 180GH and KH 70... based on the conversion on the nutrafin GH/KH test kit it read about 10Dh? is that ok..? nitrate at 10ppm and Ammonia = 0 and Ph between 6.5to 6.8. Holy angel, I tested my water and it read 20GH. which is pretty soft i think?? i have seen some shrimps come out but still not eating like they used to be... hopefully the others come out and regain back their active behavior prior to them going into hiding

 

[RandomMan]

RODI will get you down to a TDS of 0-3.

 

[stonedaquarium]

sorry what is RODI and how do you measure TDS or get it to 0 or 3?

 

[HolyAngel]

A dGH of 20 is hard as rock basically. 0-4 dgh is soft water, ~5-8 is moderately hard, and anything over 10 is definitely hard water.
RODI is using both Techniques to purify the water, RO takes out most things, and then you distill that and you have pretty much pure as it gets water. You can buy water that comes this way or do it yourself.

 

[stonedaquarium]

holyangel, what test kit are you using? sorry this is my 1st time reading a GH or KH test kit. when i did my test (nutrafin test kit for Gh/KH) it gave me a reading of 180GH, and i dunno if i did this correctly but the instructions told me to multiply the GH x 0.056 to get the Dh? so i did 180 x 0.056 = 10.08 Dh? is that correct or is this value equivalent to 10.08 Dgh?

whatst he ideal hardness for PFRS ?