So I recently had an experience that has brought me back to testing my GH each time.
Last week, I got prepped to do a water change. I filled up my jugs with RO water, added my Salty remineralizer, added my Mosura TDS Up - all according to my pre-planned measurements, mixed it well, checked the TDS which was right at 150, and then did my water change on one of my 33L tanks. As I was changing the water, I noticed that my shrimp were more active. This isn't completely unusual, as they sometimes bump up in activity with a water change, but this time, it seemed just a bit more. I kept watching them, nobody showed any signs of stress, just increased activity - similar to when the males are looking for a female that has recently molted. Anyway, after further observation, every one seemed just fine. I finished up my work and went into my office. I got to thinking about it and remembering other people's experiences on this forum, and I got to thinking that maybe there was a bit of a temperature shock. Since this is one of the tanks that my Apex controller monitors, I thought I'd just check to see what the temp reading showed during the water change. Well, it wasn't the temp that spiked, but rather this...
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Now, suddenly, I got worried, and puzzled. I racked my brain trying to figure out what had happened for my pH to spike wildly like that. I had used my normal recipe, I had spot checked my TDS, and it was right at 150ish which is what I wanted. It was stumping me as to what had happened. So, I went back up to my shelf, picked up my Salty Shrimp container, and realized that I had done everything exactly as I normally do, except that I grabbed the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ (for Neo's) rather than my Salty Shrimp GH+ that I use for the Cards. Both are large, bulk containers, both are white, but of course, they have the different labels. I didn't notice this when adding the powder that I was taking it from the wrong container for tank that I was changing. Because I had only spot checked by TDS - and with the Mosura TDS up, it was exactly where I wanted it to be, I had missed a key warning sign. I had enough water left to do a quick test, and sure enough, the GH was right at 6. When I do it with the correct Salty Shrimp GH+ powder for 5 gallons, it never goes above 5.
Once I realized my mistake, I quickly removed some more water from the tank, and started replacing it from my pure RO water storage that I have right there in the room in case of emergency. I did several iterations of removing tank water, replacing with RO, and then monitoring the Apex to see the progress. In the end, the recovery worked exactly how I wanted it to - a slow drawing of the pH back down to roughly the previous levels. I didn't want any more shocking as they had already had that. But, I did want it to work back down to normal levels. In the end, I only lost 1 shrimp about 2 days later. I'll never know for sure if it was this incident that caused it or not, but I'll tell myself it was just to be a bit more cautious in the future.
Some things that I learned from this are:
- It's very good to have emergency RO water on hand in your fish room. When you need it in a hurry, it is sure nice not to have to scramble to get it.
- I now labeled the top of my Salty container lids so that I remind myself what species should get the powder
- For me, because I keep different species in the same room, a TDS check alone is not enough. I need to take the two minutes to double check the GH.
- Get to know how your shrimp react during water changes, and watch for abnormal reaction. That hint that they were just a bit more active than normal was what led me to investigate more
- Having an Apex monitor your high end tanks is certainly overkill, but, boy, can it be handy to have the automatic monitoring in situations like this. I'd never advocate a controller as standard equipment on a high-end shrimp tank, but I can't deny it was super helpful in this situation.
Hope others can learn from my mistake here. It ended fine, but I consider myself really lucky.
