Red Cherry Shrimps Dying Off

[insect_boy1]

Hi there, I recently bought a batch of 10 Red Cherry Shrimps a week and a half ago from a breeder on gumtree and introduced them to my planted 32L tank over approximately 2 hours of acclimatization. A few days ago, I noticed two dead shrimps, followed by another yesterday and one more today. I just witnessed another shrimp swimming sideways then slowly drifting down to the substrate and lying there upside down but later swimming back up and resting on a leaf but half of its legs were just dangling off the leaf rather than grabbing onto it like they usually do. This tank contains only RCS along with some snails. There is no CO2 injection. I do not have any recent water test results but will post them as soon as I get them. I did do a water change a week ago and had used the hot water tap to heat up the new water a bit and found out later by reading online that this might have introduced copper into the water and so I did another water change without heating up the water. What could be killing off the shrimps? The remaining shrimps (they seem to be females) appear to be relatively active but I am unsure if their activity level is normal since this is my first time keeping RCS. I'm unsure if they are dying off due to copper or ammonia in the water or maybe just bad breeding. Please advise

[Mustafa]

How old is your tank? Are the remaining shrimp walking around picking on surfaces or "actively" swimming around? Sometimes individual shrimp can die for no apparent reason but if the rest are doing fine there is no reason to panic.

[insect_boy1]

My tank is around 2 months old I believe. The remaining shrimp are picking at leaf surfaces. Was worried because the shrimp that appeared to be dying was smaller than the others. Should I just wait and see if it gets worse?

[Mustafa]

Yeah, just wait and see.

[insect_boy1]

Ok shall do! Thanks for the advice

[Mustafa]

No problem.

[Kunithemoonie]

Hello, I have a 29 gallon planted tank 2 months old. I have 4 blue endlers, 4 zebra endlers, 7 neon Tetras and 4 green neons and a long fin cory(it's only 1")(I know it's more then recommended but I keep an eye on the water parameters every two if not three days). I added 4 red cherry shrimp into the tank 2 weeks ago. One died within the day, I figured it was probably weak or something, but I found a second dead one today. My water parameters are; temperature: 76 degrees Fahrenheit, ammonia+nitrite+nitrate: 0, gh: 161.1ppm, kh: 89.5, but my ph: seems to like staying at 7.4. My phosphate used to be at 0.25 ppm but after trying to correct my ph with a phosphate buffer it reads darker then 10ppm. I was told the buffer shouldn't be a problem with the shrimp, but I am wondering if it was the cause of death. (I am also doing a face palm because I didn't read what kind of buffer it is and I believe I have a phosphate absorber in my canister filter and that's why my ph went back to 7.4 from 6.8(I think I heard/read shrimp prefer slightly acidic water) I had also added an acid buffer to bring the ph lower then 7. Another thing I started which really makes troubleshooting difficult is I started using flourish excel daily(following daily dosing instructions) which is doing a good job with the plants and reducing algae. I was also told that it shouldn't harm the shrimp. I do not inject Co2.

So far I'm wondering if it was the increased phosphorous, ph swing, or chemicals in the phosphorus buffer/acid buffer/flourish excel, or possibly a combination of all or just a batch of bad shrimp.

I'm thinking of doing 5% water changes everyday till the phosphorus goes down (so don't shock the fish). And hold off on everything and see if the surviving shrimp do better and start off with the acid buffer to bring the ph down for a couple weeks to see if that effects then the. Return to do the flourish, and completely avoid the phosphate buffer.

Opinions, ideas, criticisms?

[KenCotigirl]

Were they adult shrimp? Adults do not transfer as well as young. Also your fish will add stress. Shrimp dont handle stress well.

Ken

[Kunithemoonie]

Oh! I didn't know that thanks. My last two tanks I had red cherry shrimp in was a 10gallon with platy's that multiplied like crazy, (had an Amano shrimp first and) tried crs and the red cherrys took off, but I didn't take out the less red ones so after half a year I had hundreds of clear ones and ones with a yellowish tint instead of red. Second tank was a 5 gallon and only had shrimp, they seemed to multiply after they dwindled down to 10 shrimp, so I went with the 29 gallon.

Anyways thanks for the info!

[KenCotigirl]

In general fish and shrimp don't mix. Shrimp are fish food. Very happy that your shrimp did so well with platties. You must have had plenty of hiding places.

Ken

[Kunithemoonie]

They were red/orange platys, too small to eat a shrimp, maybe a shrimplete, but it was a fun and chaotic tank. The Platies were also constantly giving birth as well