Can I save my shrimp?

[Kjoygray75]

I've had a 5g tank (cycled beforehand) with shrimp in it for about a week and they were doing fine, I even had a few berried females. I have a sponge filter in the corner on low. I was afraid of salt creep over time (the filter splashes water onto the glass lid), so I removed the sponge filter and topped off with what I thought was a small amount of distilled water... my shrimp are now all pale white and swimming around frantically. I checked my salinity near the top of my tank and it's gone from about 1.015 to 1.012... or 20 to 16. It's slightly higher near the bottom, but still lower than it was.

The shrimp are definitely shocked. They females have dumped most of their eggs and they are all pale white and will not calm down. I feel awful and like I might have just killed all my shrimp. I put the sponge filter back in to help circulate the water and left it. I feel like if I change anything now it will make it worse.

What should I do? How can I properly raise the salinity back to where it was?

[ryangiggs]

From my experience... i find that opae ula to be very hardy... a sudden change in salinity will not affect them much... yes they may turn pale for a while... but it will slowly regain back the color in a few days...

[JoeG]

Also anytime anything is moved around in their tank it causes them to loose color and swim around a lot. The filter was removed, water was added, filter reinstalled, each thing could have them loosing color for awhile. Don’t panic, they will settle down.

Sorry, I didn’t address the salinity issue. As the water evaporates the salinity increases, (water evaporates, salt doesn’t), so when you top off with distilled water the salinity will go back, more or less, to where it was originally. There is no need to circulate it with a filter to equalize it.

[Kjoygray75]

Thanks for the assurance, I went ahead and took the filter out last night. Checked this morning and they're looking better and no deaths. Losing the eggs is dissapointing but I guess something else could have caused that (one berried female I see was only carrying one egg, this morning I can't see any unfortunately)

[ryangiggs]

Maybe the berried females did not drop the eggs... maybe it had released as floaters... and it got stuck at the filter... shine a strong light at one location for a while... if there are any surviving floaters they will be attracted towards the light...

[Kjoygray75]

Maybe the berried females did not drop the eggs... maybe it had released as floaters... and it got stuck at the filter... shine a strong light at one location for a while... if there are any surviving floaters they will be attracted towards the light...

The berried female did show up again, hiding in the rocks I presume. I guess I was worried over nothing this whole time

The others only have 1-3 eggs left, I love this one that is still carrying many.