Hello,
I got some of the Hawaiian Red Shimp around November 20 and 3 out of 10 of them have died so far in the last 2 weeks. I’m really scared that they’re going to be dying off one by one because that’s what happened so far. I followed all the instructions to set up the tank, I ordered sand and salt from your website and am using distilled water. I’m not really sure how I’m doing with the food. I had moss balls in the tank but they started to look like they were dying a little and I took them out and then I found a dead shrimp. I then ordered a herbivore shrimp food for them and I’m not sure if they ate it. It said to remove any uneaten food after a day to prevent water fouling. But it looked like it kinda exploded and when I tried to remove it, it broke down and scattered everywhere like dust.
I used the black sand from your website, I have half an eggshell (washed), and a small tree-looking deco in the corner that I got from petco. I asked if it was safe for shrimp and they said yes and I also washed it beforehand.I found one dead after removing the moss balls like I mentioned, which was maybe about 1.5 weeks ago. Another died several days later and then I bought the shrimp food I mentioned which was last week (Dec 3) and I found one dead in morning on Dec 7.
Please help, I really don’t want them to die off.
Thank you.
In need of help
Moderator: Mustafa
Re: In need of help
I’m only getting started myself so I am not sure if this is good advice but I’ve done a lot of research in the last month about all sorts of problems you can encounter.
Do you happen to have saved some of the water the shrimp came in?
Maybe you can put one shrimp back into that original water and see if it lives and perks up after a day or two. That water should already have algae that it can eat. So don’t feed. If it does perk up then you may have a water problem associated with a tank that’s not cycled completely. Do you have a test kit? If not bring a small amount of your water to a place like Petsmart and they will test it for you using their strips which are fast. Since it takes longer they won’t do the test tube kits but if you want a piece of mind I would invest in a water test kit.
Could you try loosening the lid for a bit more air exchange? Or put a cookie cooling mesh between so the tank can breathe? I wonder if you cycled the tank with the lid completely closed like in the pic?
Another idea I had was to remove the tree. I don’t think the toxins released from plastics will hurt fish because they are relatively large but compared to the tiny shrimp anything barely detectable would affect them. It’s as if I give an adult tyvenol to a baby that’s ten pounds. It will harm them.
One more thought that crossed my mind was your salinity. If you go to Petco and get an Imaginarium Refractometer which will be about $25 then measure the salinity. You will need distilled water which you already have it sounds like. That will help you set the meter to 0 with distilled then you measure your tanks water. Much easier to use than the tool looks. I have the same Moss ball and algae from Petshrimp so it’s been living in my tank without any shrimp nor other animals fine with salinity 1.010. Did you save some of the salt from pet shrimp? If not pick up a small container of Instant Ocean or whatever marine salt they have and see if you need to add salt. If salinity too high then have some distilled water on hand to dilute slowly until you get to 1.010.
Hopefully someone else who’s kept these shrimps longer can answer your inquiry.
Do you happen to have saved some of the water the shrimp came in?
Maybe you can put one shrimp back into that original water and see if it lives and perks up after a day or two. That water should already have algae that it can eat. So don’t feed. If it does perk up then you may have a water problem associated with a tank that’s not cycled completely. Do you have a test kit? If not bring a small amount of your water to a place like Petsmart and they will test it for you using their strips which are fast. Since it takes longer they won’t do the test tube kits but if you want a piece of mind I would invest in a water test kit.
Could you try loosening the lid for a bit more air exchange? Or put a cookie cooling mesh between so the tank can breathe? I wonder if you cycled the tank with the lid completely closed like in the pic?
Another idea I had was to remove the tree. I don’t think the toxins released from plastics will hurt fish because they are relatively large but compared to the tiny shrimp anything barely detectable would affect them. It’s as if I give an adult tyvenol to a baby that’s ten pounds. It will harm them.
One more thought that crossed my mind was your salinity. If you go to Petco and get an Imaginarium Refractometer which will be about $25 then measure the salinity. You will need distilled water which you already have it sounds like. That will help you set the meter to 0 with distilled then you measure your tanks water. Much easier to use than the tool looks. I have the same Moss ball and algae from Petshrimp so it’s been living in my tank without any shrimp nor other animals fine with salinity 1.010. Did you save some of the salt from pet shrimp? If not pick up a small container of Instant Ocean or whatever marine salt they have and see if you need to add salt. If salinity too high then have some distilled water on hand to dilute slowly until you get to 1.010.
Hopefully someone else who’s kept these shrimps longer can answer your inquiry.
Last edited by Bluemonk on Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: In need of help
I would suggest leaving the top open to promote better gas exchange. In sealed environments, at least 25% of the volume of the container needs to be air space. The gas exchange is critical to survival of any aquatic species and these shrimp are no exception. Also, do not feed as much. A few grains of food once a week is more than enough.
-
Nellyville41
- Shrimp
- Posts: 156
- Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:01 pm
Re: In need of help
Was your tank cycled before you added them in? That egg shell is pretty big but I don’t know if that mattered. Open your jar. A container that small has no room for error. As for feeding, all I do is take one tiny fish pellet and crush it to dust and sprinkle on top. If your tank isn’t cycled, it probably can’t handle the remaining food. My advice would be to do a water change. Half the salinity of sea water. I didn’t use any test kits or anything like that nature.
Re: In need of help
How's your jar doing now? At the very least you can pull your shrimp out and start all over with new water if that's a concern. Also I would remove the egg shell as it's not necessary. If you were keeping FW snails or shrimp I could understand that but for the Opae Ula you don't. I have a quart jar that just has lava rocks & a black sea fan. It done great over the last 4 years and breeds from time to time. I set up a 5 gallon tank back in August with just a handful of lava rocks & macro algae. There's already been 4 berried females which released. Nothing else as far as substrate is concerned. Based on what I've seen the best way may be just lava rocks & water.