I have been lurking in this wonderful forum for about a month now. In February I received my first juvenile Red Cherry Shrimp. Several weeks ago I purchased another small group of juveniles. My oldest group are now mature and the three females have become ovigerous during the past week! All the shrimp are housed in a shrimp only tank with java moss and some floating water sprite. I have found the answers to my questions so far by using the search function. I'm still tying to perfect the proper aquarium maintainence schedule to keep the shrimp at their happiest, but so far have noticed no casualties . The shrimp only seemed stressed immediately following a water change on a couple of ocassions and calmed down in a few minutes. I love the beauty of the adult females, but also enjoy the activity of the males (very insect like). Thanks again for the great forum.
Each week when I do a 25% water change in my shrimp tank, I refill and I keep a 5 gallon bucket of dechlorinated water stored away for use the next week. This aged water seems to be less stressful on my shrimp than water conditioned immeidately before a water change.
My shrimp do become more active immediately after a water change.
Thank you for the suggestion. I use dechlor, but am concerned about the increase in activity. Maybe it is just normal behavior. I'll try the aged water just in case .
I personally don't think aging the water makes any difference. If there is no life in the water, you are just changing the date, not the water. Most declorinators like Amquel+ or Seachem Prime work in under a minute. I've seen no difference in agitation over aged tap water vs. new tap water. When the shrimp see a change they get a little stresses and start swimming.
Newjohn- you do water changes every day, what do you see?
The only main difference between my aged water and newly conditoned water would be that the temperature of the aged water is very close to the tank temperature.
I am concerned that my cold water is too cold and don't want to use any water that has passed through the water heater since it is more likely to contain dissolved heavy metals, particularly copper.
An easy solution to cold water is the microwave. I zap a quart of watter to boiling in a pyrex container and dump it in. I keep doing that until it is at tank temperature. Normall takes me about 5-10 minutes.
. The shrimp only seemed stressed immediately following a water change on a couple of ocassions and calmed down in a few minutes. I love the beauty of the adult females, but also enjoy the activity of the males (very insect like). Thanks again for the great forum.
