Adult male blue prawn losing claws when shedding?

[demonte1997]

Not sure why this happened but both of my males (in separate tanks) lost their claws on their most recent shed.

[Mustafa]

That tends to happen when something goes wrong with the molt (obviously). Water parameters, and the way they adversely affect your shrimp, are usually what cause problematic molts. The only thing you can really do is see what your nitrate/ammonia etc. levels are, and maybe perform more frequent water changes combined with less feeding. Then hope for the best...

[demonte1997]

Thanks for the reply.

The first one to lose its claws shed again today. This is interesting because the shed frequency was rather quick. It only took 12 days for him to shed this time, whereas, the prior shed took two and a half months. I have a few theories about this.

1. The prior shed was not optimal so it became delayed. This could have been caused by a number of factors, including transferring him into a different tank.

2. For survival purposes, prawn shed frequency increases in order to regrow their claws.

Wonder if there is credence to the second theory...

I need to figure out with that kh and gh levels are. Admittedly, I don't have a test kit for that.

[Mustafa]

Don't worry about a gh test kit unless it's bundled with a kh test kit. What you need is kh, ph and nitrate test kits. I'd measure nitrate...high nitrate levels can also cause what you are describing. With the amount of food these guys consume it would not be surprising to see your nitrate levels coming in sky high.

[demonte1997]

Thank you for the info. I have a Nitrate test kit on the way. In the meantime, I am increasing their water change frequency while also ramping down the feeding.

[demonte1997]

Good news. Nitrate was non-existent. Still not sure why the bad sheds. Possibly disturbed them too much during the prior one (although not sure how because I walk on egg shells when i think they are ready to go). Will keep everyone posted.

Time for 125 gallon tank.

Thanks again

[Mustafa]

Hmm....something is wrong here, though. In a heavily fed tank like that (and I know these shrimp eat like pigs) there should be nitrate. The shrimp will produce plenty of ammonia which will be metabolized by bacteria into nitrite, and then to nitrate by other bacteria. If you don't have nitrate, you may have some amount of nitrite or ammonia...you may want to test that, too. If the shrimp is doing fine, though, I would not mess with the tank too much. Cycling issues (or possibly re-cycling issues in this case) tend to fix themselves after a while.