HELP! Cherries keep dying!

[yorris]

Hi! I am hoping maybe to get some help with my cherry shrimp. I have purchased 3 batches from an online vendor, and they are fine at first, then over time, they die one by one. I have had a few batches of babies from some females that arrived already berried, and one batch on my own, but in general, they don't breed, or the few rare times they have, they drop the eggs. They are not as active as they should be either. I have searched the Web for answers, but come up empty. I love these shrimps and want to have a happy colony! Here is where things are now: The tank is 5.5 gallons, with built in filter, which contains carbon and a little crushed coral. I do not change the filter out. It is over a year old, and I cycled it very well before any life was put in. It is fairly heavily planted with java moss, fern and small anubias. There are a few small rocks that some plants are attached to, and a few small pieces of drift wood. The substrate is black aquarium gravel. It is heated and stays 76-78. The tank lights are on during the day, off at night. I do not use any CO2 or ferts. The only chemical I use is Seachem Prime for new water (and when I set it up). I do a 10% weekly water change, with tap water, treated with Prime, temperature matched and added slowly to the filter area. The surface is well agitated with a small airstone. There is a little bit of a current at the surface due to the flow from the filter. The ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, chlorine, chloramine always read 0, and I use a dropper test. PH is 7.6 and is steady that I know of. I do use a strip test for KH, which is 80 ppm, and GH is 300 or more ppm. I do not know what my TDS is. I have tested for copper. It was 0. There are a few existing shrimps from a batch of babies I did have several months back, and maybe two from the last 10 I ordered not even a month ago. There is one small horned nerite snail, which seems fine, and some pond snails that came in on the wood. A few of them die here and there, and they are not reproducing a lot lately. There is also a tiny baby guppy that I rescued months ago in there. Interestingly, she has not grown at all. The plants are doing great. I feed a super tiny bit of crushed up fish food for the guppy daily, and will drop a very tiny piece of algae wafer in from time to time. The dead shrimp look normal, and do not act ill, I just find them dead. A few have a whitish band between the tail and thorax, but I see successful molts too. Yesterday I found 4 total laying there dead. Two looked normal, two had the white band. This is the most to die in one day, and usually it’s just here and there. Is it my KH, GH or TDS? I can’t figure it out. Thank you…

[Mustafa]

As always you may have a combination of issues. First, if the shrimp you are purchasing are imported as opposed to bred by a local/domestic breeder, then more likely than not they are simply going to die as they went through lots of stress during importation. Second...I would double dose prime. In many areas one dose of prime is not enough to completely eliminate chloramines...a tiny amount is enough to cause chronic problems that are hard to diagnose. Third...get your Kh down to 10-30 ppm (or 0 to just under 2 depending on test kit). That will fix your pH problems. Your pH is probably higher than 7.6 but your test kit only goes to that high (right?). You can get your kH down with RO water. And stop the 10 percent water changes every week....not needed, especially since you have a tiny population of shrimp. Only replace twice the amount that evaporates once in a while for now.

[yorris]

Thank you very much for your reply! I will try what you suggest! I do have a high Ph test kit, so I will use that and see where the Ph is. I have ordered a TDS meter and a drop GH / KH test kit too. I stopped the water changes, and have just been topping off. Should I start topping off with just RO water, or a mix of my tap and RO? Should I test all these parameters daily for a while? Also, should I remove the crushed coral I put in the filter? It's been in there several months, but my readings were acidic before I put that in. After I put it in, that's when I got them to breed and they seemed happier, for a while anyway. LOL. How will I know when it's safe to buy another batch? I hate to keep getting them only for the poor things to die. Thank you!

[yorris]

One more question: should I re-mineralize the RO water with something like Salty Shrimp? I don't have any of it, but read about it. Thanks!

[Mustafa]

No need to remineralize. Just cut your already dechlorinated tap water with RO water. I'd say that starting out with 2 parts RO and one part tap should get you closer to the desired results. Just test the kh after mixing and decide if you need more RO water in the mix. As for the crushed coral..I would not put it in the filter. The filter tends to be really acidic and dissolve too much calcium carbonate (which increases your kh) from the coral. Just put half a handful or so somewhere in the tank where it can slowly buffer.