Help - two rounds of dead shrimp

[jheadrick]

I'm eager to have found this forum, hope I can find some help. I was directed here to try and find help figuring out what is wrong with my setup. I've failed at two attempts to start a colony. I'm a veterinary surgeon, a hobby farmer, interested in exotics. My reptiles are in bioactive vivariums and I was interested in starting a self contained ecosystem for my youngest son. I had a one gallon plastic tank that I had white coral on the bottom and lava rocks on top of that. I had fan coral in for decoration (learned that was not good). I had the tank open for about 6 weeks, in the sunlight, to try and establish an algal population before introducing the shrimp. I had 10 shrimp in the first order. I could tell there were at least 6-7 after a couple of weeks, doing well. One day there was what appeared to be an algae bloom on top of the water and I couldn't see any living shrimp. That is when I wrote Petshrimp and learned about the coral. I removed this and most of the water, was happy to find out I really didn't lose many shrimp, still had 5 in there hiding in the coral. I had already placed a new order for 12 more, along with snails and an algae ball. A few days after introduction of all of those critters everything was dead. I never did see the snails. Salinity (with marine salt) and temp were all appropriate. I had this jar contained with a lid on it. Partial sun. I never did feed them formally - thought that the algae population was appropriate for starters. I'm curious if there are known toxins I could have introduced or that I can test for before trying this one last time. Thoughts?

[Mustafa]

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

Could you please post a picture of your tank? What substrate did you use? Is the "white coral" your substrate? Did you use any type of "live" products like live sand or live rocks? These shrimp are usually very easy to keep unless something in the water is poisoning them slowly. By the way, not seeing the snails does not mean anything as they substrate burrowers and spend most of their time berried in the substrate. They to tend to come out more when the lights are off at night though.