First off, delighted to read that your shrimp are doing better.
See below for my comments.
southerndesert wrote:I think Mustafa would have told me the same if we would have discussed feeding, but I hadn't considered it.
Naahhh....I wouldn't have said the same thing.
What seeming *everyone* in the shrimp world (experienced or not) does not realize is that shrimp are not vegeterian. Their primary food is biofilm. Biofilm has a *very high* protein content, at least as high or higher than the most protein-rich commercial fish foods out there, as it consists of lots of various micro-organisms. That's the primary food of dwarf shrimp. Yes, they pick on algae too and also digest it, but even algae has *much higher* protein content than vegetables. In addition to that biofilm also grows on the algae boosting their protein content even more. So, people
wrongly conclude that "since shrimp eat algae and algae are plants I should feed my shrimp mostly plant materials (such as veggies, kelp and whatnot) since they are vegetarian (or mostly vegeterian)." That shrimp need a low protein diet is one of the biggest myths that's still floating out there (but watch how everyone after reading this will claim that they've known it all along
).
Now that being said and being one with an open mind I gave my BT some boiled spinach and broccoli at night and regular food in the day and still am and I have had no deaths, the shrimp mob the cooked veggies and eat it amazingly fast (in all my tanks)
As you note below, just because two things happen at the same time does not mean they ae interconnected. In this case they may be interconnected as you now cut out one more factor of pollution (the second feeding of commercial food...at night). Commercial foods leach out a lot more nutrients (and thus increasing the organic load of the water and causing bacterial levels to rise) than veggies. If you just had cut out the night feeding you may have had success, too. The veggies don't leach nearly as much but are also nowhere near as nutritious. And if you leave veggies in there too long you'll get a bacterial bloom, too.
Yup I know there is a possibility of a coincidence here and the problem passed on it's own, but I feel the addition of vitamins and nutrients not available in my processed foods could well have had a major influence in the solving of my issues. I mean improper nutrient and vitamin intake will definitely cause stress right?
There are vitamins in processed foods, plus, whatever they may not get from the food they get from picking at biofilm (which exists in everyone's tanks even if you don't see it). It's hard to feed shrimp "improperly" with all the biofilm growing everywhere but the best way of doing it is to give them too many veggies. I never feed any veggies whatsoever for a reason. Been there done that.
Either way for now things are back to normal, I have learned yet another possible valuable lesson.... I was just not paying attention to how important diet is with these voratious little omnivores perhaps....
I hope the lesson you learned is that there are still a lot of myths out there that *seem* logical and *appear* to work in a given situation but that such "logic" and appearance is based on people's lack of knowledge about animals, their natural diets and their habitats. As I have said for years now, in almost every instance when problems occur, if you stop feeding and stop messing with the tank (except for normal maintenance) the problem will go away. It's just that people try all kinds of "advice" from well-meaning people, or experiment around to look for solutions themselves, and if the problem happens to resolve itself over time, the advice or experiment is credited for the resolution of the issue. There are really only a few things that cause the vast majority of the problems in shrimp tanks. Protein content of commercially prepared fish food is not one them (exept if you want to argue that more protein causes more bacterial blooms, but then that just means you're overfeeding).
