Hello! newbie having shrimp trouble!

[mintysma]

Hi everyone!

i'm asking this as a favour to a friend; she's too young to post =)
she had a big blue cameroon shrimp, which was fine for about six months. it moulted once in that time. she introduced a second, from the same shop, and things seemed ok.
about a week later the original shrimp moulted again, and was very lethargic. a week later another moult from the same shrimp, then dead shrimp!
the second one is still ok. we haven't tested the water yet, but i was thinking maybe too low pH? she still hasn't got back to me!

what else could cause a multiple moult?

sorry about no other water parameters; this is all i can go on

[GunmetalBlue]

Hi Mintysma, welcome to the forum.

Shrimp can molt for both good and bad reasons. The good is when they shed their exoskeleton to make room for their new, growing self. The bad is they can sometimes molt as a reaction to toxins or stress caused by things such as poor water quality, poor living conditions, shipping/moving to new water parameters, etc.

IMO, it definitely sounds like the latter molt was related to a "bad" reason. Of course it could have simply died of old age, but the multiple molt sounds suspicious. Unfortunately I can't really say what exactly caused it; as you mention, there's not much info to go on. However, you and your young friend could try reading the article "Why are my shrimp dying?" from this forum: http://www.petshrimp.com/articles/whyshrimpdead.html as a starting point. That way, if anything's applicable, an attempt can be made to fix anything amiss so that the remaining shrimp has a better chance of continuing to do well. Good luck!

-GB