Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

A couple months ago, I set up a 10 gallon bare bottom tank full of Java Moss in order to better observe reproduction.

For the past month I have been watching the first 2 "pregnant" females carrying eggs. One of them died today, one day after her eggs hatched. Earlier today I observed that she was close to molting as her carapace was beginning to split, but this evening I saw that she had died before completing her molt.

Is this common? Although I occasionally do find a dead shrimp, this is the first time that I have enough background information to try to figure out what happenned.

The water in this tank has the following parameters:

pH 7.2
0 ammonia
0 nitrate
nitrate less than 5 ppm
temperature 76'F

Sorry to hear about your female shrimp.

My introduction to Cherry red shrimp was through a similar experience. I bought two cherry srimps from a local pet shop, a male and a female. The shrimp looked like they were in bad condtition as the male could barely stay upright in bag I was taking him home in. The male died about an hour after I got them home and in the tank.

However the female was a large adult carrying eggs. I was wondering when the eggs would hatch and as I watched the female, I found a tiny baby shrimp and then another. I was shocked and by the time she was done I had at leat 30 baby shrimp.

To make a longgg story shorter, the female died just after molting two days later. I think molting is a stressful process and adding too it the hatching of eggs can be the thing that may have cause the already weakened shrimp to die.

My tank is now full of the shrimp from that 30 which hatched, a few from here and there and their many offspring Enjoy the shrimplets and best wishes on the other pregnant female!

Thanks for the encouragement, Neonshrimp. I originally added 3 adult females (1 pregnant), a few assorted juveniles, and 2 adult males to this tank. All of these were offspring from my main shrimp tank.

Right now there are countless babies and I really have no reason for alarm, so I will just go with the molting stress as the most likely cause.

could there be a problem with lacking calcium? although this is prob unlikely the cause.