Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I have been losing a lot of my shrimp My water parameters test fine...ph is about 7.5 temp about 76 I do regular water changes every week -- all the other invertebrates(dwarf crayfish and snails) are fine!...I even lost my wood shrimp a few days ago....it's funny I was so worried about the Hawaiian reds, and they are perfectly fine -- it's the cherries, greens, rainbows, amanos and wood shrimp that are dying....the red-nose and ghost shrimp seem ok. My large female amano -- just molted and turned very red almost like a huge cherry shrimp and was missing an eye!! I have put her in my 'safe' tank -- it's the empty FW tank I had originally been cycling for the hawaiian reds...I have moved most of my shrimp to this tank which is also stuffed with java and Christmas moss...I don't have a heater in there right now so the water is about 70 -- should I add a heater...I have lost a couple more shrimp in this tank since I moved them, but I am hoping the losses were due to whatever was causing the deaths in the other tank...I'm not feeding them much at all now -- the tanks they were in were getting a lot of high protein foods(for the snails and crays) -- so perhaps the deaths were due to too much protein? they were pooping quite a lot....but this wouldn't account for the death of the large wood shrimp as I was feeding him powdered fry food...ugh...any advice would be helpful -- please don't tell me I'm an idiot or a bad person though lol I'm pretty upset about losing these cute little guys

Sorry to hear about your loss ... it is always hard when you lose even 1 shrimp

Acsuth, I'm sorry to hear about this. I wish I had some advice.

OH... I'm sorry to hear this... really, I know how it feels...

Did you test the pH of the water? Maybe it became too acidic due to so many nutrients (food, waste, etc.) and that did not help their molting.

How long was the tank they were in set up? Maybe the the tank had not finished its cycling process?

Maybe the fact that you were feeding the wood shrimp and the crays, created a nutrient spike in the water chemistry. Perhaps nitrites or nitrates as I believe it was the case with mine some weeks ago. What I did was to do perform massive water changes to dillute whatever was in the water and decided not to feed them as much; only once a week. They should have enough to eat as they tanks has all these plants that continously leave decaying matter for them to munch on.

Test your water, don't feed them for a while and do water changes; I hope that helps, In any case, none of those actions will hurt them.

Keep us posted, Amanda.

Good luck...

Maria.

aaaawwwww sorry to hear about your shrimp. I lost a pregnate cherry last night. Makes me sad too that I can never have any babies born in my tank well at least my fish got some live food.

ok...well, several days ago I had a massive die off of shrimp -- now I have the rest in a species tank....I am still losing them at the rate of 1 per day or so! What can I do everything is fine...water temp is only about 69-70 though -- should I add a heater?

If you have tested your PH and that is fine and you are doing regular maintenance, I would be sure to check nitrates and ammonia. Heavy feeding can often give you sudden ammonia spikes even in a well established tank. The other thing that I have noticed is that certain shrimp are very sensitive to nitrates and so you have to keep them low. All of my tanks are planted so my nitrates are always at zero (I actually add a little nitrate for the plants), but when I used to have unplanted tanks, whenever the nitrates would start getting high, my ghost shrimp would die off. In my tanks though, amano shrimp have been the toughest and have not been hard to care for. It seems unlikely to me that normal range nitrates would harm them.
If you lose a shrimp, it might be nothing, but if you lose multiple shrimp at the same time, it is definately something in your water that is causing it. Test, test, test!
-Aphyosemion