Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

For the past week or so, I have been having problems with Green shrimps and Snowball shrimps death in my 20 gallon tank.

Here is my condition of the Green/Snowball shrimps tank:

Temp: 76 F (in winter) and 80 to 86 F (in summer)
pH: around 7.50 to 7.80
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 0
Substrate: Sand Oxyn with at least 10 pieces of oak leaves (previously dried and soaked to remove any tannin), and several pieces of coral chips.
Feeding schedule: Used to be once a day but switched to once every 3 days because of dark green algae on the glass. The shrimps and some sort of micro-organisms have been feeding off of that since I changed my feeding schedule.
Food: Just typical fish flake and shrimp pellets.
Water changes: 1 per week of 20% volume of the tank and used Seachem Prime to treat for chloramine.

I have raised their parents and these F1 generations of Green shrimps for more than 6 months without problems before and now casualties has started. I get like 1 death almost everyday since last week or so, and today 3 died all at 1 time.

So this morning I took out all of the Snowball and Green shrimps from the tank and placed them into other tanks. I place some of them into my other 20 gallon tank with little stem and rooted plants with the CRS and Black Bee shrimps. The substrate is Flourite and with CO2 injection. I placed the other half of my remaining population into my other tank with a pH of above 7.0 with the same substrate condition as their original tank condition except for no plants (except for 2 moss ball) and no dried leaves. Temperature is around the 73 to 76 F.

So I will see if I witness any more deaths or reproduction.

The interesting fact is this: I have raised my parental generations of Green shrimps in a very heavily planted tank with a pH of around 6.9 to 7.0 in the past without a problem. The substrate was Flourite instead of Sand Oxyn. I also had CO2 supplement into that tank because of the plants. Since then, I moved all of the parents and my F1 generations of shrimps into the tank described above. The parents slowly died away (I thought it must have been old age) and my F1 started to grow slowly.

So right now I am trying to see whether it is the pH, or the algae or something else in the tank that is causing casualties. My Tiger shrimp tank is thriving and I have been doing the same thing as I have to all of my shrimp tanks, including the same food. Just weekly water changes and rinse my filters once in a month. I have 1 power filter with a Pre-filter sponge attached at the opening and 1 air- sponge filter in each tank. I do not rinse all of my filters all at the same time but wait another week to rinse the other filter out.

So anyone here who has experienced the same fate or has any good suggestions are more than welcome. As always, your advice are greatly appreciated.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Did this happen shortly after a water change? A change in town chemicals just about wiped be out at Thanksgiving.

My last water change was done 4 days ago. That very same day, I also changed my Tiger shrimps' tank water as well. I did have 4 Tiger shrimps died as well after the water changes (1 imported old one and 3 young ones). However, I thought it must have been me removing all of my Baby Tears that has been covering the Tiger shrimp tank and allowed the ammonia to spike up. I removed all of the Baby Tears first and then carried out my water changes. I have been carrying out 1% water changes in my Tiger tank everyday for the past 3 days to make sure that is no more ammonia spike. And it showed, since I did not have any more Tiger shrimps dying or dead bodies lying around since 2 days ago so I do not believe it is the city water supply problem.

Keep an eye out on your next large water change. What I have found is it takes about 10 minutes for all the chloramine to break down and then the ammonia to be inerted. If you add conditioner to the tank, or to the new water and add that water right away the chloramine and ammonia attack your shrimp. By the time you try & measure it, the stuff is gone but the damage is done.

I found a medical paper on treatment of water used for medical purposes and it said the half life for chloramine/chlorinine/ammonia was about 4 minutes using most of the standard chemicals like sodium bisulfite or ascorbic acid. 10 minute would reduce it to around 20% of the initial concentration. 20 minutes it should all be gone.

This sneaky chemical wiped out a large portion of my inverts, so be carefull.

Kenshin wrote:The interesting fact is this: I have raised my parental generations of Green shrimps in a very heavily planted tank with a pH of around 6.9 to 7.0 in the past without a problem. The substrate was Flourite instead of Sand Oxyn. I also had CO2 supplement into that tank because of the plants. Since then, I moved all of the parents and my F1 generations of shrimps into the tank described above. The parents slowly died away (I thought it must have been old age) and my F1 started to grow slowly.

What I have been finding out more and more is that shrimp are actually very adaptable when it comes to ph and hardness, so it does not surprise me that your green shrimp did well in around neutral ph water although they come from highly alkaline (over ph 8 and up to ph 9 due to some reports!!) waters.

I'm pretty sure that the lack of plants is not the issue here. It's most likely nitrification issues....i.e slight problems with nitrifying bacteria populations. In alkaline water, even small traces of ammonia (not measurable by hobby test kits) can be harmful. That's actually the *most* common cause of death although everything else is blamed instead. So...the question is..did you do *anything* in the green shrimp tank that could have caused the problem? Any plant removals? And removals of decoration? Removal or disturbance of substrate? Anything? Too much water change at once? My green shrimp colony used to breed and thrive at ph levels up to 8.8 and absolutely no plants...so ph and plants are definitely not the problem.

Please update us if you can.

I believe I have found the problem. I was using an Aquaclear 50 power filter for some time. I used to rinse out my filters 2 times a month to clear out the debris. However, because of the holidays I have not done that for more than a month.
Once I moved out all of my Green shrimps and Snowball shrimps into other tanks, I cleaned out the whole tank and changed the substrate to Florabase. The shrimps are in my planted tank for right now at a pH of around 6.8 - 7.0 with medium hardness in water. Then I cleaned out the sponge from my Aquaclear filter and also from my normal air-sponge filter. There were so much crap that it took me literally 5 to 10 minutes to wash out the debris from the sponges. I believe that is the reason. A build up of nitrate and the bacteria cannot handle anymore even though I carry out weekly water changes, and nitrate build up too much.

For the past few days or more, I have not witnessed any more shrimp deaths since they are in the other tanks. They are feeding very happily without any signs of stress. I will be rinsing out the sponges more frequently from now on and see if that is a problem. I will update more information as I get them from my observations.