Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Ok, it looks like I have about 3 shrimp in "questionable" condition. The tank is a 10 gallon. The problem I have is it the water, food, just shipping or combination.

full story...

Recieved them on Friday - one day overdue with Heat pad not heating... Not sure why it was not working, I manipulated it a little and it started producing again. But they seemed fine and when I put them in after sitting at room temp for about an hour and then in the tank for 40 minutes. Not sure if I brought the temperature up too fast? Well I purchased 7 adult and 7 Juvenile. I lost my first one Sunday. On Saturday evening it was looking rough - split between body and tail in shell and turning white. Sunday morning it was dead - I was not surprised.

After Mustafa's post I had added - *CAREFULLY* added some fine gravel to about half the tank to start a substrate on Sunday, after catching last 5 krib fry. Substrate was mix of new and from established tanks (hoping to establish microorganisms more rapidly). Tank was an established fry tank for the kribs before adding the shrimp.

Other then that there are water sprite and java moss for plants, I (again carefully) pulled most of the thread/hair algae since unlike what I thought these shrimp are apparently not big eaters of that type of algae... There is a rather large lava rock in the tank (I put it there for fry to help produce microorganisms for small fry) - it appears most of the juvenile shrimp spend most of thier time there. There is also the sponge filter - rather large one and the heater.

I lost another of the shrimp Monday - again it was looking bad Sunday night (I was very careful with everything I did.) I'm used to working around fry, which I like to think are more delicate then they are.

I was doing 5-10% water changes 2-4 times a week in the tank prior to adding the shrimp. I did a 20% 2 days before I added them and removed most of the fry at that time. I did about a 30% change sunday night - added the new water like I add to my small fry tanks - one gallon at a time through an airline siphon.

I do see juveniles (1/4-3/8") moving around - nothing that seems out of the ordinary with them, but I can't see all them either...

I have seen several molts...juvenile and adult

I don't have the exact hardness - it is not particularly hard water though. It has always fallen into the medium hardness range. PH is 7.6-7.8. Don't have any nitrate, phosphate or nitrite testers right now - so no reading on those, but I suspect they are negligible. (No rotting food, 1/4 of the tank is java moss, top is covered by sprite.) I have not deliberately over fed them. I dropped in three pellets Sunday night. They do like to feed on the sponge filter though. Cleaned it right off pretty much. There are a few snails in the tank - can't seem to get rid of them (bet nobody else has that problem <sarcasm>) Temperature is around 74.

Getting off to a bumpy start here... I am thinking maybe it is shipping related after all the reading I have been doing, but could it be over "feeding" or anthing else?

Number 3 gone...

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like your tank might not be established as far as shrimp go. Even if you cannot measure any ammonia or nitrite, shrimp die if their environment changes rapidly. For example, deaths after cleaning the filter TOO thoroughly are not rare at all. There is something else that we cannot measure with our test kits that shrimp are sensitive too. Maybe some of the changes you made causes some bacterial crashes.

Of course the shrimp might have been "pre-damaged" too. Did you get them as domestically bred young shrimp or did you buy them as imported full adults?

Take care,
Mustafa

Can this type of one by one 'sickness' and die-off be caused by any sort of disease in the water?

I have had this type of thing with N.d. sinensis where I have two tanks set up virtually the same way, however one tank experienced slow but steady die-off while the other did not.

While there are shrimp diseases out there, which could be introduced to a tank with wild-caught, imported shirmp, most of the time it's adverse water parameters that kill off shrimp. Two of the most common killers are too much food (which deteriorates the water) and disturbance of the biological filtration (by cleaning the filter too much). Even if there is no measurable change in water parameters, shrimp do get affected by these things.