Help!! I scared my shrimp :(

[allisonnorberg]

Hey guys, kind of freaking out over here. So I was trying to remove a dead bug on the surface of my shrimp tank, and to do so I had to remove the lid. I have a 10 gallon tank with 3 mini glass clear lids, just sitting on the top to cover it. Well, whilst trying to move them to remove the bug, one of the lids dropped into the tank and all of my shrimp started swimming around madly. The lid also had a lot of dust on it so I’m worried that will be bad for the shrimp I got my shrimp in August and the tank has not been disturbed AT ALL since. I’m worried this sudden change will disturb them too much and they might die. Is it ok that this happened? Will my shrimp be ok?? Thanks in advance

[Varanus]

Panic when the water is disturbed is normal, they should calm down before too long.

As for the dust, it will likely only be an issue if the dust included anything toxic in sufficient quantities. I'd keep an eye on the tank, look for signs of poisoning (i.e. the shrimp behaving strangely, twitching and such), but most likely they'll be fine.

[allisonnorberg]

Thank you so much for your response. The dust is probably just normal dust—we haven’t done any painting, and I don’t really clean over in the area where the tank is besides vacuum. They haven’t been behaving strangely yet, but this only happened 2 days ago so I will definitely keep an eye on them for a while. Thank you !!!

[crittersni]

When I wipe down my tank, I usually end up accidentally moving it. They scatter, go into camouflage mode (lose their color), and hide. Just for a little while. Then they're back. . Keep up with the dusting because these things do happen.