Help Saving My Tank

[armandodavid96]

Hi everyone. I started a 3-gallon tank with 10 shrimp just over three years ago. The majority of my shrimp seem to have just died. There are well over a dozen lying on the bottom of the tank, not moving, and in unusual positions. I have at least one still alive in there and am hoping to save it and any others that might still be alive. Any advice will be much appreciated. My tank has a moss ball, macro algae, snails, and shrimp in it, all purchased from petshrimp.com. I've had at least four females successfully have eggs on two occasions so my tank was getting pretty populous. I moved into a new apartment about 9 months ago. The tank was getting a bit less light than at the previous place, but I didn't think it was a problem as the macro algae still seemed healthy. I gave the shrimp a flake of food about a month ago. It had been at least 6 months since their last flake. I plan to get an aquarium test kit so I can try to figure out what happened, but in the meantime, is there anything I can do to save the one shrimp that's still alive? Also, has anyone experienced a seemingly random tank death? I haven't made any changes to the tank in at least 9 months.

[Hammi3203]

I’m sorry to hear what happened to your shrimp. I had random deaths over the course of a week. I also got a test kit and everything was ok. I ended up changing the water and that is what fixed the problem for me.

[armandodavid96]

Thank you. I think it was too late by the time I started intervening. By the time I was able to test the water, there were enough dead shrimp that I had a pretty bad ammonia spike. I don't think any are still alive. I'm going to do some water changes over the next few days to see if I can bring the ammonia down in case there are any shrimp hiding or snails left alive, but I'm not getting my hopes up.