# CRS, TDS and GH



## jameson_uk (16 Apr 2018)

Last year a got a bunch of nice quality cherry shrimp but they all died off over the course of a couple of months.

I initially put this down to the tank not being mature enough but I am about to replace the shrimp and I am wondering if my water is an issue.

My water is reasonably hard (KH5/GH12) and TDS out the tap is ~260 and ~310 in tank (will double check tonight).  I do see lots of people saying cherry shrimp are fine in just about anything but also a lot of threads about shrimp mysteriously dying.

I think the main concern is GH and I have read some articles that too high a value means their shell gets to hard and they cannot moult.  Is this a valid concern?  I don't really want to get into mixing tap water with RO and changing parameters but equally so I don't fancy wiping out another colony....


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## Kalum (16 Apr 2018)

Like you've said i think one of the main things that RCS struggle with and makes more of a difference that it gets mentioned, is being introduced into an immature tank

The other thing would be adapting to new parameters, if they have came from a local breeder/LFS and are used to that water then it'll be fine, if they've lived their life in softer water then they might struggle. 

Get as young shrimp as you can and they are more likely to adapt better and once you get them breeding then they will be completely fine as they have been raised in that water. For me that's how they are adaptable, not shifting between soft to hard as adults


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## jameson_uk (16 Apr 2018)

Kalum said:


> The other thing would be adapting to new parameters, if they have came from a local breeder/LFS and are used to that water then it'll be fine, if they've lived their life in softer water then they might struggle.



RCS in LFS are in similar conditions but are very low grade where as I guess a lot of specialist shrimp sellers online keep their RCS in the same conditions as the CRS and others.  Sourcing them is my next dilemma....


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## wolfewill (16 Apr 2018)

If you're sure they're really Neocardinia davidi, then my experience with them is that you cannot kill them unless you have too much nitrites, ammonia, copper or predators (West African cichlids are the worst in my experience). I breed them for my own tanks and for friends and despite all the worried concern from the LFS employees (in the beginning), they do well everywhere. I have been using breeding tanks for the reds and pumpkins, but I have the best colour in heavily planted tanks with GH of 4 (extra Equilibrium required to raise it from 3), KH of zero to 2ish, and a pH of down to 5.1 during the lights on period (up to 6.2 at night). I have reds, pumpkins and yellows in heavily planted tanks, and I don't acclimate them anymore when moving them from one tank to another. I always need to give them away to keep their numbers in check. I don't feed them anything except Spirulina twice a week and they're great algae grazers and general tank cleaners. Also, I set up a tank in a home with very hard water from a well (KH of 18, GH of 20 plus), and they did just as well. Very red, very large for cherries, and the Amanos in the same tank were the biggest I've ever seen.


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## tam (16 Apr 2018)

Do you have a local fish group on facebook? Might be able to find some other local shrimp keepers there with better colours. I guess the other option is to start a small shrimp tank and match the sellers water, then gradually match it to your own tank. Gives you a breeding population to restock from too.

Where your originals breeding? Just wondering if it was the originals you lost or also the later generations.


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## jameson_uk (16 Apr 2018)

tam said:


> Do you have a local fish group on facebook? Might be able to find some other local shrimp keepers there with better colours. I guess the other option is to start a small shrimp tank and match the sellers water, then gradually match it to your own tank. Gives you a breeding population to restock from too.
> 
> Where your originals breeding? Just wondering if it was the originals you lost or also the later generations.


I got 10 really nice looking shrimp from Sharnbrook Shrimp who closed down shortly afterwards, I do think they were probably all adult shrimp as they were a fair size.  They lasted just over a month IIRC.  They seemed quite happy for a few weeks then started dropping off one by one.

Forgot I had started https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/aqua-one-aspire-22-shrimp-tank.47761/ reminds me I should look at the mopani again...


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## Kalum (16 Apr 2018)

I had a very similar experience when I first set up my shrimp tank, they seemed happy enough and even had one berried after a couple of weeks but still had some die off at a rate of approx 1 per day for a couple of weeks, I bought 2 lots of 10 shrimp and was down to 5 at one point 

Made a few changes like improving flow/filter turn over, mineral stones, better food, but the most important thing I did was stop making changes for the sake of it if you are confident you meet all the basics, one of the big mistakes I think I made is making small changes every time one died to try and make it better when I was just chasing my tail as I was throw in the towel

Stick with your tap water, set it up for a month and dose bacter AE or similar to get a biofilm built up, settle on a ferts regime and stick to it and same with water changes, check your normal routine and check GH/TDS before and after your water change so you know the swing and if its wild or not, 50% water change once a week works with me

I (touch wood) seem to have turned the corner with mine and not had a death in a while and have around 40-50 shrimplets aging from a month to a day old at the minute 

Just don't rush it and you'll get there


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## jameson_uk (16 Apr 2018)

Tank is still up and running with three nerites in there.  It is very well established now with lots of biofilm and some algae.  Last time I don't think I changed much when they started dying off. 

Flow however isn't something I have considered.  I use a JBL Cristalprofi M which seems to create enough flow to keep the plants doing ok but one side of the tank doesn't have too much flow at all.


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## sciencefiction (16 Apr 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> I think the main concern is GH and I have read some articles that too high a value means their shell gets to hard and they cannot moult. Is this a valid concern



My water stats are about identical to yours. I haven't had any issues with cherry shrimp at all, since I started keeping them about 6 years ago. Cherry shrimp are scavengers.They'be either on plants or on the sand picking up detritus, or on the glass if there's biofilm/algae. They'll never starve, as they greedily accept anything that goes into the tank. The only reason they may not do well is if the substrate is emitting something toxic to them. I only started with 5 adult shrimp and I got hundreds and thousands from them 5 shrimp over the years. 
Is your tank a soil tank as the substrate may have gone bad. The tank could be low on oxygen. Can you describe in better detail your setup, amount of flow, water changes, fertilization, etc...I kept mine in planted and unplanted tank with same success so plants are not a requirement. Shrimp are sensitive to CO2, perhaps heavy fertilization and also water quality. They'll try to jump out if there's a water quality issue and will be flying around the tank trying to escape. Or they'll be stuck on one spot not grazing at all, just standing still. Shrimp are active, they have to be moving if healthy but they're neither static, nor flying around aimlessly. My shrimp set ups are high flow tanks and shrimp's favorite spot is on the moss on the spraybar...So they certainly love highly oxygenated tanks and they do very well in low temps around 20-ish. They'll also survive down to 12C at least, haven't tested any lower yet...


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## jameson_uk (16 Apr 2018)

sciencefiction said:


> Can you describe in better detail your setup, amount of flow, water changes, fertilization, etc...








This is a 22l / 30cm cube kept ~20°C.  Substrate is Tropica aquarium soil.  The filter is rated at 200lph and is effectively a Hamburg Mat Filter.  Ferts are currently a couple of squirts of Tropica specialised ferts (the one without NP).   When shrimp where in I think I was dosing Excel.  Currently doing weekly 50% weekly water changes but was doing 20% when shrimp were in there.

Your point about toxins does make me think.  As in the original thread linked above I did come across some articles saying mopani was poisonous to shrimp.  The wood had actually been out the tank for about a year and I ended up putting it back in last weekend in preparation for the shrimp.  Wondering if I should remove this now.....


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## Kalum (16 Apr 2018)

No idea about the mopani but maybe replace with a bit of cheap bogwood/driftwood to be on the safe side and go back to your 50% water changes and you're good to go


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## sciencefiction (16 Apr 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> When shrimp where in I think I was dosing Excel



I'd suspect either the soil, the Excel definitely...When you have the shrimp, the more and bigger water changes, the better. The flow could be increased ideally but the tank's shape doesn't allow it that much I think. Perhaps after a while now the soil may have expelled whatever it had, unless it's gone anaerobic. I haven't heard of mopani being toxic to shrimp so I don't know about that.


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## alto (16 Apr 2018)

Shrimp are fine with Tropica Soils & fertilizers
I've not observed adverse reaction to Seachem Excel but I dose this only at recommended dose & always dilute before adding

OTOH there are various threads about the shrimp keeping forums where posters are convinced they saw better breeding without Excel

As others mention, younger shrimp always seem to travel & adapt better than adult shrimp

No idea about the mopani (though I do have some wood sold as "mopani" that looks nothing like the usual root sold as such)


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## sonicninja (16 Apr 2018)

I managed to kill my RCS first go in a tank that had been set up and cycled for 8 months. I put it down to me poorly matching TDS  between fresh tap/Ro water and my existing tank water. I’ve drip fed every water change since and never had an issue. It is only 16 litre though so I can imagine this would take significantly longer on a higher tank. I also saw some odd behaviour when dosing liquid carbon and stopped, they’ve bred like mad every since.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


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## tam (16 Apr 2018)

Haven't heard that about mopani before - maybe sometimes it's been treated like plants and that causes an issue sometimes but not others depending on the source.

Is there anything else living in the tank? I adjusted my cube to match the source, then gradually swapped back over a few weeks. I was going the other way (hard GH17 source, soft tank GH6) but should work the other way and then you only have to muck around with different water for a short period not forever. Seemed to work well had them about 2.5 months and got a hoard of babies of various sizes.


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## sciencefiction (16 Apr 2018)

sonicninja said:


> I put it down to me poorly matching TDS between fresh tap/Ro water and my existing tank water.



I think that's the biggest shrimp killer situation, not just cherry shrimp. When one is playing god with the water....I know we have no choice sometimes as tap water stats are a limitation for certain species but it is very difficult to keep anything alive in constantly fluctuating conditions. Shrimp, fish all like stability. 
I think James's water is ideal for cherry shrimp. Something else was at play. As I said, it's most likely the soil gone bad or the Excel. Shrimp won't die instantly from excel but perhaps in time they will. I stopped dosing immediately after I saw some odd shrimp behavior and I haven't dosed excel in years, I just don't like putting a disinfectant in an organic tank....I'd rather have algae....


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## wolfewill (17 Apr 2018)

sonicninja said:


> I managed to kill my RCS first go in a tank that had been set up and cycled for 8 months. I put it down to me poorly matching TDS  between fresh tap/Ro water and my existing tank water. I’ve drip fed every water change since and never had an issue.



That's a really important point. And I agree with sciencefiction: When doing a water change, the incoming water needs to be similar in all respects to the water in the tank. For my breeding tanks I have a separate tank in which I prepare the water a week in advance to doing the water change. I do 50% water changes every two weeks but I really don't think WCs are as important as some think. It's more important that conditions be steady when it is done. I dose Equilibrium to get 200 TDS, and add water conditioner, and I make sure the temperatures match. I also have crushed coral in this make up tank for a little more calcium. As for circulation, I use sponge filters, so flow is very limited.

Also, I don't use heaters in the breeding tanks, and we have very cold winters here, during which the ambient temperature of my fish room is about 68 dF. So this is the temperature in the breeding tanks are for several months. But it's during the colder winters that they breed the most. And our summers here are very warm (ambient air temps in the fish room are in the mid 70s dF), and breeding rates comparatively slow at the higher temperatures.


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## sciencefiction (17 Apr 2018)

I've kept mine at 20 and 25C as a constant temperature and they did equally well but if its a shrimp only tank, or the fish inhabitants allow it, no point heating up the tank that much. I do very large water changes with mine, sometimes drain down to a few cm of water. But I use my tap, no fluctuations there.


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## jameson_uk (21 Jun 2018)

So I bought 10 Bloody Mary shrimp online that had been bred in KH5/GH8 water.
Drip acclimated them over about 3.5 hours to get TDS within 10.

They have been in a week now and I haven't changed any water but last night I found one at the surface which looks like it had died trying to molt.



Based on last time I left it to see whether it might pull through but I suspect it will be dead by time I get home.

Do I just keep with it and of I can get some other to accept the parameters then they will be better and offspring will be fine or do I need to think about getting the GH down a little?


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## dw1305 (22 Jun 2018)

Hi all, 





jameson_uk said:


> Do I just keep with it and of I can get some other to accept the parameters then they will be better and  offspring will be fine or do I need to think about getting the GH down a little?


I think they are selected form of Cherry Shrimp (_Neocaridina davidi_), in which case they will do better in harder water.

cheers Darrel


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## jameson_uk (22 Jun 2018)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, I think they are selected form of Cherry Shrimp (_Neocaridina davidi_), in which case they will do better in harder water.
> 
> cheers Darrel


They are a slightly different type rather than through selection I believe (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Neocaridina_family_tree.jpg) but probably the same (I think there is some debate whether they are different species or not).  Either way they are basically the same 

Most shrimp owners seem to think a GH of 12 is too high and suggest 8-10 being acceptable.  GH is calcium and magnesium right?  If UK doesn't have much mg in water would this mean that a UK GH of 12 would potentially have more calcium than a US GH of 12???

I believe it is the high levels of calcium which make their skin too tough which then gives them issues molting.


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## jameson_uk (5 Jul 2018)

Ok I lost another with a failed molt and presume I have lost a few more that are hidden in the background.

Is TDS important?  No there seems to be one school that says TDS is the be all and end all for shrimp and another which says it doesn't really matter.

I had always just assumed those obsessed with TDS were using RO water and hence TDS would make sense and a lot of other people are just using TDS as a proxy for their GH and calcium levels.

I did however read something about osmotic pressure and this being important for molting and this suggested that a higher TDS (no matter what it is made up of) can cause issues.

My TDS is now about 300 after I mixed in some deionised water.  Tap is normally about 320 and this was measured the day after water change when I added ferts and prime which seems ok to me.   I know a lot of people seem to have happily breeding RCS colonies in even higher TDS but wondering whether it is worth trying to reduce TDS to around 200 and try and get the colony going and then slowly switching back to 100% tap???


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## keano (5 Jul 2018)

Ive never lost a CRS i've no idea what my tap water comes out at. Tap water goes straight in untreated.

The only 2 parameters i check once a week is TDS and pH. My TDS is what i used to determine when i change the water when gets above 150-170 i change half a tank.

pH stays around 6 due to CO2 injection and substrate


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## sparkyweasel (5 Jul 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> They are a slightly different type rather than through selection I believe (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Neocaridina_family_tree.jpg)   .



Can you make any sense out of that diagram?



jameson_uk said:


> Most shrimp owners seem to think a GH of 12 is too high.



I suspect that _most _shrimp owners just put a few cherries in their tank with tap water and never think about TDS.
Mine lived, moulted and bred at 18°GH before I moved house. 12°GH now.


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## Barbara Turner (6 Jul 2018)

Could the shrimps have access to to much protien? 
I know this can also cause problems moulting. 

 Just checking the obvious, you have checked Ammonia and nitrite levels both will quickly kill off shrimps. 

I've killed cherries with liquid carbon but I was spot dosing just under twice recommend as I had a algae problem. 

Is it time to buy a cheap RO filter off fleabay and see if it helps, it's alot of extra faffing if you can advoid it.


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## jameson_uk (6 Jul 2018)

Ammonia and nitrites both 0.  I have not dosed any liquid carbon with these shrimps.

I have mainly fed leaf based feed (and not much of that) so I don't think they have had much protein.

With this heatwave the temp has risen to ~23°C but they were dying before when it was 21°C.

Had a bit of a scan last night and removed another couple that had died trying to molt.

I could only find a couple of shrimp out of the 10 I added.

After £80 I think I might have to give up on shrimps....


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## jameson_uk (6 Jul 2018)

Came across https://skfaquatics.com/forum/topic/4228-gh-camg-ratio/ which talks about the ca:mg ratio being right.   This sounds plausible but I guess that is the whole point of call my bluff....   

My thought has always been that most of the hardness here is Calcium Carbonate so it did make me wonder whether all the Calcium isn't available to the shrimp as there isn't enough Magnesium.

Anyway I couldn't quite figure out the chemistry.   It says 
Mg = ((GH*17.86) - (Ca*2.5)) /4.1

I know my GH comes up as 12 and for a ball park figure I looked at https://www.south-staffs-water.co.uk/household/my-water-supply/water-quality/water-hardness which has a number of different values for calcium / magnesium / hardness.  My are Sutton Coldfield says 62 ppm Calcium and 10.82 ppm Magnesium which gives ~ 6:1 ratio.

However knowing my GH is 12 and plugging in the calcium ppm of 62 give a ratio of something like 4.2:1

Then further it talks about Calcium levels saying
100ppm = 100/17.9 = 5.6dH
But assuming my Calcium levels are ~62ppm this doesn't make sense as GH is 12 (11.2 on water company report)

I get a bit lost but I think the GH * 17.86 is to convert this into CaCO3 ppm?   Then I guess CaCO3 is 2.5 more than Ca .   So taking away gives the ppm of some sort of Mg and 4.1 is the conversion factor to get back to actual Mg?

The GH seems to match water company report and I suspect the calcium levels are probably indicative so just trying to figure out what ballpark my actual ca:mg ratio might be in.

Anyone who actually understands the chemistry care to input? @dw1305 ?


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## Edvet (6 Jul 2018)

Ca: Mg ratios are more influenced by food, High quality food will supply the necessary minerals.


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