Cannot sustain cherry shrimp in planted tank

[Zeus.]

I did read some where that for every RCS you can see there's 10 hiding.

 

[mmustelus]

I had the same issues, they grew fast and at one point half of my females were berried. They all died. I also have raccoon tigers and I've never lost one.
My gh and kh is similar to yours. I eventually added some montmarillonite powder and crushed egg shells and its increased my gh to about 6. I haven't lost a cherry since and I've had 2-3 rounds of babies.

 

[BarryH]

I started with RCS probably 18 months ago, buying 12 Red Sakura and I can only repeat what Zeus said above, they are pretty bullet proof. I have a number of tanks and all seem to do really well without any particular care or attention. A couple of the tanks have Harlequin Rasboras but they are the only fish I have.

 

[Kevin Eades]

Have you got any protection on the filter intake. They may be hiding out in the filter mine sometimes get in if the guard is knocked off

 

[SteveMid]

Have you got any protection on the filter intake. They may be hiding out in the filter mine sometimes get in if the guard is knocked off

Thanks Kevin, I thought this might have been a problem with first batch when I lost a couple so I put fine net over intake but still lost the rest.

 

[SteveMid]

I had the same issues, they grew fast and at one point half of my females were berried. They all died. I also have raccoon tigers and I've never lost one.
My gh and kh is similar to yours. I eventually added some montmarillonite powder and crushed egg shells and its increased my gh to about 6. I haven't lost a cherry since and I've had 2-3 rounds of babies.

👍 This sounds quite promising. I will be looking at increasing the GH by treating the tap water on my water changes

 

[MichaelJ]

👍 This sounds quite promising. I will be looking at increasing the GH by treating the tap water on my water changes

@SteveMid For what its worth, the breeder I got my Neocaridina davidi's from, had their water at ~6 GH and the TDS 230-260 ppm. If you'r worried that you Calcium content may be too low I suggest only to add some additional Calcium Chloride such as this to whatever you're doing now to give it that extra Ca and drive up that GH a notch (I use it myself as part of my RO/Tap water prep). And of course, look out for other causes when introducing more shrimps - (such as predation from those Platy fish as @zeus points out). Shrimps are supposedly relatively sensitive to wide swings in TDS - its a rather vague notion to me, as I suppose it all depends on what makes up the TDS number in the first place...Oh, and drip acclimation is always a very good idea. Anyway, I am still learning the ins and outs of shrimp keeping as well.
Cheers,
Michael

 

[Gorillastomp]

You said there were disappearing... are you seeing dead bodies ? If not then make sure they have no area to get out of the tank i.e pump wire, tubing etc...

I lot a couple of amano shrimp that way, they were escaping the tank from my water pump wire. Found them dry on the floor.

 

[mmustelus]

Montmorillonite powder also makes my planted tank crystal clear. I just found another round of babies so I think my intervention worked. Good Luck. My next plan was to go the shrimp salt route. I was not so keen on it because I have toddlers and I wanted to make the entire process as simple as possible. Having to get RO water is just an added complication and task I was not keen on.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I was just wondering about other mineral additives as my tap water is very soft

Cherry shrimps need some hardness (dGH/dKH). They don't persist in my rainwater tanks (about 4dKH, but softer in the winter), but do really well in our tap water (about 17 dGH/dKH).

cheers Darrel

 

[Swishrelic]

To add some recent experience here particularly with big Amanos, they are savage! Pretty sure they killed two adult RCS, presumably after a moult. The damage inflicted in seconds by 2 Amanos together was pretty hard to see and terminal for the RCS so no longer keeping them hungry to eat the hair algae! I'm feeding Hikari algae wafers in enough small pieces for each of them to grab some and run off with it now and fingers crossed it works.

They are are particularly big (out of the sump specials) so maybe not so much of an issue with smaller ones but thought I'd share.

Re algae my set up is only 2 months in so have a lot but it does give great cover/food for the baby shrimp think so I can live with it for now!