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Cannot sustain cherry shrimp in planted tank

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.
 
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.
Red Sakura Shrimp.jpg
 
Kevin Eades said:
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
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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.
 
mmustelus said:
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.
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👍 This sounds quite promising. I will be looking at increasing the GH by treating the tap water on my water changes
 
SteveMid said:
👍 This sounds quite promising. I will be looking at increasing the GH by treating the tap water on my water changes
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@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
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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!
 

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Aqua360 said:
Something to watch out for is matching the parameters closely in water changes, shrimp are very sensitive in that regard and can easily kick the bucket if the conditions are drastically different.

Another thing I noted is you have amano shrimp, this is a divisive issue but personally I've experience plenty of aggression from them, wouldn't surprise me if they were taking the opportunity with cherries.

The other thing is to consider mineral supplements as above mentioned, can really help the moulting process. Have you ever measured TDS?
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It’s been two years and kept meaning to update on how I got on with this. The answer it turns must have been related to mineralisation of the fresh water during large water changes. I have been add some shrimp mineral salts to my water changes and now have tank full of breeding cherry shrimp (almost too many 😂). Thanks for the advice @Aqua360
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SteveMid said:
It’s been two years and kept meaning to update on how I got on with this. The answer it turns must have been related to mineralisation of the fresh water during large water changes. I have been add some shrimp mineral salts to my water changes and now have tank full of breeding cherry shrimp (almost too many 😂). Thanks for the advice @Aqua360 View attachment 205556
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Glad to hear you had success! Tank looks amazing
 
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