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Random shrimp deaths in mature tank

Westyggx

Member
Joined
11 Sep 2010
Messages
1,494
Location
Manchester, UK
Hi, looking for some assistance here please as i have lost several shrimp in the last week. My tank is over a year old so pretty mature but today i saw 3 dead cherries and a dead amano. I have not changed anything in my tank so i have no idea what this could be i think in total i have lost around 20-25 but only just noticed since i removed my background plants and saw no inverts in the foliage.

I am going to get my water tested tomorrow but wanted to know if anyone has had random deaths with shrimp.

Cheers
 
My last 2 batches of cherries both went south. I lose them 1 here n there and a batch of 15-20 usually fizzle out over several months.

The last batch even had young but not seen those for weeks, I've given up on shrimp for a few months, maybe try again in the summer.
 
Dincho said:
Has anything been added to the tank lately? new shrimp, hardscape, plants etc?

How are your nitrate levels?

At first i though it was due to the age as many of my shrimp were over a year old but now my tank litterally has about 5 shrimp in out of 50 so i have lost a hell of a lot. I havent added anything apart from calcium and seachem prime which is something i never used to add until the last few weeks.

With regards to nitrates, i am going to the LFS today toget that checked out.

Cheers
 
I don't think Seachem prime is to blame as I use it for all my tanks and my shrimp are fine. I lose one occassionally due to age in the planted tank but the scale of reproduction means it doesn't make a dent. I started with 20 rcs in March and have about 300 now after having sold 500-600 over that period of time. Starting with 50 you ought to have been knee deep in shrimp by now!

I'm experiencing something a little similar to you in one of my shrimp tanks but I know the cause. I left some sand in when I added gravel and it releases a toxic bubble every once in a while and takes the nearest shrimp with it. Even in this tank the losses don't make a dent on the numbers. This suggests to me that there's been something long term that has affected they're reproduction as well as they're mortality. I hope you find out what's going on.

Viv
 
Thanks for the reply I can confirm that the nitrates are fine after just coming back from my lfs.

Funny you say that about the Sand as I previously had play sand and covered some of it over with akadama soil. To be honest I think it's a mixture between something toxic in the tank (could it be dead plant matter?) I say this as I lost a lot of Blyxa due to lack of light and it all died underneath but I didn't notice.

Cheers
 
You say Nitrates are fine, what was the reading?

If you have a load of dead plants then that is going to hike up your nitrates. High nitrates lower the shrimps immune system making them them extremely prone to bacteria infections.
 
He didn't actually give me a number but the chart came back yellow think thats 0-3? If that's makes sense to you? I removed all the plants recently and did the usual 50% change so hopefully onwards and upwards from here?
 
Almost yes, I have not had a death I have seen of since the removal and large water change.
 
Westyggx said:
Almost yes, I have not had a death I have seen of since the removal and large water change.

I had a similar problem with my crs. Hardly any deaths in 2 years until i decided to trim back and remove some plants. I reckoned disturbing the substrate released some nasties into my tank water and killed over 20 shrimp in the space of 2 weeks. Either that, or the cut stems from some of the plants leached something sinister into the tank. I know anubias is certainly toxic to shrimp so maybe others can cause problems too.
 
Maybe mate i guess we will never know, ovbiously plants take in nitrates (or is it nitrates?) so when i removed the load of blxya i might have had an influx on one of them since there wasnt enough plants to remove it? No idea.. just hope it has stopped now.
 
I experienced something like this - in my nano tank, shrimps stopped becoming berried and seemed to die off, of natural causes, one by one until the colony had completely died off. Tried everything, raising KH, GH, mineral rocks, changed all the filters and cleaned the RO unit, new plants etc. Nothing worked and any new shrimp added, even cherry shrimp, died within 2 days of being added. Then, the same thing started happening in my 100l shrimp tank!

I think I've just cacked it though - I changed the substrate (Naturesoil) in my nano last week to ADA Forest Sant Xingu and added Cherry shrimp the next day - I've had no deaths, a few molts and they all look healthy. Just waiting for some to be berried to confirm that everything's ok. I've heard that many breeders change their substrates on a yearly basis, maybe this is why.
 
Hi,

Looking for some answers really, as you can see from my first post i started to lose shrimp some time ago. This is still happening one by one i am still seeing drop offs. My friend who lives down the road has lost all his CRS and alot of cherries too. He cleaned his filter out a week or so ago and gave me the shrimp that had been sucked up, i placed them in my nano at work which had been cycling for over a month. I have now lost 4 cherries in this tank.

This is the water parametres from my waterboard.


Analysis Typical Value UK/EU limit Units
Hardness level very soft
Hardness Clarke 1.75 Clarke
Aluminium 36.5 200 µg Al/l
Calcium 8.8 mg Ca/l
Residual chlorine - Total 0.41 mg/l
Residual chlorine - Free 0.35 mg/l
Coliform bacteria 0 0 number/100ml
Colour <1.13 20 mg/l Pt/Co scale
Conductivity 64.3 2500 uS/cm at 20oC
Copper 0.041 2 mg Cu/l
E.coli 0 0 number/100ml
Iron 7.07 200 µg Fe/l
Lead <0.694 25 µg Pb/l
Magnesium 0.754 mg Mg/l
Manganese 1.59 50 µg Mn/l
Nitrate 1.04 50 mg NO3/l
Sodium 4.45 200 mg Na/l


Whats up??

Thanks
 
i've lost all but 3 of my cherries too recently for no reason as far as I can tell tank has been running 3-4 months now nicely mature growing well and all the fish are fine though I can't water test as accurately as you but what tests I can do are all within parameters considered good for cherries :(

I think if these last few die I'll just stop bothering with shrimp
 
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