hotweldfire
Member
Re: the bacterial infection thing. I had this a few months ago. Reckon it was introduction of some new shrimp that did it and paraguard that cured it. Haven't had a loss for more than 2 months now. However, that's only part of the story.
In terms of the cause, as I said, I think the trigger was some new shrimp. Either some relatively high grade CRS/CBS from a shop that doesn't necessarily have the best quarantine practices (Matt probably knows where I'm talking about) or some wild shrimp from an online retailer. However, that might have been coincidental.
I think these (potentially lethal) bacterial populations are always present in the shrimp tank. I reckon they become a problem when
- their population builds up too much
- shrimp are stressed and therefore immunity is down
Part of the cause for my outbreak was poor hygiene. Because the tank was so heavily planted I'd stopped vacuuming the substrate. That's probably fine on the whole but some of the moss was harbouring huge amounts of crud. Using a pipette to "fluff" my fissidens, for example, resulted in huge clouds of dirt. More importantly I never bothered to clean the mechanical filtration in my eheim. When I did look in there the water was literally black.
My shrimp were likely somewhat stressed too (down to dodgy CO2 reg). I had also, no doubt, added too many shrimp, of too many species, from too many different sources.
I now use paraguard as a quarantine measure - I add 3 days dose whenever I put new shrimp in. No substitute for proper quarantine I know but I don't have a spare tank for that.
My main concern is that the bacteria will build up a resistance to the stuff. Radik - you know if the other treatments have a different active ingredient?
In terms of the cause, as I said, I think the trigger was some new shrimp. Either some relatively high grade CRS/CBS from a shop that doesn't necessarily have the best quarantine practices (Matt probably knows where I'm talking about) or some wild shrimp from an online retailer. However, that might have been coincidental.
I think these (potentially lethal) bacterial populations are always present in the shrimp tank. I reckon they become a problem when
- their population builds up too much
- shrimp are stressed and therefore immunity is down
Part of the cause for my outbreak was poor hygiene. Because the tank was so heavily planted I'd stopped vacuuming the substrate. That's probably fine on the whole but some of the moss was harbouring huge amounts of crud. Using a pipette to "fluff" my fissidens, for example, resulted in huge clouds of dirt. More importantly I never bothered to clean the mechanical filtration in my eheim. When I did look in there the water was literally black.
My shrimp were likely somewhat stressed too (down to dodgy CO2 reg). I had also, no doubt, added too many shrimp, of too many species, from too many different sources.
I now use paraguard as a quarantine measure - I add 3 days dose whenever I put new shrimp in. No substitute for proper quarantine I know but I don't have a spare tank for that.
My main concern is that the bacteria will build up a resistance to the stuff. Radik - you know if the other treatments have a different active ingredient?
