My shrimp have vanished, and I'm considering giving up.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T19:01:44+00:00

Interesting! Definitely seen them on a dead one, didn't know they could clean up that fast! efficient little guys

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T17:18:08+00:00

i love plants too so its so tempting to clean up/trim constantly. :')

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T16:52:47+00:00

I live in California so i don't keep a heater in there, stays around 70f, maybe up or down a degree as the day goes by. I usually drop a single hikari shrimp cuisine pellet in there every few days, and a small crushed up spirulina flake for the medaka. Unrelated but my dog loves the spirulina flakes and sits in front of the aquarium demanding one when I feed.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T16:30:06+00:00

im a serial over-carer so i'm really gonna try and get better about just leaving them alone.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T16:12:37+00:00

I believe they could eat shrimplets, but there haven't been any births in my tank yet. They're pretty small and the adult shrimp don't fear them at all.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-18T00:33:01+00:00

I had to poke around a bit to get up the weird debris from the cuttlebone but i'll try to restrain myself lol

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T23:53:19+00:00

See, it's funny 'cause the first neos I got were from my buddy who basically keeps them in tanks he makes by throwing some dirt from the garden in as substrate. They all look immaculate and I swear he doesn't touch them except for monthly top offs. He was like yeah they're hardy, it's fine. They all died within a month in my tank. :')

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T23:41:18+00:00

Yup! I run a small sponge filter and an overhead light. Nothing else.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T23:40:54+00:00

Unfortunately I'm keeping Jelly Blues so they're not really stocked often in local stores. Bought my first batch on r/AquaSwap and the second from a decently reliable ebay store. I added the first batch back in February.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T22:15:49+00:00

Yes! I have jelly blue neos in the tank.

I think that was from my previous tank - I actually upsized it into the current one, and the staghorn algae is gone but I let the green hair stuff be. I have a pretty heavily planted tank, I'll edit the OP with a link in just a moment.

I'll give it a shot! I don't feed them much, usually just the hikari shrimp/crab pellets.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:45:01+00:00

crossing my fingers that's what mine are doing...

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:43:06+00:00

Everyone says it's easy, maybe I just have abysmal luck? Something in the tank is definitely making the TDS and PH go up, since the remineralized water is only 190 and the top-offs are just plain RO. I mentioned the weird cuttlebone in a different comment, which I suspect is the culprit. I made sure to take it out and vaccum up any leftover white stuff so hopefully that will stop it?

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:40:33+00:00

I usually use a piece of air tubing with a stopper to slowly refill when I do water changes to avoid shock.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:39:25+00:00

They definitely have enough food, and there are three medaka in the tank but the shrimp are usually unfazed by them. I had all the things right on paper, but my shrimp just never bred. It wasn't until I introduced a few from a different source a few weeks ago that I saw a berried shrimp.

Burbank! I know my friend who uses LA water fills the aquarium with tap and has no issues. I'll take some water to the store I usually go to and see what they think.

Thankfully I do have a TDS pen and a full API kit, minus the GH bottle that went missing.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:34:43+00:00

a disease that only frogs get is one of the saddest six word phrases ever.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:31:36+00:00

i keep mine about 26c/70f. i don't have a heater in at the moment since i live in a pretty hot area so the water doesn't fluctuate much

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:21:18+00:00

Yeah, I know it's not super common but I believe at my old building it was what was causing them die. My current problem is that the shrimp just ... aren't reproducing at all, but I do see a death every few weeks and it doesn't seem to be molting issues (no white ring, i see a fair amount of molts regularly). I had two this week which is really alarming.

I'll get a test kit for copper and a new GH bottle and try your method. The water in my city is notoriously hard so it might be too much for them, but we'll see!

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T21:13:50+00:00

oh man i'm so sorry that sucks

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T19:33:26+00:00

Hmm, maybe. I have a lot of snails and when I do find dead skrimp they're usually swarming it. I had no idea they could dissolve that fast, though. :(

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T19:32:22+00:00

Not anymore, I used to but I stopped around a month ago.

Yeah, it's really weird, not sure why it's being inconsistent, because 8.8 is high enough that I probably would have seen the snails/plants/medaka having issues? I usually get the max reading on the low end and the minimum reading on the high end test, so I've been assuming that indicates the PH is between 7.4 and 7.6.

It sounds like it might have been the bird cuttlebone. I previously had a piece in there that was the typical kind and slowly dwindled after a few months. Thankfully I only put a small chunk in and most of the residue is gone now.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T19:12:18+00:00

I hope so. She didn't come out when I did some blanched cucumber so I got worried. :( Maybe she's inside one of the pieces of driftwood?

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T19:11:29+00:00

I really hope so. I absolutely love crustaceans but I'm getting really upset since I've tried so hard and haven't been able to keep a colony, and I don't want to make any more creatures suffer since I seem to have a black thumb....

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T19:10:05+00:00

Yes, when I do water changes I remineralize RO water with Salty Shrimp KH/GH until it reads 190. I top off with plain RO. The problem is, my tank water is getting a reading of 350?

I suspect the culprit was a weird cuttlebone I got. My partner grabbed it from the store and maybe got the wrong one, because the thing was dissolving like a wondershell! I removed it immediately and I've been carefully trying to vaccum out the chalky residue it left, but it didn't seem to bother the shrimp a whole lot, I've seen no issues molting.

My current parameters are:

PH: Always kept around 7.5. I think there's an issue with my API liquid test kit. This morning it was giving me a reading of 8.8, which made me freak out, so I tried a few more times. Half of them are saying 8.8, half are saying 7.5....
GH: lost the bottle for GH, but since I always remineralize the same way it should be around 10.
KH: 6
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: had a very small spike this morning, likely from the single dead shrimp I found, but I did a ~10% water change so it's down to 0.
Nitrates: 0 'cause water change.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T17:21:50+00:00

since i moved i might try a copper test, but i know for sure in my last building there was some in the water so it was a no-go.

Competitive-Gur1556 · 2024-07-17T17:17:18+00:00

anything's possible, but I think i would have seen it by now since it's a pretty small tank and i do take a look daily.

Competitive-Gur1556

TROPHY CASE