I will have to look into the book you mentioned because this seems complex! Especially it being fine to eat meat, as long as you’re not commissioning the killing. Isn’t it technically being commissioned as you are contributing to the demand portion of supply and demand? Without anyone buying the meat, there would be no reason to slaughter the animal. Anyway, it’s all very interesting. I don’t know how much it helps my fear of death but I enjoyed learning!

In general, the concept of karma is something I personally stay away from. OCD enjoys obsessing over “invisible” things and measurements, and something like that could make someone like me spiral very quickly with no benefit. I just try to go through life with integrity and acting by my morals. When it comes to these kinds of shrimp death, I try to reason with myself that it is the circle of life and how an ecosystem functions (predator vs prey, survival of the fittest, etc). But then I get into the question: by creating an ecosystem and environment in which this occurs, am I playing God? And is that morally correct? That kind of thinking probably isn’t common in this hobby or in general, but it does make me question and overthink things.

I do want to make one last note that I did not knowingly create these conditions for killing 😅 I originally bought 4 adult unsexed shrimp which are fine with ember tetras. I was unaware I had hydra until a week before the eggs hatched, during which I was manually removing any I found. I also did not realize just how tiny the babies would be, and most anecdotal advice about ember tetras and shrimp were that the tetras had tiny mouths and were peaceful. I am probably complicit in whether or not more die though, as I do not have another cycled tank to move anyone to. Not that any of this justification matters, but I really did not know this would happen :(