Fed Up of the Battle - Shrimp Death Mystery

[Strider199]

If you can stop the fertilizer dosing for awhile, I think that would help. When I set-up my first cherry red shrimp tank I wanted the plants and moss to grow so I used a well branded fert. My shrimp did well for awhile but I ended up with all kinds of things in that tank which I contributed to the soil type substrate to the fert's. I re-did the tank with normal aquarium safe gravel, java moss, and anubias on driftwood. I stopped the fert's and increased the light out-put but decreased the amount of time the lights were on. This worked for me on the second go around.
Limpets are annoying but they wont hurt the shrimp. I have them and the shrimp are breeding well.
Water changes will only be beneficial so dont hold back but try stopping the dosing for a bit and see how things go. Your grass may suffer but your shrimp may benefit.

[talldutchie]

Any suggestions?

Well... your temp is fine. Your dosing regimen isn't that unusual.

Shrimp deaths occur for roughly 3 reasons:

1. poisoning.Everything dies and fairly quickly too, usually in 24-36 hours. Shrimp curl into balls while dying.
2. One of the few lethal bacterial and fungus infections.
Shrimp die at a slower pace, 3-4 a week. Bodies look fairly normal.

Both I would expect to have hit every species in the tank

3. Failure to moult. Sometimes you don't find the bodies of this, if you do the difference between bright red dead and somewhat darker is sometimes apparent. Most difficult to diagnose since dfferent indidivudals and species grow at different rates.

Now, since your rilli do fine it might be something else entirely. One thing I do notice is that you manage to get a ph of 7 out of london tap water. Normally that stuff is so hard you'd need no salt if you wanted to keep rift lake.

[~firefly~]

Thanks for those invaluable opinions. I'll cut the ferts and carry on as planned.

Actually, the last body I pulled out was purple so had indeed darkened. Not noticed it on any others though. Hmmm...

Yep, straight from the tap my London water is 7.5 lowering to 7.0 after a few hours in the tank. My LFS was surprised I got that too.

[madagascariensis]

Several signs point to high accumulation of organics, such as mulm building up in moss, sudden algae growth, and pH(and possibly hardness) dropping when you add new water to your tank. But on the other hand you have low nitrates and a good water change schedule. Weird.

[~firefly~]

Yes, my suspicion is the "moss tree" mulm, although that would normally be combined with a spike in nitrates wouldn't it? That is, unless it was anaerobically active and leeching something nasty that my test kits don't test for.

Either way - thanks everyone for the input. I was very worried yesterday and I wish I'd taken action a bit sooner. I'm glad that it doesn't seem to be something really obvious I've missed anyway.

Might post an update in a week or two to report back.

[~firefly~]

Update: all appears well...and for the first time ever I have babies in the tank.

I've kept up with the ferts but increased the frequency of my water changes x3 (every other day as I didn't really have time to do daily ones this week). If all goes well I might reintroduce some moss in a few weeks.

[talldutchie]

Strange... my instinct tells me the moss mulm wasn't to blame. Otoh, you are getting results now which is encouraging......

How about wendelov instead of moss?

[~firefly~]

Balls. I spoke too soon. Another death today.

[SomethingIsFishy]

Bummer. Hope you can figure it out.

My opinion may not be worth much because I am admittedly a newbie, but I wonder if the difference in pH between the tank and tap is stressing the shrimp?? If the pH goes up every time you do a wc then falls again maybe that's weakening the shrimp?? My water change schedule is a lot less frequent than yours and I've had my shrimp for just a couple months and have had two shrimp hatch eggs and one is currently berried again. Just a thought...

[~firefly~]

I would imagine that a large weekly change would cause more shock than smaller daily changes (more stable). I'm losing shrimp regardless of WC frequency. It's odd.