red cherry shrimps

[danbrown]

hi everyone,
I a 20 litre heavily planted tank which i made just to have some shrimps,i had the other day evicted my chocolate oranda to my folks large pond as he has killed his other oranda mate and ripped a black moor to shreds(eye out,fins in tatters etc) so i saw this a perfect opportunity to have some shrimps as ive wanted some for ages.
I planted the tank up with a load of plants and java moss and was very happy with the way it turned out and bought 3 rcs and 3 guppies as they are very small and very pretty,
now being the donkey that i am i just assumed everything in the tank was fine and dandy as the fish in there were over 5 years old and i never once had a problem.
I found a shrimp dead today and havn't seen the other 2 for over 2 days now so i'm hoping they are not dead too, i tested the water today and everything is perfect and within normal parameters apart from the nitrates (i did a 40 odd% water change saturday) and they were off the scale.
I was very shocked and angry with myself for not checking the other day before putting in the shrimp and guppies, i put some interpet tapsafe in the tank and i was wondering have i done the right thing ???? The guppies are fine and still swimming around as normal. I don't know what else to do if tap safe wont sort it !!!

[Brhino]

three fancy goldfish in a tiny 20 liter tank would have been a massive bioload, which explains the nitrates off the scale. Fish can adjust to high nitrates if they are gradually introduced to them, so that's how your goldfish were able to survive for that long. But then, you introduced some new stock and they're going to get shocked by the nitrates. You've got to do water changes to get those nitrates down, ideally below 20ppm. Use the tapsafe each time you do a water change - that's what it's for, treating tap water. It doesn't do anything for nitrates.

With that said, shrimp are great hiders so just because you don't see two of them don't necessarily mean they're dead.

[danbrown]

hi, thanks for that info, how many do you recon a should do a week ?
Cheers Dan