Need advice for dying shrimps (and my shrimp story)

[FreemanAng]

Hi everyone, I am having a little trouble with keeping my shrimps alive, and the cause is quite confusing (at least for me), here's my story:

I started shrimp keeping since last year December 2014. I started with a 7 gallons heavy planted tank filled with 20 cherries, 2 Amano shrimps, as well as 5 neon tetras and 10 mosquito rasboras. I used prime to condition the water, and will usually add 1/4 teaspoon of red sea salt. The water will always be stored for at least 2-3 days before being used for the water change (aged water since I do not have RO water device).
This was a happy start for me (and maybe my shrimps). Things were going so well, there was no casualties, and some of the shrimps even reproduced.

Soon I bought another 7 galloons tank, and make it similar to my first tank, but with more different types of shrimps (cheap ones cos I poor student ). I bought snails too and add it to both tanks. So far everything was ok for months.

Below are some of the happy times I have had.

RCS_Eating2.jpgShrimp Babies.jpg
Pregnant shrimp.jpg

Soon, the snail population grew, and there were many of them. They did not (or are too slow) to snatch food from the fishes and shrimps, so I do not bother. Instead, they helped to clean up by eating leftover food that the fishes and shrimp avoids. The tank was well-maintained by them, so much so that water changes need to be made only once per week (instead of twice per week usually). There was one point when I did not do water changes for 2 weeks as the water was clean.

Not long later in March 2015, I begin finding planarias in my tank 1.

Planaria in my tank :


They appeared harmless to shrimps and fishes in my tank, and I understand they are a result of overfeeding (which explains the population boom for the snails). I also noticed tubifex swimming freely in tank 1, but not in tank 2. There were no casualties at this point yet until...

I decided to buy some (small) fishes, in particular, lamp eyes and glass fishes, plus some small neon tetras, and add it in equal amounts to tank 1 and tank 2 respectively.

Fishes I bought:
Peaceful Fishes.jpg

Soon later, I begin finding dead shrimps in tank 1. Everyday there was like 1-2 at least. There was once when I saw many planarias on a decoration lying still, which I suspect (and saw on some forums) they are hunting for shrimps. I had read that when the shrimps step on them, they will grab on to the shrimp's legs, and penetrate into their body, thereafter killing them. When I found 2-3 of the bodies infested with red and transparent planaria, I was furious and begin a process of manually removing any planaria worms from the aquarium I spotted. I won't say I am successful, but I rarely seen them now.

Shrimps continue to die, I was doing water changes almost daily, and I checked with test kits, the water seems fine. Shrimps that are dying seems to be shivering, and some with a white line around their neck (which I read on some forums, their shedding failed). I added more marine salt to provide for more calcium in the aquarium.

Shrimps continue to die.... I was happy to end my final exams today (5th June 2015), but returned home to find a shock. When I turned on the light of my tank, I saw one of my shrimp has its shell near the head ripped open and lying in a pool of around 5-6 planarias. It was still wringing very weakly!! I quickly lifted it up, added tank water to a container with 1 full teaspoon of salt, and soaked the shrimp inside to kill the planarias. After 1-2 mins, I took the shrimp and place it in a container with normal tank water.

Shrimp with open shell near the head:
Shrimp shell open.jpg

I am not sure how to save it now, but I hope it will recover to heal its shell, although a part of me predicts he is not going to make it till tomorrow.

I also found in the tank, a shrimp's broken body.

I now do not think it is the work of the planaria, since I do not think planaria has the ability to break the body into half like this. I am suspecting its my fishes, but the new fishes does not seems to show any aggression towards the shrimps (at least when the light is on).

Another usual syndrome I see with dying shrimps is that they seems to have their front hands (or princers) locked together, such that you can fee there was something sticky locking them together. But on closer look, there was like nothing.


As such, I am now down to tank 1 with growing number of dead shrimps. I wish to seek all your advice before my tanks get wiped out of shrimps that I had enjoyed keeping for months.

Thank you and sorry for the long post.

[FreemanAng]

Update (07/05/2015)

Another shrimp found almost dead (moving weakly), no visible injuries. Moved to another container, and changing water now.

Attachment 48401

I have heard that at certain times, more chlorine are added to the reservoirs, and this might be one possible cause I am thinking, but wouldn't using prime fix the chlorine? Or is it due to the flourine in our tap water?

[eviltrain]

check your gH, kH and tds.

i believe ur shrimps dies due to gH too high and they are unable to moult.

[FreemanAng]

check your gH, kH and tds.

i believe ur shrimps dies due to gH too high and they are unable to moult.

Thanks eviltrain for your reply. Checked, gh and kh was 0. I did not (and never had) test for tds hm........ Maybe I will head down tml to buy a test kit with more tests. Thanks for your advice!

[Dscheng]

Your water parameter look normal to me. Usually 50pcs in a bag, there are some sick one. But malayan shrimp are quite hardy one.

[FreemanAng]

Your water parameter look normal to me. Usually 50pcs in a bag, there are some sick one. But malayan shrimp are quite hardy one.

Thanks Dscheng for your reply, I do not think water conditions are an issue because I am now changing water everyday, but the death continues And the test kits show 0 kds, ghs, 6.0-6.5 ph (I am using active substrate), 0 nitrate and nitrites. ( mostly 0 because the water is now changed on daily basis). Haiz..

Btw the transparent shrimp u saw are yamato shrimps, not Malayan shrimps, and they are great !! But 2 have died off so far, one after having a blue hue on it

[Dscheng]

Is your tank cycled? Why you need to change water everyday? In fact our tap water is very toxic. Shrimp tank best is to use distilled water.

[FreemanAng]

Is your tank cycled? Why you need to change water everyday? In fact our tap water is very toxic. Shrimp tank best is to use distilled water.

Hi Dscheng, my tank was cycled since last time (months ago), and I added prime to condition the water so it should be safe. When there are dead bodies, changing water is a must for me. Since there are dead shrimps daily, hence the daily change

[Urban Aquaria]

GH of 0 is too low... the shrimps may not have enough minerals to form new shells and molt properly.

Just adding salt may not provide all the minerals that the shrimps need, you should dose mineral supplements designed for shrimps instead, those contain minerals and vitamins that shrimps can actually use.

Although more frequent water changes can help, but too much changes can shift the parameters too quickly and affect the weaker shrimps (especially of the tank was running with infrequent water changes previously)... shrimps require stable paramters, constant changes and fluctuations trigger molting which kills them if they are not ready yet.

Do check your tap water parameters as it may have changed recently (mine had a crazy TDS shift for a week before reverting back to normal, probably due to water pipe maintenance), there could be chemicals or extra minerals like rust or copper in the water that affected the shrimps.

Also check that there are no aerosol cleaning/polishing products or deodorants being used around the tank (even a distance away from the tank), those contain chemicals which are harmful to invertebrates... and check that the water change bucket and tools were not used to contain chemicals (ie. someone using it as mop bucket or to soak clothes in laundry detergent).

As for planaria, from my experience they only grab shrimps that are already going to die and too weak to escape, planaria can't catch healthy shrimps. So when you see planaria feeding on a dead or dying shrimp, they were not the cause of death, they are simply eating the shrimp abit earlier.

Its still a good idea to get rid of planaria though, they are pests and compete for food (and look unsightly too). Maybe you can try the product called "No Planaria", its safe for shrimps while being effective at killing planaria. Note that it'll also kill certain snails too.

[FreemanAng]

Thanks Urban Aquaria,

Your insights does provide me a better understanding. Just to ask, what range of gh and tds is the best?

For the salt, I have thought it this way because the packaging does show minerals that comes with it, but I guess I will go look for the supplements you suggest.

red_sea_salt.jpg


For water change issues, I shall let the water stay and remove only the dead shrimps for now and see how it goes. The past few months of successful shrimp keeping has provided me with the illusion that if I continue using the same method, applying the same chemical to tap water, everything will be ok. But apparently this is not true.
Your incident reminded me of a current renovation going on in a unit below mine, as well as another incident somewhere last year, where my tap water tastes strongly like algae. I wrote to the NEA guys and they immediately tested every unit's water in the block, but the issue was gone when they came, so they did not find anything wrong. I understood from them water tank is flushed only once every month (or 2 months), and the algae smell might be due to algae growing in the pipe of a neighbour who had gone for holidays. They told us to open the tap for at least 10 seconds to let the old water drain away first if anything similar happens.

So this (I guess) brings me to the conclusion that tap water is indeed unstable due to outside factors, and may be unsafe even if we used prime or other conditioner. So will TDS help me to distinguish unsafe and safe tap water? Or there are other factors too?

Talking about planaria, I just found another shrimp today, a very young one, with the same condition of a splitted open shell near its head, and planeria surrounding it. Same as yesterday, I took it out and place it in a separate container, but yesterday's one was dead by today, so I have not much hope for it. I have heard of no planeria, and its effectiveness, but sadly, the nearest fish farm I know (SeaView), they did not sell this product, so I will be ordering online for now.

I understand that there are also shrimp food that kills planeria? Is it better?

And btw thanks for your advice

[Urban Aquaria]

Your insights does provide me a better understanding. Just to ask, what range of gh and tds is the best?

Ideally for most shrimps in general, GH should be in the range of 4-8 dKH, not too high yet not too low, just enough for shrimps to absorb the minerals they need from the water column.

Most shrimp keepers usually try to keep TDS between 100-200 ppm range, its can be abit higher or lower as shrimps can adapt to varying parameters, but the most important thing is the changes to TDS have to be slow and gradual. Sudden changes in TDS will negatively affect shrimps very quickly.

For the salt, I have thought it this way because the packaging does show minerals that comes with it, but I guess I will go look for the supplements you suggest.

red_sea_salt.jpg

For the salt you are using, that is meant for reef tanks so the mineral levels are designed for marine invertebrates and corals... it would be quite different in composition and concentration from the minerals and vitamins that freshwater shrimps use.

Just for reference, you can check out the list of mineral content in some examples of additives for freshwater shrimp (personally i use the BorneoWild minerocks in my tanks and they have been working well): http://www.borneowild.com/pp_mineral...u=s&sub=0&pg=1

Most of the time the shrimps should be able to already obtain sufficient minerals and vitamins from the algae and food they eat anyways, so all these additional mineral supplements are just to fill in any gaps in terms of nutrition and enhance their condition to improve their lifespan.

For water change issues, I shall let the water stay and remove only the dead shrimps for now and see how it goes. The past few months of successful shrimp keeping has provided me with the illusion that if I continue using the same method, applying the same chemical to tap water, everything will be ok. But apparently this is not true.
Your incident reminded me of a current renovation going on in a unit below mine, as well as another incident somewhere last year, where my tap water tastes strongly like algae. I wrote to the NEA guys and they immediately tested every unit's water in the block, but the issue was gone when they came, so they did not find anything wrong. I understood from them water tank is flushed only once every month (or 2 months), and the algae smell might be due to algae growing in the pipe of a neighbour who had gone for holidays. They told us to open the tap for at least 10 seconds to let the old water drain away first if anything similar happens.

So this (I guess) brings me to the conclusion that tap water is indeed unstable due to outside factors, and may be unsafe even if we used prime or other conditioner. So will TDS help me to distinguish unsafe and safe tap water? Or there are other factors too?

Yeah, our local tap water parameters do vary from week to week (sometimes even day to day)... and different areas of Singapore and even different buildings (with old vs new pipes) tend to have different parameters too.

Dosing water conditioners like Seachem Prime will usually help to neutralize most of the chemicals and toxic heavy metals in the tap water and make it safe, but sometimes there are unusually odd spikes in tap water parameters, so a TDS meter helps to quickly detect any potential issues early (like in my case, when my tap water TDS suddenly jumped from 50-60 to 170-180).

While we may not know what exactly are the extra things in the water (our test kits can't detect those extra chemicals being used), but at least we can get a heads up early and either not use the water or dilute it further with distilled/RO water to reduce the concentration of those unknown additives.

Talking about planaria, I just found another shrimp today, a very young one, with the same condition of a splitted open shell near its head, and planeria surrounding it. Same as yesterday, I took it out and place it in a separate container, but yesterday's one was dead by today, so I have not much hope for it. I have heard of no planeria, and its effectiveness, but sadly, the nearest fish farm I know (SeaView), they did not sell this product, so I will be ordering online for now.

I understand that there are also shrimp food that kills planeria? Is it better?

Shrimps with split shells are a sure sign of molting problems, have to look at ways to solve that. The planaria are just doing their job of "recycling" the dead carcasses, i guess they can be considered as clean up crew too.

No Planaria is quite effective, i have used it before in my shrimp grow-out tank and it works, though you still need to manually remove as much planaria you see and reduce feeding (it has to be a multi-pronged approach), otherwise if the planaria population is still large and they all die en mass during the treatment, it can create an significant ammonia spike in the tank.

[FreemanAng]

Thanks Urban Aquaria for your reply, I have purchased a TDS meter, and found out my 2 tanks have TDS reading of 290 -300. I understood from my friend this is quite high, so I did a water change. My house's tap water reading was 90, after adding prime, it became 130, and this reading stays (+- 20) after the water change. So I guess you could say one issue was the TDS level, which I will be monitoring from now on.

To fix the nutrition problem, the aquarium shop recommended me HerpCraft Mineral Block (that's the only calcium block they have) :
HerpCraft Minteral Block.jpg
I bought it and have dumped 1 of them inside the tank to see if it works, hopefully no more dead shrimps by tml, as my population of shrimps is down to only 4-5 now (sadly).

[Urban Aquaria]

Thanks Urban Aquaria for your reply, I have purchased a TDS meter, and found out my 2 tanks have TDS reading of 290 -300. I understood from my friend this is quite high, so I did a water change. My house's tap water reading was 90, after adding prime, it became 130, and this reading stays (+- 20) after the water change. So I guess you could say one issue was the TDS level, which I will be monitoring from now on.

To fix the nutrition problem, the aquarium shop recommended me HerpCraft Mineral Block (that's the only calcium block they have) :
HerpCraft Minteral Block.jpg
I bought it and have dumped 1 of them inside the tank to see if it works, hopefully no more dead shrimps by tml, as my population of shrimps is down to only 4-5 now (sadly).

Tap water TDS at 90 is okay, but if it jumps to 130 after adding Prime, better check your dosage amounts... usually Prime should only be adding another +5-10 TDS if dosed at recommended amounts.

The mineral blocks you bought can help increase the mineral content in the tank, but as it's not designed specifically for shrimps, the mineral concentration may vary depending on how quick the block dissolves and the ratio of water volume. So you may need to monitor the GH parameter (if you have a GH test kit), or keep an eye on the shrimps and observe if they start to exhibit molting problems due to GH that may have accumulated too high.

[Devilblood]

another note...do not keep fishes with shrimp period...to them shrimp are snack

[Devilblood]

Also, tried to get mineral that are meant for shrimp, like UA mention the mineral you get maybe is not meant for shrimp. Go visit shop like Green Chapter or Aquatic Chamber to ask for advise or check the mineral they selling.

[FreemanAng]

Thanks Urban Aquaria and Devilblood for your advice, my shrimp seems ok now, no death for 2 days, and they are now actively eating and moving around!
I was indeed overdosing prime, and when I saw your post, I immediately went and check the dosage recommended. I was overdosing by 7x the required amount! Now the TDS after (correct dosage) prime is ~100.

For the mineral block, it was indeed not meant for shrimps, but that was the only one they have at the moment so I have to take it to try out and stop the deaths, time was running out previously. I will go and purchase those specially for shrimps soon.

Anyways, a great thanks to all of you who replied and provided me with advice throughout! I have learned quite a number of things from this incident.

[Dscheng]

Use mosura mineral plus ultra. Very good!

[FreemanAng]

Use mosura mineral plus ultra. Very good!

Thanks Dscheng, I will look out for it this coming weekend in Sea View

[Jimmy]

May I know where is the best shop to get TDS meter? Saw one selling for $30, not sure if price is good. Not LFS. Thanks

[FreemanAng]

May I know where is the best shop to get TDS meter? Saw one selling for $30, not sure if price is good. Not LFS. Thanks

So far if you can afford to wait, one of my friends found this one
http://m.banggood.com/Wholesale-Digi...y-p-52966.html