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Survive and optimum conditions are a different thing. Try lowering your GH to about 4 and see if it solves your problem. Use distilled water.
Hey guys,
My mixture of approx 30 Sakura and FR have been having moulting difficulties. I can see quite a few moulted shells, but also see a few deaths a week. Can tell from the dead bodies that their shell are semi "split"/"opened", most likely from difficulty in splitting open and jumping out of their old shell.
My tank has been set up for about 6 weeks with ADA New Amazonia soil. Its quite heavily planted with Cabomba, some Jap Hairgrass, Wisteria, Windelov, some Taiwan moss on mesh, Pelia on mesh, and frogbits floating around.
2ft tank, 60x30x30
Water volume approx 55 litres
Ammonia 0
NO2 0
NO3 10
ph 6.4
gh 6 (measured using drip test kits)
kh 0-3 (using test strips, hard to tell exact)
I am using a Jebao 503 (750/hr) canister filter, I have a rainbar right at my water surface, added valves to control the flow otherwise will be too strong. Some aeration with the bubbles contained within a plastic tube to limit the disturbance. Only tankmates are 3 otos and 12 Ember Tetras.
I read from other threads that gh 6 is a bit too high for cherries, but I also did some reading online and many websites state that cherries can survive in water with gh up to 12.
Can bros here kindly share their gh values with me for their cherries as reference?
I would want to try and increase the moulting success rate of my cherries, kind of painful to see them died like that....any ideas or suggestions?
Survive and optimum conditions are a different thing. Try lowering your GH to about 4 and see if it solves your problem. Use distilled water.
What I did:Originally Posted by cheetf
I have tried lowering the gh from 6 to 5 to 4 by removing all rocks that were previously in there and also did 2 water changes of about 20% - 30%, still the same problem persists.
When gh was 4, and there are still deaths, i tried dosing some mineral plus, still the death continues.
As suggested by one of the bros, I have tried added active charcoal and still the same issue.
The dead bodies looks mostly the same, slight break in the carapace/semi-moulted shell.
What puzzles me is its not that they can't moult as I do see quite a few nicely moulted shells lying around, but some some of them just cannot seem to moult properly. Other than that, the shrimps seem happy enough in the tank, grazing and exploring casually.
Im not using distilled water but tap water conditioned with Seachcem Prime. The fishes I have are eating well and totally happy, but i am not....
I did a lot of reading online and there are suggestions that adding iodine may help in the moulting, and some people added Seachem Reed Iodide in small amounts with success.
Additional info: My shrimps don't seem too interested in the food I put in, they prefer to nibble off the plants. Tried hikari shrimp cuisine, algae wafers, and got some mosura food from a friend, same thing.
Any useful thoughts or comments will be appreciated!
Last edited by tranzy; 19th Jan 2012 at 13:23.
Hi bro,
I'm not an expert but I was ever told that if you feed to much mosura or use products that claim to enhance the color of your shrimp it may lead to the problems you are experiencing. I had a similar experience with my shrimp dying off too. What i did was to feed smaller portions and instead of dropping an entire pallet in I will crush it into smaller pieces. Started using a larger variety of food and stopped dosing any products that claim to enhance things. After a week or 2 things stabilized and the deaths stopped. Now only during water changes I add a small amount of mineral plus.
Good luck!
Any suggestions of ideas are welcomed, expert or not!
The reason I wanted to start off with cherries is because I did not want to buy too many supplements or chiller, minimum fuss besides maintaining water quality. When I first started to put in the shrimps I did not add anything extra into the water, just hikari shrimp cuisine and algae pellets. Only just started adding mineral plus when all else failed.
I usually break the mosura food into smaller piece as its big, but hikari pellets are small so no need. My deaths have been going on for a while so trying all means to stop it....
Bro, you might want to check on the ph as mentioned. Or ask if any bro can help to check your ph. Sorry as I can't help cos mine using the test strips only. I remember reading that a slightly higher ph is better for fr and cherry. My ada soil was buffering at 6 or less for at least a month or so.
TDS readings? Cherries are hardy but they are still shrimps afterall, fragile
I don't find cherries hardy but I guess they are the hardy-est shrimps.. Yamotos are hardest I think.. hahaha!
I started keeping the shrimps in a nano tank. 20 or so but they started dying. So like the TS started to try all sort of remedies. I did not know the cause of deaths. First thing I did was to all carbon in my GEX-M filter and added a sponge filter just in case, upgraded to a 2ft tank and added a cooling fan.
The deaths still continued. The next thing I did was to change my anti-chlorine. At that time I was using Genesis, change to Nutrafin and added slightly more then recommended. Also every water change I added some mineral plus.
Unfortunately the deaths continued. I bought a KH and GH test kit. My KH is still very low now and my GH is 5. I proceeded to add some coral chips in my filter. I also change my feeding patterns to feed daily (used to feed bi-weekly) smaller crushed portions alternating between mosura and algae pallets. The entire process took months but my tank is stable now and I have some berried shrimps with shrimplets in my tank.
TS don't give up and all the best! Sometime we never really know what went wrong.
Biweekly feeding is very stingy. Hahaha!! Normally I only starve them for one or two day a week but never two days in a row
are these females and bought from shops?
silane
Master Silane, does that make any difference?
I will like to know more in details if possible.
they are mixture of males and females, some were berried when i got them but before they hatched they lost the eggs and died....
well, new discovery, and major oversight on my part. measured the ph yesterday (this time using handheld ph meter calibrated about 1 month ago) and discovered my ph is actually at 5!
way too low for cherries i think, although i read from various other forum discussions online that some had their cherries in their tank of the same ph. i already bought some coral chips and added a handful in, and did a ~20% WC.
I read that ph in planted tanks will be higher in the day and lower at night due to plants releasing CO2 at night and oxygen in the day. CO2 release will lower ph. Anyone can provide a rough idea of how much lower ph might be at night? just for reference and knowledge...
Same here. Did read before on bros who have the co2 setup does change the ph when in use. However for plants, not too sure about the changes make during the day and night.
From my old planted tank experience, CO2 at saturation during the day only dropped my pH from 6.8 to 6.2. Inject anymore and the fishes started fainting.
It is highly unlikely for the pH to plunge to 5 due to CO2 alone, especially when you're not injecting any.
What soil are you using and how old is the soil?
Hi, soil is ADA New Amazonia, tank was established on 13 Nov 2011, so about 7 weeks old.
Thanks for the figures, i just wanted to have a rough gauge of how much the ph difference is between night and day.
After adding about 2 handful of those bigger sized coral chips and doing some WC on Fri night, ph reading is 6.1, no more deaths in the tank yet, left with 4 shrimps in the tank.
ADA New Amazonia will buffer the ph down while the coral chips will try to bring it up. Any idea if the existing coral chips will increase its buffering capabilities gradually or do i have to add in more to up the ph?
There is no guideline when it comes to using coral chips to counteract the effects of the soil on the pH. You have to monitor pH, GH and KH on a daily basis to be sure of the correct quantity. It is more or less a case of trial and error. If no deaths occur and the shrimps can molt properly then the conditions should be fine.
ADA Amazonia 1 or 2 will bring the pH down to 5 or so, after which it will rise back up to 6-6.5 when it is fully stabilised. Same case with New Amazonia.
Fish.. Simply Irresistable
Back to Killies... slowly.
7 Weeks is still very new and the tank's probably still cycling. Some deaths may be due to low levels of ammonia. Are the shrimps eating well?
Hey guys, Happy Lunar New Year!!
Thanks everyone for their inputs and comments, so far no deaths since the coral chips were added. Previously there would be at least a couple dead every day, or every other day.
pH has been brought up to about 6.6, an increase of about 0.5 since a few days ago, but then again previous few days sky was quite downcast so not much sunlight coming through the windows, maybe slightly different co2 levels would have had a small effect on the ph levels.
i will continue to monitor the water parameters over the next few weeks. As mentioned, once the New Amazonia stabilises the ph should maintain at 6-6.5, so eventually if the coral chips are not needed i will gradually remove some of them...
My ammonia levels still at 0, no2 0 as well. The shrimps seem to be eating much better than before. Previously, when i put in food, they were hardly attracted to it. Today, they went right to the pellet...
Anyway, now that the shrimps are happier, if alls well at the end of the week. while i slowly start to introduce more shrimps into the tank...hope to bring an end to the deaths.
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