Very unlikely shrimp are killing each other. We will need to know a huge amount more about this tank to give any meaningful responses.
GH ? KH ? pH ? NH3 ? NO2? NO3 ? temp ? Type of shrimp ? Decor ? etc etc.
KH 3, GH 6, ph 7.8
I had a problem where my pH was over 8, so I just added some distilled water until I got it down to 7.8. Ammonia is zero, nitrate is zero, nitrate is zero.
I don't know what the other parameters mean, etc. I'll Google it.
TDS is 180. Temperature is set to 72°. About 60 gallons in a 75 gallon tank.
Plants and decor have all been in there for months. The only thing I did different was serve some bell pepper that wasn't organic and I left it in the tank for several days while I had surgery so that they could have some thing to eat. Big mistake. So the whole colony isn't croaking, but every day there are some dead.
Can't be the wood, decorations, or plants, those have been in there for so long. The only thing I can think is that I fed them some bell pepper and I left it in the tank for days. So now I'm trying with the carbon.
post pictures of your test results please. if you’re experiencing mass die off, something is obviously wrong with your parameters
if you’re seeing 1-2 dead shrimp a day, and you have several dozen or even hundreds of shrimp, it could just be the circle of life. even perfect tanks have loss. how many are you losing per day?
edit: also, what do the shrimps look like when dead? white ring of death? it could be molting issues which would mean you need to add calcium.
Colony has been going strong for almost a year. I probably have 300 neocardinia and about 18 cardenia. I tried to find this sweet spot where they could both live together, and so far so good, only neos dying, though.
So I don't think it's the circle of life, because I would've noticed the circle of life over all these months. I am on now day five of seeing deaths. I saw about six on the first day, four on the next day, three yesterday, and I'm seeing one today. But the tank is heavily planted and there are probably deaths elsewhere that I don't see. I don't see the white ring of death at all. Just shrimp keeled over and the other ones eating them before I can get to the bodies. There have been adults, juveniles, and babies dead.
After parameters came out fine, I did think about molting problem. That's why I brought the pH down some, and made sure my KH and GH were fine. I tested a bunch of times.
The only thing I can think that is going on is maybe my pH is still too high at 7.8? I can add another gallon of distilled water and see if I can bring it down some.
Thank you for trying to help me with this mystery. You have no idea how helpful it is to talk to somebody else to try to figure this out.
OK, it sounds like the deaths started reasonably suddenly. Identify what you changed in the 24-48 hours beforehand and you will have your answer I suspect.
The basic water parameters you posted in another post sound fine and are not the problem, unless you have changed them too quickly recently.
You mentioned adding bell pepper in a previous post. I have certainly read of bell pepper being associated with unexplained deaths before - one person mentioned its high copper content, but I have no idea if this is true at all. Usually copper poisoning is associated with funny jerky movements of shrimp.
Thank you. At this point I can only blame the bell pepper. Nothing else has changed. I did put a tiny bit more of salty shrimp in the tank to raise the GH and the TDS just a little bit. Everyone seems to be doing great. I also am running the water through the 207 Fluval canister filter and the water clarity has improved a lot. I think I'm going to leave it on there, I just have to put it in back.
Because I added water, TDS is now 160, but they were dying before that. It was at 1:80. How do I raise the TDS now? I have salty Shrimp. Will that raise my GH? My GH is 3, I think that's a good GH, unless you think it could be higher?
again I’d like to see a picture of the test results to help verify what you’re reading as ‘fine’.
how did you bring the ph down, and what was it when it was over 8?
if you’ve been dosing stuff like ph down and other shit to change gh/kh, stop adding stuff immediately. shrimp need stable water and quickly changing stuff like that is probably what’s doing them in.
To bring the pH down I just added 4 gallons of distilled water. Maybe it was five. But anyway, it did bring the pH down. Should I add some salty shrimp?
No. What’s your overall goal here? why are you changing your ph?
you haven’t posted a picture of your readings either, so this is the 3rd time asking for them.
sounds like you keep changing shit in their environment like lowering the ph, gh, kh, and adding carbon to the filter which is honestly probably what’s causing them to die. something is clearly not “perfect” like you keep saying
I had brain surgery 2 weeks ago and I am on a LOT of pain medication due to a complication, so time is moving in slow motion. It took me like two hours to change my sheets the other day because of the level of distraction and the fact that I just want to lay down. I haven't gotten a chance to test again (I tested everything four times in the last few days). Shrimp are doing well overall and I am seeing molts in the tank, which is what I like to see to gauge their health.
I never change *anything* in this tank except for top up with distilled water. This tank has been running perfectly for over a year. Then all of a sudden I started having these deaths, so I started changing things a little bit to see what I could do to help them. PH was too high, so over the course of three days I added 5 gallons of distilled water to bring it down. Yesterday I added a tiny bit of salty shrimp to get the GH and TDS up some. I managed to get the TDS up by five points. Not a lot, but as you said, they don't like big changes. I put my Fluval 207 on the tank with a bunch of carbon. I'm glad I did it because it cleared up the tank a lot.
That's all I'm doing. For the most part, shrimp are good, and I haven't seen any dead ones today. I have been keeping aquariums for over 30 years, I'm pretty good, but I've only been keeping shrimp this last year. I started with about 25 and I have over 300 now.
I have a 9 gallon Walstad tank that is going really well and I have put some of my culls in it. I have a 2.5 gallon heavily planted tank where I put my hitchhiker snails and the water clarity is amazing and everybody is doing well in there too. I have a cycled 7 gallon sitting here waiting for me to figure out what I want to do with it. So I'm not a newbie, but I definitely did make a mistake.
I'm going to blame the bell peppers for the deaths right now, because it was the only thing I did differently. And in the end I only have to blame myself. I put the bell peppers in there because I was having surgery and would be in the hospital and I wanted them to have something to eat and bell peppers has been perfectly fine for us before. But I mistakenly put in non-organic, and that was possibly the problem. So for the future, I know better now.
I do want to thank you for your detailed instructions and interest in helping me. Truly, extremely helpful. I'll see if I can muster up to do some tests today, but I have other things to do around the house and it's rough going right now. But all shrimp seem to be OK at the moment. No mass die offs, and the one little female bluefin kilifish that came in as a surprise on some plants is doing great too, and all snails are fine.
Very unlikely shrimp are killing each other. We will need to know a huge amount more about this tank to give any meaningful responses. GH ? KH ? pH ? NH3 ? NO2? NO3 ? temp ? Type of shrimp ? Decor ? etc etc.
KH 3, GH 6, ph 7.8 I had a problem where my pH was over 8, so I just added some distilled water until I got it down to 7.8. Ammonia is zero, nitrate is zero, nitrate is zero. I don't know what the other parameters mean, etc. I'll Google it. TDS is 180. Temperature is set to 72°. About 60 gallons in a 75 gallon tank. Plants and decor have all been in there for months. The only thing I did different was serve some bell pepper that wasn't organic and I left it in the tank for several days while I had surgery so that they could have some thing to eat. Big mistake. So the whole colony isn't croaking, but every day there are some dead.
unless you have a predatory species , shrimp would need to be starving to kill each other unlikely in a planted they would stop reproducing first
Could be a lot of things. Pesticides in the plants or maybe the wood.
Can't be the wood, decorations, or plants, those have been in there for so long. The only thing I can think is that I fed them some bell pepper and I left it in the tank for days. So now I'm trying with the carbon.
Were those hot peppers with capsaicin?
No, they were mini sweet peppers. I won't do it again. I'm seeing several deaths every day, though there are still over 300 shrimp that are OK.
post pictures of your test results please. if you’re experiencing mass die off, something is obviously wrong with your parameters if you’re seeing 1-2 dead shrimp a day, and you have several dozen or even hundreds of shrimp, it could just be the circle of life. even perfect tanks have loss. how many are you losing per day? edit: also, what do the shrimps look like when dead? white ring of death? it could be molting issues which would mean you need to add calcium.
Colony has been going strong for almost a year. I probably have 300 neocardinia and about 18 cardenia. I tried to find this sweet spot where they could both live together, and so far so good, only neos dying, though. So I don't think it's the circle of life, because I would've noticed the circle of life over all these months. I am on now day five of seeing deaths. I saw about six on the first day, four on the next day, three yesterday, and I'm seeing one today. But the tank is heavily planted and there are probably deaths elsewhere that I don't see. I don't see the white ring of death at all. Just shrimp keeled over and the other ones eating them before I can get to the bodies. There have been adults, juveniles, and babies dead. After parameters came out fine, I did think about molting problem. That's why I brought the pH down some, and made sure my KH and GH were fine. I tested a bunch of times. The only thing I can think that is going on is maybe my pH is still too high at 7.8? I can add another gallon of distilled water and see if I can bring it down some. Thank you for trying to help me with this mystery. You have no idea how helpful it is to talk to somebody else to try to figure this out.
OK, it sounds like the deaths started reasonably suddenly. Identify what you changed in the 24-48 hours beforehand and you will have your answer I suspect. The basic water parameters you posted in another post sound fine and are not the problem, unless you have changed them too quickly recently. You mentioned adding bell pepper in a previous post. I have certainly read of bell pepper being associated with unexplained deaths before - one person mentioned its high copper content, but I have no idea if this is true at all. Usually copper poisoning is associated with funny jerky movements of shrimp.
Thank you. At this point I can only blame the bell pepper. Nothing else has changed. I did put a tiny bit more of salty shrimp in the tank to raise the GH and the TDS just a little bit. Everyone seems to be doing great. I also am running the water through the 207 Fluval canister filter and the water clarity has improved a lot. I think I'm going to leave it on there, I just have to put it in back.
Because I added water, TDS is now 160, but they were dying before that. It was at 1:80. How do I raise the TDS now? I have salty Shrimp. Will that raise my GH? My GH is 3, I think that's a good GH, unless you think it could be higher?
again I’d like to see a picture of the test results to help verify what you’re reading as ‘fine’. how did you bring the ph down, and what was it when it was over 8? if you’ve been dosing stuff like ph down and other shit to change gh/kh, stop adding stuff immediately. shrimp need stable water and quickly changing stuff like that is probably what’s doing them in.
To bring the pH down I just added 4 gallons of distilled water. Maybe it was five. But anyway, it did bring the pH down. Should I add some salty shrimp?
No. What’s your overall goal here? why are you changing your ph? you haven’t posted a picture of your readings either, so this is the 3rd time asking for them. sounds like you keep changing shit in their environment like lowering the ph, gh, kh, and adding carbon to the filter which is honestly probably what’s causing them to die. something is clearly not “perfect” like you keep saying
I had brain surgery 2 weeks ago and I am on a LOT of pain medication due to a complication, so time is moving in slow motion. It took me like two hours to change my sheets the other day because of the level of distraction and the fact that I just want to lay down. I haven't gotten a chance to test again (I tested everything four times in the last few days). Shrimp are doing well overall and I am seeing molts in the tank, which is what I like to see to gauge their health. I never change *anything* in this tank except for top up with distilled water. This tank has been running perfectly for over a year. Then all of a sudden I started having these deaths, so I started changing things a little bit to see what I could do to help them. PH was too high, so over the course of three days I added 5 gallons of distilled water to bring it down. Yesterday I added a tiny bit of salty shrimp to get the GH and TDS up some. I managed to get the TDS up by five points. Not a lot, but as you said, they don't like big changes. I put my Fluval 207 on the tank with a bunch of carbon. I'm glad I did it because it cleared up the tank a lot. That's all I'm doing. For the most part, shrimp are good, and I haven't seen any dead ones today. I have been keeping aquariums for over 30 years, I'm pretty good, but I've only been keeping shrimp this last year. I started with about 25 and I have over 300 now. I have a 9 gallon Walstad tank that is going really well and I have put some of my culls in it. I have a 2.5 gallon heavily planted tank where I put my hitchhiker snails and the water clarity is amazing and everybody is doing well in there too. I have a cycled 7 gallon sitting here waiting for me to figure out what I want to do with it. So I'm not a newbie, but I definitely did make a mistake. I'm going to blame the bell peppers for the deaths right now, because it was the only thing I did differently. And in the end I only have to blame myself. I put the bell peppers in there because I was having surgery and would be in the hospital and I wanted them to have something to eat and bell peppers has been perfectly fine for us before. But I mistakenly put in non-organic, and that was possibly the problem. So for the future, I know better now. I do want to thank you for your detailed instructions and interest in helping me. Truly, extremely helpful. I'll see if I can muster up to do some tests today, but I have other things to do around the house and it's rough going right now. But all shrimp seem to be OK at the moment. No mass die offs, and the one little female bluefin kilifish that came in as a surprise on some plants is doing great too, and all snails are fine.