# Cherry Shrimp Deaths



## Daniel Ma

So recently, in my new 5.5 gal, I set up during the summer, 3 of my RCS have died, the third one being this morning when I saw it. This is a shrimp only tank. My tank is cycled, but now that I have lost a few shrimp, I think I should test the water. The thing is, I do have planaria and hydra in my tank and I am deciding what I should do to exterminate them. It have not overfed my tank, the planaria had come from moss that was bought from an aquarist. I know you can use fenbendazole and no-planaria, but I don't know which one works better. If anyone has had any experience using either one or anything else, please let me know. Also, I use Seachem Prime for my dechlorinator, and I heard it is harmful to shrimp? Other than that I don't really know what the problem is, because I haven't witness any shrimp dying if they were stung by hydra, nor have I seen planaria attack shrimp unless it was already dead, and the Prime with water was added into my tank last week.

One of the shrimps was acting different though. It was a female. She wasn't moving as much and I had a feeling it was in trouble. She had a white-ish/pink strip on its back from it's head to it's abdomen. I was thinking it was ready to molt because she had white eyes and overall a white tinted body. But the next day, I saw it didn't make it. Other than that, I'm not really sure what is wrong. the temperature is between 20-30 Celsius because it does drop during the night. Could that be a factor that caused the shrimp to die? I'm pretty sure temperature is not a worry as long as it's between 20-30.

I am still new to keeping shrimp as a hobby, and I'll need all the info I get from experienced people.
Thanks.


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## Diztrbd1

Testing the water would be a good start. If you can list all the water parameters Ph, Kh, Gh Nitrate, nitrite, ammonia ...It would be most likely be very helpful in diagnosing the problem. 
Im no expert with shrimp but I do know they require stability when it comes to their water chemistry. They don't do well with big changes in the water. Temp could be one factor as it doesn't take 5 gal much time to rise or lower. 5 gal is hard to keep the parameters stable in. Though I know there are people who are successful keeping them in a smaller tanks as such, I personally would recommend getting a bigger tank and a heater so the temp does not fluctuate much. Anyway, if you can.... the water parameters would be very helpful with the experts here


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## effox

You'll need to keep the temperature stable. Going into winter, you'll want to ensure that it remains constant for sure, so invest in a cheap heater.

5.5g's can swing pretty easily as John mentioned, for water parameters and heat. Posting all water parameters would be beneficial, in the event the temperature swings weren't the issue (or only issue).

Cheers,
Chris


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## Dawna

PRETTY sure shrimps don't like temperatures at 28-30C. I mean, even tropical guppies usually stay at around 25C. I keep my 5 gallon of cherry shrimps at a stable 23C, its been almost 2 months since I got 5 of them, now I have 10 big ones and around 8-12 baby ones D: From my experience, they don't react well to big water changes, so I only take out a tiny amount every 2-3days just to keep the area clean.


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## effox

Yeah, I kept mine at 74 degree F if I recall correctly, which is 23 Celsius.

Regardless, I'm sure they can handle and thrive in a variety of temperatures and water parameters, but it needs to be constant, not fluctuating drastically. The first thing I'd do is buy a 10w heater or something small like that to keep the temperature dialed in.

The planaria are unsightly but not harmful. I treated my shrimp tank with No Planaria and had no casualties. I believe they are doses for 10g, so you'd need to cut the medication by 50%.

Hydra don't harm full grown shrimp from my understanding, only shrimplets. I've never had to treat for them though, so no advice or certainty from me there.


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## nigerian prince

you gotta find a way to sort out those temp. swings, i keep my tank temperature at 22-24c, i am a beginner to shrimp but they seem to be doing well, breeding like crazy

not sure if prime is harmful to shrimp, perhaps if your not dosing correctly?

use some "no planaria" , ive never used it but many others here have and ive only heard good reviews


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## Daniel Ma

Thanks for all the help. I do have a heater and yesterday night I checked the temp before I closed the light and it was almost to 20 Celsius, so I turned my heater on. I'll see if i can get no planaria from Canadian Aquatics.


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## wsl

I've used no planaria before and it was very effective. I think it may be able to kill hydra as well. Only thing to watch out for is if you have a lot of planaria in your tank, you can easily cause a big ammonia spike by killing them all at once, so you have to make sure to do the water changes after you use it.


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## Daniel Ma

Oh no wonder. There are quite a few but not all over the substrate. I just lost another shrimp tonight. The temperature was steady. I really gotta test the water so I can list the parameters out. Has anyone ever had shrimp deaths and couldn't find out why?


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## Nicole

I think the temperature is what stressed your shrimps out. 20-30C is a huge range..my shrimp tank fluctuates no more than 1C or maybe even 2C if it's from a water change. Is your heater not adjustable? I would invest in one if so. You shouldn't have to wait to turn the heater on or off because by then the temperature would have already fluctuated. What's your tank at now even if it's steady? I find a good temperature to be around 23/24C.


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## Parallel

From my experience.. I've had tons of death when starting to keep cherries/fire reds.. Now i've got the hang of it. From my opinion I think cherries are one of the hardiest of all shrimps and as long as the temperature isn't fluctuating by minutes rather slowly by the hour.. it's fine.

If you think it's temperature killing your shrimp it's just a small factor.. The largest factor right now is your water parameters. I can see this because you say there's a white pink strip on the back of shrimps. This indicates they have trouble molting. The solution is test your water make sure its around 150-300 tds and make sure your GH is at least 2-6. All inverts need calcium carbonate to molt. A factor of TDS indicates how healthy or when they molt.. so make sure your tds consists of healthy minerals such as calcium, potassium, magnesium etc which are fine for building tds.

Just my 2cents

P.S don't change the water params drastically.. do it slowly rather.
make sure you maintain a constant ph ( 6.5 -6.7 is what I am at usually)
PRIME is one of the best conditioners out there. It has absolutely NO harm to ANY inverts.


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## Daniel Ma

Nicole said:


> I think the temperature is what stressed your shrimps out. 20-30C is a huge range..my shrimp tank fluctuates no more than 1C or maybe even 2C if it's from a water change. Is your heater not adjustable? I would invest in one if so. You shouldn't have to wait to turn the heater on or off because by then the temperature would have already fluctuated. What's your tank at now even if it's steady? I find a good temperature to be around 23/24C.


Yeah the heater is automatic, I just turn it on and whenever it needs to heat up, it'll have a light. My temperature is about 23/24C. Other than that, I don't know what's wrong.


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## Nicole

You mean the heater is always plugged in right? I was just confused because you said the temperature was almost 20 so then you turned on your heater? Or did you just get a heater and didn't have one before? Just trying to figure out how your tank has a range of 20-30C..

Have you finally got your water tested? You won't know what's wrong until you do so.

I find that my shrimps get all the nutrients they need from their feedings with the constant signs of molting and breeding so I don't test for TDS.


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## Daniel Ma

Nicole said:


> You mean the heater is always plugged in right? I was just confused because you said the temperature was almost 20 so then you turned on your heater? Or did you just get a heater and didn't have one before? Just trying to figure out how your tank has a range of 20-30C..
> 
> Have you finally got your water tested? You won't know what's wrong until you do so.
> 
> I find that my shrimps get all the nutrients they need from their feedings with the constant signs of molting and breeding so I don't test for TDS.


Yeah my heater is always plugged in. I said it was from 20-30C because I think it kept on going up and down, but staying in between 20-3-C. Right now it is a solid 23/24.

My water parameters:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm 
pH: in between 7.2-7.6

Nitrate is supposed to be 5ppm but it's always 0 for me, and is my pH too high?
I also don't have a gH and kH test kit so would it be ideal to get one?


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## Daniel Ma

Parallel said:


> From my experience.. I've had tons of death when starting to keep cherries/fire reds.. Now i've got the hang of it. From my opinion I think cherries are one of the hardiest of all shrimps and as long as the temperature isn't fluctuating by minutes rather slowly by the hour.. it's fine.
> 
> If you think it's temperature killing your shrimp it's just a small factor.. The largest factor right now is your water parameters. I can see this because you say there's a white pink strip on the back of shrimps. This indicates they have trouble molting. The solution is test your water make sure its around 150-300 tds and make sure your GH is at least 2-6. All inverts need calcium carbonate to molt. A factor of TDS indicates how healthy or when they molt.. so make sure your tds consists of healthy minerals such as calcium, potassium, magnesium etc which are fine for building tds.
> 
> Just my 2cents
> 
> P.S don't change the water params drastically.. do it slowly rather.
> make sure you maintain a constant ph ( 6.5 -6.7 is what I am at usually)
> PRIME is one of the best conditioners out there. It has absolutely NO harm to ANY inverts.


The white pink strip seems to only be on females. Sometimes it's not there though. I got these cherries at Island Pets Unlimited near Lougheed mall since they had a new shipment of shrimp. I also got an amano shrimp there, who is molting fine with my other amano shrimp that was in the tank already. One of them just molted a day ago, and one of the cherries had molted just a few hours ago. But it only seems to be the males that molt... They had cherries with yellows in their tank and both types had white stripes. Though I'm pretty sure the males don't usually have it.

Check this thread out: cherry shrimp with white strip everyone said the stripe was good and it was a colouration of the shrimp.

How can I make sure I have the essential minerals in the water? I think I'll need a gH and kH test kit. What do they test for though? I hear people talk about it a lot but I don't know much about it and didn't know how important it was.


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## shady280

I've had a case of dying shrimp, check your food source for copper, harmful to shrimp. had another case as well where my lights got too hot (led strip malfunction) went too high and cooked the poor little guys. if you have a small tank with a few shrimp there is a good chance you don't even need to feed them, they will do fine off the micro bacteria thats naturally in the tank.


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## Sayonara

I have had this mysterious shrimp death before. I agree with 'Parallel' and think it was because our water is too pure (tap water is about 6-11 in TDS in the lower mainland) and shrimp need minerals and stuff to molt and be healthy. I purchased this 'Bee Shrimp Mineral GH+' and I think it has really helped remineralize the water that we have to better levels that shrimp need to molt. Check the product out, and if you need some I'll even sell you half of what I have because you only need a little bit of the powder for gallons of water. Otherwise this will keep me for years.


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