Dead Shrimp...what's The Cause?

[bb1991]

So i just found my amano shrimp devouring my cherry shrimp. But before that the cherry shrimp looked sluggish, and sort of ready to accept its fate. (Standing still, no appendages moving, letting the current move its body. Oh and the amano only ate the shrimp after it died)
I can't take a picture to show you what it looked like, because i don't have a camera and as of right now the amano shrimp is half way through finishing its insides. I can tell you what it looked like before it died though. It turned a lighter red than it would normally look like(One color away from being pink maybe). The shell seemed rougher and more textured, almost wrinkly if you were to compare to skin. Now that only the head part of the shrimp still has insides in it, i can tell you that the tail part of the shell is transparent, like just done molting. And that's what i thought it was going to do in the beginning, getting ready to molt. Oh and i dunno how old the shrimps are..

The main difference that distinguished it from other of my cherries was definitely the color and the texture of the shell. It was almost 'fake' looking, like the color was all opaque, no translucency at all (even around the bottom half of the shrimp)

Is this a disease, lack of food, or old age?
On a side note: What's the lifespan of a cherry shrimp?

 

[Baccus]

For the cherry shrimp to not have had any appendages left, do you have any fish in the tank with the shrimp? it sounds as if the shrimp had trouble shedding at one point and might have lost its legs that way. Usually water with not enough calcium can cause trouble with moults, or a disease of the shrimp.

If the shell of the shrimp looked rough/ textured it could have been a disease that killed it, I am sure I have read somewhere that a disease like the opague colour of the shrimp causes the shell to deteriate.
For the opague disease look up names like White Muscle Disease in shrimp, or viruses of shrimp. I hope you took the cherry shrimp being devoured away from the amano, because one of the ways that white muscle disease is suspected of being transmitted is via healthy shrimp eating the dead diseased ones. This disease is a virus and has no cure with an pretty sucessful kill rate, so if you see any more opague shrimp remove them from your tank and humanely kill them and ensure the corpses are not going to be able to infect waterways by flushing the corspe down the toilet or risnsed down the sink, buried in a garden or compost bin would the best way to dispose of the corpse.

Oh and cherry shrimp only have a fairly short life expendancy of around 2-3 years, one of the reasons they grow so fast and breed so well, they are a mini shrimp and thus in their natural environment are at the bottom of the food chain. And I know the red cherry is not a natural wild colour morph but the original brownish red cherry shrimp are still in their wild habitat.