Dwarf Shrimp Dying Daily - please help!

[scteel24]

Wow! You have quite an assortment. Blue velvet shrimp, yellow (or gold) shrimp, cherry shrimp etc.

Have you recently been adding anything? Like a slime coat or a medication?

Thank you! I started with 2 orange, 3 dark blue, 2 yellow, and 2 green - they have morphed into crazy colors! The light blue one was born, not purchased and I have a few that I swear are solid black even though that color doesn't exist! I had a few that were an aqua green - super cool, but they died : (

 

[scteel24]

Thank you! I started with 2 orange, 3 dark blue, 2 yellow, and 2 green - they have morphed into crazy colors! The light blue one was born, not purchased and I have a few that I swear are solid black even though that color doesn't exist! I had a few that were an aqua green - super cool, but they died : (

And no slime coat, or meds added

 

[Munroco]

Thanks for all of the replies - I will do a large water change tonight

Neos are a lot more forgiving of water changes than cardinia but IMO you should still use the drip method if you must do a large change. Sudden alterations to water parameters can do more harm than good.

 

[FishGuest5123]

Any chance of a picture of the shrimp so we can check them for disease?

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate eveyr day for a couple of weeks.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. Wash filter media in a bucket of tank water and re-use it.

Remove as many snails as possible because they will compete with the shrimp for food and make the water quality deteriorate faster.

If you're trying to breed a species, get all the other species out of the tank.

Snails will make the water quality deteriorate? They contribute very little to the bio-load and are
a great clean up crew. I’m totally confused by what you said???

 

[Colin_T]

I'm not sure why putting salt into your tank would help with this problem. If you do decide to go down that route, don't just dump it in, add it very gradually.

Salt can treat a number of disease organisms that affect fish and shrimp and is generally very safe for them.

----------------------

Snails will make the water quality deteriorate? They contribute very little to the bio-load and are a great clean up crew. I’m totally confused by what you said???

The OP said they had a bunch of snails in the tank. If that is the case, the snails will be adding to the bio-load in the aquarium. Snails eat and poop in the tank and use oxygen and produce ammonia just like fish and shrimp do. Having a couple of snails won't make much difference but if there are 20, 30, 50, 100 snails in the tank, it will add to the crap being produced.

One average sized Mystery snail produces as much bio-load as 3 or 4 neon tetras.
A couple of adult Malaysian trumpet snails equal 1 neon tetra.
One adult Ramshorn snail equals 1 neon tetra.

Snails can quickly build up in numbers and I have seen tanks with thousands of snails in and they used to cause the water quality to go off really quickly. And the amount of poop they produced was huge. And before everyone says it's food related, these tanks were full of plants and didn't have many fish, and didn't get much food added to them. The snails ate the algae and plants and eventually destroyed all the plants.

People under-estimate how many snails are in their tanks and the amount of waste they produce. And if there are no predators to control them, they will breed out of control.

 

[FishGuest5123]

Salt can treat a number of disease organisms that affect fish and shrimp and is generally very safe for them.

----------------------

The OP said they had a bunch of snails in the tank. If that is the case, the snails will be adding to the bio-load in the aquarium. Snails eat and poop in the tank and use oxygen and produce ammonia just like fish and shrimp do. Having a couple of snails won't make much difference but if there are 20, 30, 50, 100 snails in the tank, it will add to the crap being produced.

One average sized Mystery snail produces as much bio-load as 3 or 4 neon tetras.
A couple of adult Malaysian trumpet snails equal 1 neon tetra.
One adult Ramshorn snail equals 1 neon tetra.

Snails can quickly build up in numbers and I have seen tanks with thousands of snails in and they used to cause the water quality to go off really quickly. And the amount of poop they produced was huge. And before everyone says it's food related, these tanks were full of plants and didn't have many fish, and didn't get much food added to them. The snails ate the algae and plants and eventually destroyed all the plants.

People under-estimate how many snails are in their tanks and the amount of waste they produce. And if there are no predators to control them, they will breed out of control.

I’m the predator in my tank. I scoop them up and toss them out!

 

[Retired Viking]

Is it possible you have predator in your tank? A dragonfly nymphs or Damselfly nymphs. They are around the same size as most dwarf shrimp

phs o

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Interesting. I once saw one of those in a little creek. It was completely demolishing a baby crawfish. They’re nasty.

 

[scteel24]

I don't think so - I got a few pics of the fallen - 3 more last night - one was almost completely eaten by the snails, but I got pics of these two - one curled in and one did not

 

[scteel24]

I did a water test on the Tap itself and not from the tank:
7.5 ph
Gh 120
Kh 180

Super baffling......

 

[Naughts]

I don't think so - I got a few pics of the fallen - 3 more last night - one was almost completely eaten by the snails, but I got pics of these two - one curled in and one did not View attachment 98365
View attachment 98366

They seem to be dying when they are moulting. How many water changes have you done, and what was the volume of water?

 

[scteel24]

Every 3-4 weeks I change about 2 gallons - it's a 6 gallon tank. I have found molted skeletons as well.

 

[Naughts]

The low pH/ GH will be improved by more water changes as recommended earlier. They could be struggling to moult because of soft water/ lack of calcium.
What are they fed on? Is calcium and iodine listed on the ingredients?

 

[Essjay]

The GH at 180 ppm/10 dH shouldn't be a problem. I have cherry shrimps in dH 5/90 ppm and they don't have any problems with moulting.

Some websites say that water changes in shrimp tanks should be small. My shrimps are in a tank with fish so they get upwards of 50% every week and they are thriving.

 

[Naughts]

The GH at 180 ppm/10 dH shouldn't be a problem. I have cherry shrimps in dH 5/90 ppm and they don't have any problems with moulting.

Some websites say that water changes in shrimp tanks should be small. My shrimps are in a tank with fish so they get upwards of 50% every week and they are thriving.

the tap water has good levels (GH 120) but the tank water has become acidic due to low and infrequent water changes.