Was My Ghost Shrimp Dead?

[gpsoph]

I purchased two ghost shrimps from Petco yesterday. I put them in the tank last night which I made sure had the same temp. of water in the tank as the temp. of the bag the shrimp came in. They both swam around the tank and seemed healthy. This morning I went to check on them to see one of them was curled up into a ball at the bottom of the tank. He would move his legs while doing it. Then he would uncurl and while on his side he would move really fast to other sides of the tank. At that point he still had a clear color to him. I did a lot of research on it and thought maybe he was just molting. I went back to check on him again and he was laying on his back and had turned completely white. I waited a couple hours and he never moved. I netted him out to see if he would move, but he never did anything. I thought he was dead so I flushed him down the toiled. I probably should've posted this before I did that. I would feel horrible if he was actually alive. The other shrimp is doing fine as far as I can tell, but now he's all alone.
So my questions are:
1. Was my ghost shrimp dead or just molting?
2. Will the other living ghost shrimp be fine alone and if so for how long?

 

[Baccus]

There is a good chance the shrimp actually died while in the process of moulting, if they have been keep in the wrong water for their shell development and later shedding it can cause problems with them being able to actually escape the old shell.
Also when acclimatising shrimp to a new tank, it is always important to not only get the temperature of the shrimps bag/ container the same as the intended tank, but also match the pH and gH. This can be achieved by drip acclimatising, were you set up a hose to drip tank water gradually into the shrimps bag or container over an extended length of time. Or over the say 3 hours of drip acclimatising you might add say 50-100ml of tank water every 10-15 minutes until the shrimps bag/ container has pretty much the same water as the tank. You could also do 10ml every 2 minutes of this water adding, the volumes don't matter that much just as long as the adding of tank water is done gradually and the shrimp get a chance to adjust.
I have found pH shock one of the biggest sudden killers of otherwise healthy shrimp.
 
Oh and please in future don't flush any dead or dying fish, shrimp, or snails down the toilet, sewerage systems really are not designed for those kinds of things going through the water treatment process. It also has the potential for whatever disease or parasite that killed your pet to get out into local waterways, and these pests and diseases usually are not found naturally in certain areas, so the introduction of them can decimate wild fish/ shrimp/ snail populations impacting on the entire food chain. Some intensively farmed shrimp especially have a very nasty contagious disease that is easily transmitted and nearly 100% lethal to all shrimp it infects. It is the same with an American crawdad that has been introduced into Englands' water ways, the crawdads are immune to the disease they carry but it wipes out the native English crays that have no natural resistance.

 

[gpsoph]

Now my other ghost shrimp has turned white also and is just sitting still in the tank. Is he dead too or just molting? Is there anything I can do to help him or do I just leave him alone? I don't want this one to die too. 

 

[Baccus]

If the actual entire body has gone white then I would say there is not much you can do for it, how ever most of the diseases that I know of that make shrimp go white are not so quick at turning the entire body white. It usually starts off in just a couple of spots and then spreads through out the shrimp.
 
All I can suggest is to keep on top of your water quality, it may not save this shrimp but it can prolong its life, if it is still alive.

 

[gpsoph]

Okay. Thanks!

 

[woodward_tweet]

I don't suppose you purchased new plants at the same time? It's just the flitting about manically and then curling up is what mine did when I put new plants in the tank. I removed the plants and did a 50% water change and they recovered really quickly. Apparently places like pets at home (where I purchased my plants from) use pesticides containing copper to eliminate snails. Totally toxic to shrimp. Worth knowing even if this isn't the case in this instance.