# Shrimp Tank Issues



## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Hello APC world,

I have a 10G Shrimp only tank that i'm having some recent problems with and i'm not sure how deep the problem really goes. Let me explain.

We had christmas break from school and I went home to RI for the break. I had a roomie feed my shrimp one time over the three weeks (middle of break) as there was a nice green algae film on the glass and everyone seemed to be always eating and pooping and i had two pregnant shrimp. He did daily or every two day checkups on the tank as he has his own to take care of as well. He said he'd let me know if anything changed.

I came back 2 weeks ago, and the tank was overrun by hair algae. He said it looked about the same to him. umm what?  . So i cleaned the aquarium up about a week into school as that's the first time i had a chance. but i fed my shrimp again as soon as i was back. when i cleaned the aquarium i cut out all the moss that was infected with hair algae and trimmed back some hydrocotle. So now over the past two days i've been loking into the tank more and more expecting/hoping to see more tigers and yellows, or at least a good amount. I see a good number of yellows and some tigers but the problem is, i've found 2 dead shrimp over the past two days.

One was already white when i found it so i'm guessing it was a yellow shrimp as there were no stripes, and the one today was kinda orange/pink and it was for sure a tiger shrimp because i could see the stripes. Also i see some shells of snails that have died but only a few. 

I just did a full water test. Results:
Nitrate 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Ammonia - 0ppm
PH ~7.6
Temp 72*F

So i think i figured out why my plants appear to of stalled in growing but i dont have explanations to the death of two shrimp. Any advice would be great.


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## oblongshrimp (Aug 8, 2006)

Your friend may have overfed your shrimp. The resulting ammonia spike (while it was probably small) would have caused the outbreak of hair algae. Often I find when my plants aren't doing well the shrimp aren't either. I dont know if its because the plants are dying and releasing stuff into the water or they are just not able to keep up with the waste the tank is producing. 

I would do a waterchange, and dose some nitrates. If possible you may want to add some more plants to the tank depending on how much stuff you and to chop out. Its often very hard to figure out why shrimp die so hopefully it will just be those two.

Good Luck


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

i would consider this tank heavily planted. And how come the shrimp would die now if it was over feeading that did it? I broke up the amount of food for him to put in and it was no more then normal. I woulda assumed the snails would of gotten to it as well.

I'm not rejecting u i'm j/w


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## oblongshrimp (Aug 8, 2006)

usually algae is caused by some spike in ammonia (even if small). That may not have lead directly to the shrimp deaths but as I mentioned it is usually very hard to identify why shrimp die. Hopefully it will just be those two.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

Muirner said:


> i would consider this tank heavily planted. And how come the shrimp would die now if it was over feeading that did it? I broke up the amount of food for him to put in and it was no more then normal. I woulda assumed the snails would of gotten to it as well.
> 
> I'm not rejecting u i'm j/w


ok so it cant be overfeeding since you broke up the amounts for him. do you normally dose and did you have a timer for your light? myabe he left it on for too long?

your pH is kind of high and i heard basic pH can turn ammonia and nitrite into a more toxic form. since couple of your shrimp were berried, a significant increase in population may cause a spike in ammonia and nitrite. the minor spike may be magnified by the basic pH of your tank's water.

thats my theory. anyone else got another?


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

So i did some looking and i see that Tiger Shrimp like the pH up to 7.5. I'll locate my high pH test and see what i can find after class. But if i go to the pet store and pick up R/O water, how much should i actually get? It's a 10g tank and i want to come down to about 7.2 or so, but i assume this needs to be over the course of a day? 

So if i get 5g, and put it in 1g at a time changing nothing else (do i dose prime??) will that bring me closer to where i need to be?

EDIT: ermmm wouldnt that make my water lower in pH thus more acidic? Gah?!?!


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## southerndesert (Oct 14, 2007)

Tiger Shrimp do best in a PH of 6.3 to 6.8 and somewhat soft (acidic) if PH is kept above 7.2 lifespan will be shortened as well as survival rate of young very low. 7.5 is too high for them in the long run.


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## modster (Jun 16, 2007)

hmm... how long have you had your tank? Shrimps do die from aging and 2 dead shrimps could be just a coincident. In case you still want to adjust your ph, you should change 1g per day and no, you don't need to add prime.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

i heard ketapang leaves will lower pH of water or you could just use a buffer.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Ok, so major update. Due to events that just so happen to occur i've been away from the tank for a while but able to keep semi better tabs on it. I was assured by the keeper that the tank would be taken care of with proper water changes. Well... Hmm you'll see when i post the tank stats whats up.

I came back last night, and the tank is, looking alright. Algae is down. But levels in the tank are way off to say the least. I took it to the LFS to get detailed testing and here are my morbid results:

PH - 7.8-7.9 (YIKES!!!)
Amonia - 0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
GH - 125 (Um what?!?!)
KH - 7

Ok, so can someone explain GH and KH to me please. I'm hurting here for why GH is so high. It makes me nervous. I've done a water change today of about 2 gallons. I'm tempted to go pick up 2g of RO and mix with 2 G tap to drop the ph and GH more. 

Help! My tank in RI dosent do this!


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

for the GH, is it 125 ppm? do you have rocks in ur tank? ome rocks could raise kH and pH gradually over time. what substrate are you using?


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

i use Ecocomplete. I need this PH to drop drastically.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

discus buffer by seachem works but theres something in your tank thats gradually raising the pH. if you have any rocks i would suggest you to take them out.


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

Eco complete, I have read many times, raises the pH of water. That could be your problem. If it's not a big tank you just might want to change the substrate.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

if you switch amazonia is the way to go


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

switching substrates is not an option at this point in time. is this a common thing for eco-complete to raise the pH of an aquarium like this? 

Also if i start doing w.c.'s with 50/50 RO/tap, will this help bring my pH down? I get excelent results with eco, plants grow great, no arial roots it's very nice. I just cant have this pH issue. i have 3 preggers shrimp at this point and although the pH is high, they yellows look great.


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## Quetzalcoatl (Feb 13, 2009)

First you should check pH of your tap water. If that is high, then you know why the pH in your tank is high. If that is low, then there must be something in the tank that is raising the pH. 
RO water will lower your KH and GH. If you are injecting CO2, lower KH will lower your pH as well.

More importantly, how is your shrimp doing? Did you lose any more shrimp since the first two? Rapidly changing your pH will have some serious effect on your shrimp. You should be very careful when you are lowering it.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

Quetzalcoatl said:


> First you should check pH of your tap water. If that is high, then you know why the pH in your tank is high. If that is low, then there must be something in the tank that is raising the pH.
> RO water will lower your KH and GH. If you are injecting CO2, lower KH will lower your pH as well.
> 
> More importantly, how is your shrimp doing? Did you lose any more shrimp since the first two? Rapidly changing your pH will have some serious effect on your shrimp. You should be very careful when you are lowering it.


his water has been changing gradually, so its probably the pH of his tap water and something in his tank thats rasing the pH of the water. neocaridinas will do well in a variety of water parameters but if oyu want your tigers to thrive u'll have to lower the hardness and the pH.


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## iris600 (Feb 12, 2004)

I've raised cherries and tigers in tap water, which was well and was hard as heck. I was keeping it as a shrimp only low tech tank (because I didn't want to have to dose and possibly make a mistake and kill shrimp) with moss, ferns, and anubias. I used ecocomplete, and I think stability was the key. Their lifespans may have been shortened, but they reproduced enough that I didn't notice.

I moved to the other side of the country and again have harder than heck well water, my cherries are in tap, lost the tigers in the move, and my high grade CRS are in half tap half RO.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

discus buffer will lower the pH hopefully that'll help. 

im glad i liv ein SF the water here is pretty soft. only 40ppm. if you're to use half RO half tap a machine that produces RO water is probably going o be cheaper in the long run. in SF the RO water is 4$ for 2.5 gallons. if you have a bigger tank it'll add up and its a big hassle.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

My water has changed gradually over time to what it is now. The yellow shrimp seem to be taking the high pH and high GH in stride, and even have 3 preggers right now. The tigers are around but not as many and im not sure if that's because of the pH or the mess i had when i came back from break. 

I only did a 1-2 g w.c. with 50/50 before i left and i'm going back in a few hours to hopefully find a healthy tank. I just need to set up some ferts for it. Currently it's cheaper to not have an R/O setup as when i move home from school the waste water bill would be ridiculous.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Well now 5 days since my last update and i have good and bad news:
Bad news:
- 1 More dead yellow shrimp. Could this be due to temp of the tank? I didnt run a heater and the external strip is reading about 66ish. I've added a small heater to aid in this.
I'm thinking this could be from PH swing or something. I've done water changes and have got the water to about 7.6ish. Slowly i'm getting it under control. I'm going to the LFS tonight to find exact pH

Good News:
I have babies! Shrimp that is. I was looking into the tank and i've spotted up to 6 of them so far at one time. This is the first sucessful breading story with shrimp i have. Now just to figure out why they are dying.


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## tex627 (Nov 2, 2008)

the trick for shrimp is stable water parameters. if the temp, pH, gH, TDS are stable they will thrive. try to keep the water parameters more stable.


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