# Unexplaned Shrimp Death



## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Ok, so I had 15 shrimp, and every day I try to spot as many as
possible. Usually I can count 12 with 2 very red females with what
looked to be yellow eggs? Every day they were doing their thing doing
very well. Well yesterday I was feeding my puffer and i noticed this
jelly mass in the corrner of my tank with some planera around it, So I
thought it was a nest of planeria (idk why I thought that) but i
vaccumed it out and netted it. After looking and takign a picture i
can see that it's a shrimp, one of the very red ones. Can anyone tell
what may have happened with her?








sorry for the size i did it for the resoulution.

I do a 25-50% almost daily. It's a 10 Gallon tank with 6 endlers, 1
DP, shrimp, and lately planera (idk where they came from) I use
Seachem Prime, lighting is 2 incandecent 15 watt lights. Substrate is
gravel. Levels were all at 0 last time i checked, ph was 7.4.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Wow, just after i made that post, i went to feed my fish, and i found 2 more dead. One looked like it was exploded with something, and the other was in the process of planeria eating it. WHAT THE HELL? So now I'm asking in despiration, what do i do? How do i get planeria out of the tank ASAP? Or how do I get my shrimp out? Attached are pictures of both, one pic is good the other not so much. I also have a video but it's 35mb, and i'll have to take my time to see when i can upload it.: This sucks.

You can see the planeria on the rock in this one. It almost looks like it "exploded"









Not such a good photo:









So i did a deep gravel vac, and pulled up a lot of them, but i'm sure there is more. What's my next step?

pH - 7.2
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 5-10ppm (i think?)


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## Shrimp&Snails (Mar 27, 2006)

How long has the tank been set up for? A zero reading for ammonia, nitrIte *and[/] nitrAte makes me think something's going on that's causing the tank to mini cycle.

Planaria is an indication of overfeeding....cut back on feeding and increase partial water changes.

Maybe the puffer chewed on them? I keep cherry, tiger and amano shrimp and never saw any dead shrimps like that before.*


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

The tank has been set up for probably 2 months or more, and has been stocked for a good amount of time. I have cut back on the feeding because i figured if nothing else they'd starve. I'll continue on the deep gravel vac's though.

Also, isnt NitrAte something that gets dosed in established tanks? So having a low # of it isnt a bad thing, but it cant go up past the 10-20ppm mark.

In the first picture (in the set of 2) you can see the planeria almost "exploding" out from the shrimp, they were crawling on it. I guess all i can do now is hope that some of my males that are left sex to females HAHA, or i get more. The second picture i took a video of, you can see the shrimp being attacked by planeria, twitching and flipping around. It's pretty messed up. 

After my gravel vac yesterday i looked into the container where i empty the water, and there was a good probably 45 planeria of various sizes in there. After treating them to almost boiling water my jug was clean. I'll keep trying to suck them up, but in the meantime i hope i dont lose more shrimp


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## Color Me Blue (Feb 26, 2006)

I had 3 DPs in my 55g with tons of shrimp and eventually the DPs started to peck off the adult shrimp. Keep an eye out for the DP. I had to remove mine.  

Is it just me, but the pic of your "planaria"....doesn't look like planaria to me. I've never seen blood red planaria before.:shock:


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## Color Me Blue (Feb 26, 2006)

Ah nevermind, I just saw some pics of ones that were reddishh. They come in several colors. But I still don't know....they sure look like something else. Sure way to tell is to cut them in half. They usually don't "attack". Sure if the shrimp is dead, it's a feast for them. 

Why are you changing your water everyday? Do you lack adequate filtration? You could be stressing your cherries out with such frequenting wc's.


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