Unexpected neocaridina shrimp death(s)

Tank

What is the water volume of the tank? 55g
How long has the tank been running? ~6months
Does it have a filter? yes
Does it have a heater? yes
What is the water temperature? 24C
What is the entire stocking of this tank? (Please list all fish and inverts.)
~12 red rili shrimp
a ton of mini ramshorn snails (pests)
a few detritus worms (pests)
some sort of white mites (unidentified) (pests)

Maintenance
How often do you change the water? about every 2 weeks, haven't changed it in over 3 weeks
How much of the water do you change? 20%
What do you use to treat your water? Seachem Equilibrium, Flourish, Potassium
Do you vacuum the substrate or just the water? Mostly just water

*Parameters - Very Important
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish? yes
What do you use to test the water? API master test kit + API GH/KH test kit
What are your parameters? We need to know the exact numbers, not just “fine” or “safe”.

Ammonia: 0-0.25 (test results have shown 0.25 ever since the beginning, apparently this is common with API test kit)
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
pH: 6.4
GH: 6
KH: 0-1

Feeding
How often do you feed your fish? I don't, tank should be big enough for the amount of shrimp to graze on biofilm
How much do you feed your fish? N/A
What brand of food do you feed your fish? N/A
Do you feed frozen or freeze-dried foods? N/A

Illness & Symptoms
How long have you had this fish? 3-4 months
How long ago did you first notice these symptoms? yesterday
In a few words, can you explain the symptoms? No obvious symptoms, shrimp seemingly fine early in the day grazing along. Dead by night.
Have you started any treatment for the illness? No
Was your fish physically ill or injured upon purchase? No
How has its behavior and appearance changed, if at all? N/A

Explain your emergency situation in detail. (Please give a clear explanation of what is going on, include details from the beginning of the illness leading up to now)
The vast majority of the colony seems fine right now. Tank consist(ed) of mostly red rilis and one blue velvet shrimp. The blue velvet was doing fine yesterday morning grazing along. By evening it was in the corner of the tank not moving, an hour later it was on its side (still alive, but clearly about to die). I thought this was very strange since shrimp (less than a year old) don't usually suddenly die. This morning, another shrimp was barely moving, although it seems to be moving right now albeit a bit lethargically. The rest of the shrimp seem fine. I know I haven't done a water change in a while, but all the parameters have been perfect so I thought it wasn't necessary.

Feel free to ask more information. Hopefully this was a random unfortunate one off... but if not, I'd like to solve this before more of them pass away.

Thanks!

Edit: An additional piece of information that could be related (?):
I've had minimal success in breeding these guys (2 females, rest male). There have been 3 rounds of the females being berried (1 time for one female and 2 for the other). I've only been able to count a maximum of 7 babies (after 2 pregnancies). It seems most of the babies don't survive, although I haven't seen any trace of dead baby shrimp. After the 3rd round, I couldn't find any new babies (ie. they're either all hiding or none survived). It now seems neither of the females are producing any new eggs as its been a month and I haven't seem any ovaries on their backs. They should all be less than a year old. What would cause this?

 

Hi Akio i am going to pick out things going wrong which can and will cause you shrimp ill health and death, this is not a personal dig at you but more advise but these need to be addressed.
First you need to do 15 to 20% water changes weekly the reason is to replenish lost minerals within the tank over a period of time it as an affect on your shrimps health,
Feeding so important they will not live on biofilm alone they need minerals,calcium,protein, not giving them this will result in whats happening to your tank at the moment, they need good quality shrimp food and cooked vegetables,
You need to reduce the amount of snails they make a lot of waste and that leads to Ammonia and may miss nitrits yet nitraits will have an affect these must be showing at time with lack of water changes
You ph6.4 is to low that needs to be between 6.8 and 7.8 over the time youve had your shrimp the affects again you are seeing will be because of low ph as well as the other point,
You mut try and replicate their conditions to mimic what they get in the wild ,

 

Hi. richiep gave you great advice. He is an expert on shrimp. In my opinion, doing what he stated should be enough for your shrimp to go back to normal.
Also, is your tank cycled?

 

Hi. richiep gave you great advice. He is an expert on shrimp. In my opinion, doing what he stated should be enough for your shrimp to go back to normal.
Also, is your tank cycled?

Thank you

 

Thank you so much. I don't take it personally and appreciate the feedback.
I'll start doing weekly water changes. Would it be okay doing only 10% changes/week? The reason I ask is because my tap water is quite different than the tank water (0 GH vs 6 GH). I'm scared that a large water change would create a sudden change in the water quality which would hurt the shrimp.

I'll be getting shrimp food ASAP.

Getting rid of the snails is definitely a work in progress. I've never actually had an issue with nitrates. Its always been at 0. I've always assumed this was because of the plants and moss absorbing it.

The ph issue is a bit harder to solve for me. I can artificially inflate it with products but this would again result in parameter changes every time I do a water change. Do you have a recommended method to get the ph higher while keeping everything stable in the long run?

 

Hi. richiep gave you great advice. He is an expert on shrimp. In my opinion, doing what he stated should be enough for your shrimp to go back to normal.
Also, is your tank cycled?

As far as I'm aware it has been cycled. I'll be honest and say at the beginning I wasn't on top of constantly checking the parameters so I most likely missed the cycle (this was all before I got shrimp). I'd imagine 6 months in if the tank wasn't cycled then I'd already been seeing the terrible effects on the shrimp. 1+month into the start of the tank the parameters have always been consistent (0.25, 0, 0).

 

I'll start doing weekly water changes. Would it be okay doing only 10% changes/week? The reason I ask is because my tap water is quite different than the tank water (0 GH vs 6 GH). I'm scared that a large water change would create a sudden change in the water quality which would hurt the shrimp.

I believe the difference in GH is because of the Equilibrium. I believe you will want to treat the replacement water with the desired dosage of Equilibrium so that you maintain steady water parameters.

KH of 0-1 may be low as well. Might need to do something about that. Whatever you do should be slow.

richiep Bump up the KH a bit?

 

I believe the difference in GH is because of the Equilibrium. I believe you will want to treat the replacement water with the desired dosage of Equilibrium so that you maintain steady water parameters.

KH of 0-1 may be low as well. Might need to do something about that. Whatever you do should be slow.

richiep Bump up the KH a bit?

Sorry I didn't clarify, yes the equilibrium is purely to raise the GH. I was previously advised on this forum to use it to raise the GH as the tap water level wasn't enough. Unfortunately, the siphon I use for water changes is directly attached to the tap and as a result goes right from the tap to the tank, making it hard to pre-mix the new water.

 

Sorg67 is right you need yo get this watef changes correct snd once you have a system inplace you do the same each week,
You need to do a mix to get your gh8
Just read your post above can you give us a picture of your setup

 

Setup as in just the tank? Or the water change setup?

 

Watef changes
Whats stopping you filling a bucket with tap water then adding minerals

 

Since you are using a python does that mean you dechlorinate in the tank? Is that rough on shrimp? How do you manage Equilibrium dosing?

 

Since you are using a python does that mean you dechlorinate in the tank? Is that rough on shrimp? How do you manage Equilibrium dosing?

This is a little confusing at the moment

 

Honestly I haven't been using the bucket method simply because it takes way longer. 10-20% change in a 55g would take a few trips.

Vancouver water is extremely soft and apparently has next to no chlorine in it, at least according to the owner at my local fish store. I've assumed dechlorinating would be unnecessary because of this.


For equilibrium, i would add in approximately half a dose per water change after the tap water is already in the tank.


Edit: forgot to mention the advice given from my local fish store was that equilibrium was sufficient. They say that's all they add to their tanks for water changes.

 

Ok i think were getting somewhere
I think small quantities of chlorine is getting through and that toxic giving the symtems youve discribed
You must start using dechloranter in your changes
Second you water could be a lot different to your lfs each system will have different parameters.
What id like you to do is give us these readings GH/KH PH Ammonia nitrite nitraits from your tap after that we should be able to make a plan but
Thats a lovely looking tank

 

Honestly I haven't been using the bucket method simply because it takes way longer. 10-20% change in a 55g would take a few trips. . .

I do minimum 25% changes, and sometimes as much as 40%, in a 65 gallon tank every week or 10 days with a bucket. Of course it's a 2.5 gallon bucket. I'm 59 years old, and well past the time I wanted to lift a 5 gallon bucket of water up shoulder high.

 

Just tested the tap parameters:
PH: 6.8 - 7.0
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
GH: 0-1
KH: 0-1

One thing I noticed was that the Ammonia reading was a solid 0 vs the tank's reading of 0.25. This is the first time I've noticed this difference. Is this suggesting my tank is not cycled??? I feel at this point 6 months+ since the tank being established it would have shown results of at least a partial cycle... I've read about how at lower pHs the tank won't cycle. My tank for the first couple month used to have a lower pH (from 5.6 all the way up to 6.6). Now I'm concerned if it was never cycled... Having said this, I can confidently say that my weekly tests have NEVER had ammonia/ammonium readings above 0.25. 0.25 has been the consistent result, and at 6.4pH this translates to 0.0003ppm NH3.

Edit: I've been doing some thinking, and since for the last month or so the ph has consistently been around 6.4, and no water changes were done, if the tank was not cycled then I should have seen an increase in ammonia/nitrites. This however was not the case. I would think this is an indicator that the tank is cycled. But then why would my tank show any trace of pH when my tap water doesn't. Shouldn't my tank show 0 as well? Is it a safe assumption to make that my plants absorb the nitrates resulting in constant readings of 0 nitrates?

Edit2: I don't know if its worth mentioning that on the first few days of the tank I added fluval biological enhancer to speed up the cycle. This was before I added any shrimp or plants so I'm not sure if the beneficial bacteria added just died off without a source of ammonia.

 

Your tank is cycled so no worries there
The 0.25 ammonia i'd say is 0 as that colour is hard to differentiate from 0.25 to 0,
Out of preference I'd use
Salty be gh/kh+ as i think it would be better suited for your needs,
You can carry on using the one you have but it needs to be mixed outside the tank to get it spot on this way your water will be constant, is this a posdibility?
You slso have the option of putting in Caradina shrimp like Crystal reds or black bee, which ever route you take mixing outside the tank is the best option, if you carry on as you are you need to increase your GH to 8
I pick up wiyh uou tomorrow its almost 1am time for beaks under wings and heads under blankets

 

Your tank is cycled so no worries there
The 0.25 ammonia i'd say is 0 as that colour is hard to differentiate from 0.25 to 0,
Out of preference I'd use
Salty be gh/kh+ as i think it would be better suited for your needs,
You can carry on using the one you have but it needs to be mixed outside the tank to get it spot on this way your water will be constant, is this a posdibility?
You slso have the option of putting in Caradina shrimp like Crystal reds or black bee, which ever route you take mixing outside the tank is the best option, if you carry on as you are you need to increase your GH to 8
I pick up wiyh uou tomorrow its almost 1am time for beaks under wings and heads under blankets

It'll take more time but if that's the best route to take then I'll use a bucket and pre-mix. You mentioned I should be using a dechlorinater as well so I'll slowly be adding that in and adding it in for my water changes as well. I won't be getting rid of the shrimp I have, so I'll be trying to raise the pH to 6.8. Given this, I think this would make it too high for Caridina?

 

I'll be heading to my lfs tomorrow to pick up the following:
a) high grade shrimp food
b) dechlorinater (seachem prime?)

I also want to pick up something to raise the pH since it seems the "natural" pH of my tank is quite a bit lower than the tap water's pH. I was looking at seachem neutral but this apparently gets rid of calcium and magnesium which I obviously don't want.. Is there a pH increasing product you recommend?