Unexplained tangerine tiger death

shrimpthude

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I recently set up a small tank for keeping a couple tangerine tiger shrimp. I'm not sure what caused it but I lost a female today.
The tank is fully cycled and the water parameters (listed below) seem to be within specified ranges for the species.

pH: 6.4
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10
KH: 0-1
GH: 6-7
TDS: 230-240

About 10 days ago she successfully molted and began carrying a clutch of eggs, but in the last few days she'd begun to drop them. I'd been testing the water daily and keeping a close eye on their behavior because there was a very slight 0.25ppm ammonia spike on the 4th of this month but the water had returned to its normal ammonia-free state a few days before she started dropping the eggs. This whole time none of the shrimp had been showing any outward signs of stress from what I could tell either, and the remaining male still appears healthy. I know that producing eggs takes a toll on any organism, could this be the result of the brief ammonia exposure taking more of a toll on the recently gravid shrimp than on the male? Or is the carbonate hardness too low even for Caridina?
 

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Firstly sorry to hear, shrimp are delicate and some unexplained deaths do occur.
I kept neos for years n years but just starting caridina so not expert but my 2 cents is.
Kh is not too low, 0 or 1 is preferred with almost all caridina.
Tds is on the high end, Lots of people keep under 150 tds for caridina. Although tangerine tiger are known for being able to breed in near neo or neo parameters. This being said tangerine tigers will be more tolerant of higher tds than most caridina.
It is summer, what are your water Temps? Caridina prefer slightly cooler water.
When you do water changes do you temp match and drip or very slowly replace.
These buggers are sensitive to quick parameter changes.
How big is colony?
Is this only loss?
I had heater stick on recently and Temps went from 72 to 77 in a few hrs and lost 4 tangerine tigers over it.
 

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  • #3
I do 2 to 3 small (about 10%) changes a week or whenever the nitrates go above 20ppm and drip the water in with airline tubing over the span of 30 to 45 minutes. The water stays around 76 degrees, which I'm realizing now may be an issue :(

The colony started with 2 females and one male, but I lost one female soon after a lengthy drip acclimation which I chalked up to the compounded stress of transport and the fact that she was berried when I got her.
 
I'm in the temp. rise camp. My experience is that a relative fast rise in temperature is a killer in the few days after.

0.25 ammonia is likely a measurement error. Shrimp excrete relatively less ammonia than fish. Besides, it's not toxic at lower pH.
 
  • Thread Starter
  • #5
I'm in the temp. rise camp. My experience is that a relative fast rise in temperature is a killer in the few days after.

0.25 ammonia is likely a measurement error. Shrimp excrete relatively less ammonia than fish. Besides, it's not toxic at lower pH.
Whenever I get ammonia readings I do a second test to verify, it was actually from an external source.
A piece of driftwood I bought was leaching it into the water. I caught it quick enough that it wasn't immediately fatal at least. I confirmed it was the driftwood after placing it in a bucket of dechlorinated tap water and letting it sit overnight. After 24 hours the water in the bucket read 4ppm.
 
That tds is a little high for tigers imo. How big is your tank please ? 3 shrimp in a tank should NOT be showing 10 nitrates , also that’s a very small number to start a colony with and would take you a while to build it up compared to starting with 5 of each.

What are you feeding them ?
If your water is always 76 then I wouldn’t worry too much if that’s unheated, if you can turn the heater down a tad then go ahead :)

Your kh and gh is fine how it is .
 

Random Great Topic!

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