# lead (from plant weights) dangerous to shrimp?



## MamaJu (Jun 4, 2013)

I used some lead weights to hold down some plants in my aquarium. Is it safe for the amano shrimp and red cherry shrimp?


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## wicca27 (May 3, 2009)

ive never had a problem with it and had it in tanks with crs, red tiger, and oebt.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

Plant weights aren't lead, I think they are zinc, but they'll be fine


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Nothing on my end and I use a ton of them.

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## rah-bop (Apr 28, 2012)

Zinc is super poisonous to fish, so I doubt it would be that (or at least I hope it's not!) One time a piece of galvanized metal got into my 1800 gallon pond and killed all of my koi and goldfish all at once. It was horrific.

Just for fun I looked into this some more. It turns out that the weights are lead (or at least contain lead.) In the aquarium the lead does not leach out very much unless the water is acidic or CO2 injected. Most fish can tolerate the minor amount of lead but some fish (like plecos, I heard) don't have any apparent resistance to it at all.

While most people reported that they never had a problem with lead weights in the aquarium, it is in general recommended not to use lead weights if you can help it.

If anyone finds more or different information I'd love to hear about it, because now I want to get to the bottom of this, haha.


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## wicca27 (May 3, 2009)

my bristle nose are fine with it and so are the hill stream loaches. i have these lead strip weights on several plants in several of my tanks and all is well. one of my tanks that had crs had a ph of about 6 and still no prob with them all the other tanks are between 7 and 8 in ph


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