# Red Cherry Shrimp Exoskeleton Peeling Off



## Yukiharu (May 3, 2014)

I've never heard of shells peeling off of live shrimp before. As you mentioned I would have also suspected a gH/calcium issue but you don't seem to be having one. Your supplement is supposed to be complete so I don't think that's the issue either (unless it separated in the jar, which I don't know enough about to confirm/deny as a possibility in the first place).
Poison from the tap also sounds unlikely with an RO/DI system. Are you maintaining it properly?


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## ADW (Nov 18, 2016)

Hi Yukiharu,

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, I replaced all of the RO/DI units 3 weeks ago when the problem started. The tds reads 0 when filtered.

I have an image of a shrimp with the issue. The shrimp was dead and half eaten when I took it out of the tank.


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## Yukiharu (May 3, 2014)

Very weird. To me it looks like a typical low calcium/gH death.
Do you have any other tanks to compare with?


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## IntotheWRX (May 13, 2016)

damn that sucks. looks painful like they just had 3rd degree burns and their skin is peeling off.


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## ADW (Nov 18, 2016)

Yukiharu said:


> Very weird. To me it looks like a typical low calcium/gH death.
> Do you have any other tanks to compare with?


Low calcium you say.. To be honest, I've not researched that before. Much of the food they have has calcium in plus they have the correct GH levels in the water. Do you mind me asking what symptoms are associated with a calcium deficiency?

I do also have cherry shrimp in a community tank. They are doing well, but not breeding as the GH is about 18 and the PH is 8.0. Nitrates are very high in the community tank too. They are not showing the same issue though.

Bump:


IntotheWRX said:


> damn that sucks. looks painful like they just had 3rd degree burns and their skin is peeling off.


It certainly does suck..

They look completely normal to start with. They then fall to the floor. I get them out and that is what they look like after about 24 hours. The one in the picture was eaten slightly before I had a chance to grab it unfortunately.


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## natemcnutty (May 26, 2016)

Hopefully someone knows for sure, but to me, the symptoms sound like micrococcus (bacterial) where sometimes the shrimp will just stop mid walking and even die upright. I've never had it, but your description reminded me of something I'd read on a listserv (anyone still use these? ). The solution was dosing Oxytetracycline which targets gram negative bacteria.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Curious as to why you have Sulawesi remienralizer for Neos?


Do you do any water top offs with pure RO or do you only do water changes with remineralized RO?


When doing the GH test, does it turn green at 7 drops exactly? Or is it green before then?


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

Try a drop of invert iodine in your water. You can get that in the reef section of your lfs.


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## ADW (Nov 18, 2016)

natemcnutty said:


> Hopefully someone knows for sure, but to me, the symptoms sound like micrococcus (bacterial) where sometimes the shrimp will just stop mid walking and even die upright. I've never had it, but your description reminded me of something I'd read on a listserv (anyone still use these? ). The solution was dosing Oxytetracycline which targets gram negative bacteria.


Hi natemcnutty,

Thanks for your reply!

Hmm.. Maybe micrococcus related. They certainly do freeze in mid air and fall to the ground, but they aren't dead when it happens, so I ruled it out. Plus they aren't showing any of the other symptoms that come with the infection. The inside of the head isn't inflamed or off-colour.

May have to look further into it and get hold of my vet to see what tests they can do. Can't buy the antibiotics over the counter here in the uk unfortunately.



Zoidburg said:


> Curious as to why you have Sulawesi remienralizer for Neos?
> 
> Do you do any water top offs with pure RO or do you only do water changes with remineralized RO?
> 
> When doing the GH test, does it turn green at 7 drops exactly? Or is it green before then?


Hi Zoidburg,

Thanks for your reply!

The SulawesiMineral 7.5 is suitable for Neos also. I find it disolves in the water much quicker than the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+.

During the summer I just added re-mineralised water when doing weekly water changes to top up the tank to the normal level. I think that's why the GH went up from 6 to 10. I shoud have been checking, but my liquid test ran out.

Sorry, I made a mistake. I use the NTLabs test kit not the API. The colour changes to blue when I add the seventh drop to the GH test tube.



mistergreen said:


> Try a drop of invert iodine in your water. You can get that in the reef section of your lfs.


Hi mistergreen,

Thanks also for your reply!

I managed to find some iodine that's meant for use with coral. Would that do?

The GlasGarten Shrimp Dinner Gran is supposed to have iodine in it. I'm interested to know what prompted the suggestion?

I just thought I'd share some pics of my setup and shrimp.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

Iodine supposedly fixes exoskeleton issues.

They should be fine if there's iodine in the food but a drop or 2 in the water couldn't hurt.
You'd need very little for freshwater.

What's your regular tap water look like? Maybe you don't need to go through the hassle with RO and remineralize.


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## ADW (Nov 18, 2016)

mistergreen said:


> Iodine supposedly fixes exoskeleton issues.
> 
> They should be fine if there's iodine in the food but a drop or 2 in the water couldn't hurt.
> You'd need very little for freshwater.
> ...


I may invest in some iodine then. Is the one for coral suitable?

My tap water is very hard. The GH is about 18, nitrate is 10+ and the PH is 8.0. I tried to raise a shrimp only tank a couple of years back with just tap water and they struggled to survive.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

I was just curious as to why Sulawesi over the Neo!  Makes sense!


And yes, if you don't add RO at top offs, that can certainly raise the tanks parameters!



I'm currently using hard tap water to remineralize soft tap. I do have a remineralizer, but I'm not a big fan of it. It's very dirty, TDS wise.

My tap water is 3-4 GH and KH with a TDS of around 50-60, and the hard water I'm mixing it with is about 10 KH and 19 GH with a TDS about 475. I'm currently mixing the water together to get about 150-200 TDS, depending on how high the TDS is in the tank. This is a recent switch though, so still in the early stages of seeing how well they like it, but so far, so good.




I haven't seen the exoskeleton peal away like that when they are in water that's too soft... normally, they just had problems molting with not enough minerals in the water.


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