# Beginner Red Cherry shrimp and water questions



## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

Hello folks,

I'm new to the forum, and also new to keeping shrimp. I've had freshwater fish successfully over the years, but recently started by first shrimp tank a couple of months ago. I set up a 20 gallon long tank that I purchased used online. It came with some basic plants and a few shrimp. I put on an old Aquaclear 150 filter with a sponge pre-filter (basically a model 30 today) and a new dual sponge filter. I have black EcoComplete as my substrate, and it is lightly planted. I purchased 20 RCS from what seems to be a very reputable seller online. After getting them acclimated, I experienced a death every 1-3 days or so. It seemed to me that usually I would see a molt, and a dead shrimp shortly after.

Yesterday I finally got my API water testing kits (I should have done this long ago). Upon measuring my water, I found GH and KH of about 8. Ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite were all at or near zero. When I measured pH using the "standard" bottle, I was getting a dark blue, as if measuring around 7.6. I then tried the "high Ph" bottle, and ended up getting a red wine color, which I would guess is around 8.3 or 8.4 I assume that the standard pH test is reading off of the charts, and that I need to use the high pH test until my pH lowers? If so, the pH seems too high based on what I've read, but I don't know if that is what would be causing a slow die off. I still have around 4 shrimp or so left. Water temp is steady around 75, I have a small heater.

I'm assuming I should be trying to bring my KH/GH, and pH down. I have a reverse osmosis filter installed at home, so I was considering doing a 20% water change with that. I also have a water softening pad that I could install in the Aquaclear, but don't know if I should go that route. If my deaths are somehow related to molting, won't lowering my hardness further the molting problems? Is there something else I'm missing?

The only additives I put in my water is dechlorinator (I do a 20% tap water change each week), root tabs (half a tab every 6" or so in the substrate), and Seachem Flourish Excel (per dosage instructions). Also, I have not really fed them anything, I was told that a small amount of shrimp would survive off of the algae in the tank. I have offered blanched zucchini on a couple of occasions, but they do not seem to eat.

Thank you in advance for any help, I appreciate it.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

Welcome to the forum.

"[A]t or near zero" = that's your problem. They have to be at zero, otherwise they're toxic to invertebrates like Neocaridina davidi.

Don't worry about your GH and KH - they're fine for Neos. You can certainly lower it if you absolutely want to by doing small RO/DI changes. You could figure out how much tap it takes to mix with RO to get the parameters you're interested in. Then just change with that every week. Or do so with small water changes if you want to do it outside of regular water change time.

If you aren't feeding your shrimp, you should. They'll need more than leftovers in your tank. Try blanched spinach or kale to see if they go for that.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

I apologize, I probably should have been more specific. From what I can tell with my water tests, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are indeed zero.


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## TraceyW (Apr 3, 2012)

They may also be starving especially if this tank is only a couple of months old. I usually consider the biofilm/algae as a supplement and don't rely on it to feed my shrimp. Do you have any fish or other tankmates with the shrimp? If not then there would be no leftover food for them to try to get by on either. Try feeding at least every other day a variety. I usually use a couple of shrimp pellets for mine every other day and I have about 20 RCS also. I also mix up the offerings with algae wafers, blanched spinach and mixed flake food. I have ramshorn snails and MTS snails in the tank to help keep the tank clean. I think i read somewhere not to feed your shrimp more than what they can consume in 2 to 3 hours.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

I certainly can try feeding them more often. I do not have any other fish or critters in the tank, aside from snails that came with plants that I've purchased. I assumed that when they didn't go after the zucchini that I offered, that they simply were not hungry. Perhaps it is a sign of a different problem.

Am I wrong to assume that my pH is too high? It seems high compared to what I've read. I can certainly work to lower it, that is no problem. I'm just concerned over what I presume to be a molting problem. I picked up a cuttlebone turtle supplement that is supposed to be straight calcium, but have not added it yet.

I also noticed that one of the surviving shrimp has a white stripe running down the length of his back. Not sure if that is another sign of molting issues, or if I'm barking up the wrong tree.


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## Puddles (Jan 5, 2013)

pH is ok, neos adapt to almost anything and I believe TDS is more crucial that pH anyway. The white stripe down the back is very common for female cherries. I would stay away form the cuttlebone, your shrimp won't need it for calcium and it leeches into the water. Try some other foods and see if they go for them.


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## mcturtle (Jun 9, 2013)

From the sound of your parameters the water should be OK. I throw cuprisorb into my filter to be on the safeside/ remove any copper that might be in my tapwater. If upping their food doesn't work you could try the cuprisorb.


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## wrm130 (Jan 16, 2013)

the white stripe is normal on adult females


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## 82nd_Airborne (Mar 28, 2012)

If your tank came with plants I'm assuming it also came with substrate? In any case, the prior owner may have used an algaecide that contained copper which will stay in a tank and is lethal to shrimp, so I would second adding the cuprisorb as a precaution.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

Thank you for all of the replies, I appreciate the insight. I have some cuprisorb, a copper test kit, and a TDS meter coming Friday. I'll see what I find out.


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## ravensgate (May 24, 2012)

Don't think the shrimp aren't hungry if they don't go for zucchini (or any other food for that matter). Depending on what they were fed where they came from they may not know what fresh veggies are OR processed foods. SOmetimes it takes a few times to get them to figure it out. Any time I get new shrimp in they seem to need a couple of weeks to figure out 'veggies'. Fortunately the rest of my crew show them the awesomeness of it all but still, it takes time with some. Try different things, don't get discouraged, if they haven't touched it in a couple of hours I yank it out and try something else at another time.


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## Dolfan (Apr 8, 2005)

I am having the same problems you describe with my RCS tank. I have a 10 gallon and started with 20 shrimp. I also have hard water with High Ph, GH, and KH. My ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates are 0. I have occasional deaths and am down to 6 or 7. I also have not had any breeding. I got these shrimp in mid May. So I would think they would be breeding by now. I have seen the occasional set of dropped eggs in the tank. 

From my research and info from fellow shrimp ppl here on the forum, Excel is not recommended. Some ppl use it with no ill effects, others claim it wiped out their entire colony. I don't use it in my shrimp tank just to be on the safe side. 

I'm interested in any other suggestions they may have for Perfectly_Circle as it seems we have very similar tank parameters and problems.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

Noticed another death since being home from work this afternoon, I'm down to probably just a few RCS.

I did a copper test just now with an API copper test kit, water is completely clear showing zero copper in my water. I checked my water with an inexpensive TDS meter, showing 184. I'll try running cuprisorb just for kicks. I now have a few different foods that I will continue to try offering. I've also stopped adding Flourish Excel since originally posting, though I was having deaths before adding it to my tank.

Quite frustrated at this point, and not too sure what else to try. Snails seem to be doing just fine. I've ordered more shrimp to be here next week from a different source. For a shrimp that is considered to be so hearty, I sure seem to be struggling to keep them.


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## UncleChin (Jul 26, 2013)

In my tank, Ive never checked my ph and all the other stuff. The only time my shrimp died is when i put sink water in it. i always add bath water to my tank but i noticed everytime i change my water i add sink water and. a shrimp dies a day later. Use a different water source. 
Have a lot of moss and feed them every 2 days. 
Water current can also play a factor in their death.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

I'm not sure what you mean by bath water vs. sink water.

I do have a HOB aquaclear filter and a sponge filter in that tank. I could try removing the HOB. I had read that there is no such thing as too much filtration, but perhaps the current output from the HOB is too much.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

If I add water from my RO filter, I do not need to add dechlorinator, correct? The RO filter should remove that? Are there issues with adding too much dechlorinator?


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## ckraft (Feb 19, 2013)

perfectly_circle01 said:


> If I add water from my RO filter, I do not need to add dechlorinator, correct? The RO filter should remove that? Are there issues with adding too much dechlorinator?


Dechlor is not needed for RO water. Two problems I've seen with too much dechlor, or at least with Novaqua, which I use. If over time, you add enough for the whole tank when doing top-off, them you can get a foaming buildup on the surface. If you have a ten G tank and add enough for ten gallons when really only adding one gallon of water, it can build up. I don't know about other types of dechlor.

The other problem, and I am probably the only one dumb enough to have done it, was to go to about 1/2 dechlor, again Novaqua. That killed everything.

I was filling a 2.5 G tank, thought I had a jug of water and had the gallon jug of Novaqua. Don't do that.:icon_wink


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## Merth (Sep 9, 2012)

Many people will advise that ph is not so important with cherries as they adapt pretty readily to different levels. In my experience I couldnt keep cherries alive in my tap water of 8.2 ph for any length of time no matter how "perfect" the other conditions were. Once I started using distilled water remineralized with salty shrimp my cherry population exploded to the point I was selling babies every other month or so to keep the population in check.

I would try using a mixture of the tap and r/o to get as close to ideal conditions as possible. Once your colony gets established and healthy you can do like I did and start slowly moving towards the tap conditions if the r/o is too much hassle to use.

As a side note for the future, once you start having babies and you will trust me make sure you have a food source specifically for the babies. Again my experience is they dont thrive with just biofilm as a food source. I was fortunate enough to make some great friends here and win a couple raok's which provided me with products which made a world of difference.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

If you have water that's at pH of 8.2, you also likely have water that's rather hard. Potentially too hard for even Cherries - if they're not used to extreme hardness. That's why we always ask folks for their KH and GH - two things that are far more important than acidity for Neos.

That doesn't mean pH isn't important. Just less important than hardness and parameter stability.

If you have a really mature tank (say, 5-6mos), there will be plenty for baby shrimp to eat. Even the most sensitive Taiwan Bees. But it's always nice to supplement what's naturally in the tank.


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## denske (Feb 20, 2013)

Is the pic of your tests results for ammonia clear in color? It looks like the ammonia one is clear, did you add both solutions?


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

Well, one silly thing I did as Denske mentioned, was not add bottle number two to the ammonia and nitrate (nitrite?) test. I thought they were spare bottles. Reading the instructions closely helps  I re-tested last night, and the levels were still at zero from what I can see.

I did about a 25% water change last night, and replaced with water from my kitchen's R/O filter. I tested water around lunch time today, and saw that my pH was still around the 8.4 mark, but my GH and KH dropped from 8 to 5. It seems like a big drop, or my tests were off a bit. When I tested my bucket of R/O water from the sink, the pH was around 7.0. I guess I expected some kind of pH drop in my 20 gallon shrimp tank.

I would like to get my pH down to the mid 7 range, but am a bit leery to mess around with that given my current water testing. Would something like pH Down be safe to try, or would it potentially cause a crash? I'm guessing I don't want my KH or GH to go down any further.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

RO water won't give you a stable pH reading because there's nothing in it to buffer it in a certain spot.

When you do water changes with RO water, it has to be remineralized BEFORE you add it to your tank. If you dropped your GH from 8 to 5, that's extreme.

Stop messing with your pH. Focus on hardness - KH and GH. Messing with your pH is going to cause you more problems than you're prepared to deal with.

Go read the sticky here in the Shrimp section. That is where you should start.


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## perfectly_circle01 (Jul 24, 2013)

I double checked KH and GH, and the numbers are probably more like 6. Either way, it is a big drop, while pH didn't seem to move much at all.

My intent wasn't to drop my KH/GH that much. I was trying to bring my pH/KH/GH down a touch by adding some R/O water. Some have said my original water parameters should have been fine. Others have said they have been unsuccessful with a pH as high as mine. I've read of some people who could nearly raise them in a mud puddle  So, I'm stumped and frustrated. The only thing I can remotely go by, is that it seems I usually had a dead shrimp within a day of finding a molt. Maybe that is sheer dumb luck. Maybe it means nothing.

The issue being is that I don't know why I'm experiencing a slow die off over the course of two months. I figured I could either try to get my pH and hardness down to more "commonly accepted" RCS numbers, or buy another batch and hope they do not die (without knowing why they died in the first place).

I've gone through the shrimp sticky section. I've also tried doing some reading on other sites. I admit I am very new to keeping shrimp, but it also seems that people do tremendously well with "worse" water parameters.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

Let your tank mature for a while without messing with parameters. When you make adjustments, do so slowly and over an extended period of time.

Once things are stable, then you'll have a better feel for what's going on and will be more successful with shrimp.


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