Report

You are into experimental territory now.  There are lots of meds for ich, lice, anchor worm, etc.  This parasite might be internal (within the body), and any meds designed for external application might not work. An unfortunately, any meds designed for internal parasites are targeting worms, which might also be ineffective against this parasite. Be careful that these meds don't affect your shrimp as well.

Just to update:  I checked some molt shells of some blue bolts and golden bee that don't have this short antenna problem - no bugs I check an old, adult RWP in the tank which currently has this problem.  It's antenna are still long, but seems "unhappy" and not eating ever since this last molt - lots of bugs in shell, plus molt shell has a red tint to it.  May be some sign of sickness, as usually my RWP molt shells are perfectly clear. I'm thinking I need some kind of anti-(internal?)parasite med to treat this.  Any suggestions? 

yes, it's the shed shells. now that I think about it, I also remember in the video the bugs were clear, and I have seen clear ones before too, a long time ago.  But these recent ones were dark colored. So I have two tanks.  In one of them, where I normally have this problem, I have been dosing antibiotics.  The short version is that most of the shadow panda and RWP shrimp have got this disease, but they haven't died either.  But they don't recover either.  They just simply stop growing and stay at a small size with stumpy short antenna.  The first shadow panda that got this problem is still alive maybe 2-3 months later. In my other tank which often doesn't have this problem also got it, but it seems to have hit harder, where both "almost adult" shadow panda suddenly got it and died within a few days.  Antibiotics didn't save them.  It's too weird - it seems like this problem comes on suddenly, with no trigger that I can think of.  (besides "the weather was warm and I ran the air conditioned".  This doesn't actually affect the water temperatures since I have a chiller, but maybe something blew into the tank?)

Sorry for the delay, I have been searching on here and the wider web but cannot find what you are referring too! I do know which video you are talking about and remember seeing it. The video was of a shed shell rather than a live shrimp! Are you seeing them on live shrimp? From memory I don't think it was anything to worry about and I very much doubt it would discriminate between different colours of shrimp, but was probably nothing to worry about and just part of the life in aquariums, like detritus worms and other life forms. I think they were colourless in the video, if my memory is any good? Are you still getting shadow panda deaths?

Hello folks, I remember reading about this a few years ago but for the life of me cannot find this info / thread again. Can somebody point me to a link for this info? I forgot the forum I saw it on. There was a discussion about how if you look at a shrimp molt shell under a microscope or loupe, sometimes you can see tiny "bugs" or whatever moving around inside. At that time, I think the conclusion was that maybe it was a symbiotic relationship because it even happened with healthy shrimp. But I can't remember if this occurred only in neocaridina or caridina also? I just happened to look at a shadow panda's (caridina) shell who is sick with the "shortened antenna disease" that I always complained about. There were tiny blue/black spots moving around inside.  I also looked at the molt shells of some blue bolts that don't have this problem, and there were very few, or none, spots moving around inside the molt shell. I wonder if this could be some symbiotic relationship gone wrong and is the actual (proximate) cause of the problem.  (Since antibiotics didn't really seem to work) In that case, I would need some kind of anti-parasite medication to cure the shrimps.  What are the typical internal anti-parasite medications for shrimps?