Thinking that Crystal Shrimp isn’t right for me..

[Avctasi]

Hello, I was really wanting to get into Crystal shrimps but I’ve been having constant issues and I’m unsure if I wanna do something else because I can’t get everything set up.

 

for starters I live with my parents so they tend to do most of the temperature regulation and all that stuff we keep the house a steady 74 F the issue that my room gets pretty warm as I have a an enclosure for a ball python, saltwater tank and grow lights. I just currently checked my tanks were at a steady 80F, and sometimes dips around 76-80 (with no heater) when it wants to, I currently just moved the aquarium light higher up and see if that doesn’t anything, it’s on a glass top so I’m unsure if I should change it to no top.

 

I’ve been housing some of my crystals in my other tank with cherries but they are slowly dying one by one and don’t behave much as a shrimp (not grazing and staying at one spot) I try to change 10% with RO water and Salty Shrimp remineralizer keeping it around 100tds but my tank sits at a steady 230tds, I did not add any fluval stratum or buffering substrate to this tank. My KH always sits at 2 drops while my GH is 8 drops, a little over the recommended but still can’t get it to 1 no matter how much I try. 
 

Temperature changes too much around the house if I don’t use a heater so I’m not sure if that’s the cause of the slow deaths, I tried using a heater but it constantly stays at 78.8F using the very lowest setting, I don’t wanna use more power such as an portable AC, if this doesn’t work on my new tank then I might just have to stick with neos, any tips would be helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

[jayc]

26 minutes ago, Avctasi said:

I try to change 10% with RO water and Salty Shrimp remineralizer keeping it around 100tds but my tank sits at a steady 230tds,

What else is in your tank? If you don't have substrate, are you using something else? And are there rocks in there that would keep the TDS at 230?

Is it a bare bottom tank? When was the last time you cleaned filter media?

TDS is measuring dissolved solids. So something is dissolving into the water column. This can be rocks reacting to acidity in the water, or waste breaking down, decaying food, plants, or even fertilisers. 

Your GH at 8 is higher than I would keep Crystals in. I aim for at most 6 GH.

 

26 minutes ago, Avctasi said:

I did not add any fluval stratum or buffering substrate to this tank.

Buffering substrate will help bring KH below 2. 

So that is something you might want to consider.

 

26 minutes ago, Avctasi said:

I just currently checked my tanks were at a steady 80F, and sometimes dips around 76-80 (with no heater)

Keeping a Crystal shrimp tank in a warm room probably doesn't help when you are trying to keep the water cool. Can you move the tank to another part of the house that is not so warm?

Shrimps prefer colder water. So they can go without a heater unless the water drops below 16degC.

All my Caridina shrimp are in tanks that don't go above 22degC or 72F.

Edited March 23, 2023 by jayc

[sdlTBfanUK]

Putting the crystal shrimp in with neocaridina (cherr) means the setup will benefit one type more than the other and it looks like the tank is better suited to neocaridina. Neocaridina are more robust anyway, caridina are a lot more sensitive and therefore harder to keep. The parameters quoted are definitely off for caridina and better suited to the neocariidina! I'm sure that that is the reason for the deaths.

You shouldn't need a heater if the house sits arount 74F (and it is unlikely to get so cold that it would kill your shrimp, especially with the other heat sources in the room) and the crystals would be ok at that sort of temperature, though the 80F is getting a bit warm for them, whereas neocaridina would be less affected by that higher temperature. Of course you also need to bear in mind how hot it will get during a really hot spell as even if they are doing well normally, if you even get a few days of over 80+ (in the aquarium though, not necessarily room temperature) that could wipe them out.

You could try tiger shrimps as they are almost as tough and robust as cherry shrimps and require similar water parameters, and give a bit of variety? I'm not sure that I would try the caridina in your position due to the difficulty of keeping them and the extra costs involved, when it probably won't work?

 

[Avctasi]

Thank you both for your help, my newer tank that doesn’t have anything does have stratum and is heavily planted (some carpet plants like Monte Carlo, anubis, java ferns), parameters are good the only issue is the temp change.  My other tank where they are housed currently has sand, river stone pebbles, and a bunch of assorted plants (java moss, cabomba, ludwigs etc) 

I haven’t thought of doing tiger shrimps but I may go into that route instead if this doesn’t work for crystals. Thank you guys again!