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CRS, Dying,berried,moulting, all at the same time, CONFUSED


doctr-dan

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Okay this is getting ridiculous lost another this morning only this time it was a berried female.

Something has to change fast!

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  • doctr-dan

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Guys I have just been reading through this thread, and you are all repeating what has been said and done on many other forums around the world.

We are ALL at fault here by assuming that Crs/Cbs and above species need all this fancy jigarmaroos, addives,tests etc to survive.In my view it is all of this poking, prodding, testing and adjusting that is killing the shrimp. I have proven time and time again that if you leave your tanks alone, do minimal water changes( evaporation only) don't clean your filters unless they stop working, and let nature ( not us) do the work for us. For example I have a 2ft tank housing 14 yellow cherries ,4 rilies, 6 DAS, 8 darwin red nose, 10 a grade, cbs 2 a grade crs, 1 gold and a min of 15 shrimplets, all living together with a ph of 7.6 water temp 26deg c . I NEVER TEST FOR ANY OTHER PARAMETER. and use aged tap water for top ups. The tank has an edan 501 canister filter and two small sponge filters, a 15 watt heater and an 8 watt lamp.The filters have not been touched for the last 10 month. All the shrimp are breeding well. I have had no deaths in this tank ever. even my newest arrivals are doing well. i actually have 7 tanks and practice the same hands off techneques. with minimal death problems.

So guys may I suggest that you leave your tanks alone , don't fiddle , be patient, and let nature take it's course.and "ENJOY"

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So guys may I suggest that you leave your tanks alone ' date=' don't fiddle , be patient, and let nature take it's course.and "ENJOY"[/quote']

There is nothing natural about a glass box full of water with a filter on it.

I still say it's all the minerals that you're adding raising the GH. The additives you listed all increase the GH by 2+ gh. By using the 3 together you're raising the GH by 6+ it's not a buffer like pH. These additives are not 'buffering' your GH to 2, They're raising your GH by 2.

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I agree partially with you Wayne. Once you have correctly setup your tank, you should be as hands off as possible. But the issues that doctr-dan has need to be rectified rather than just leaving them alone as this is obviously not working for him.

I also think that the issue may be caused by the higher than normal GH and think that the use of 100% RO with salty bee minerals will help bring these deaths to a stop. If the GH is still above 5 after a few weeks of small weekly water changes with the remineralised RO I would take a few of the suspect noodles from the filter and place them in a glass with plain RO water and leave them for a day or so and test the GH to see if it is still at 0 or if it has been affected. If affected you know the noodles are possibly adding to the issue.

Wayne - I would be interested to know what your GH is in the tank your talking about.

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Mate I have no idea of the GH I have never tested for it and havn't a clue how to do so( it might frighten me if I did)I very rearly check the PH . I have no problems so I don't check All my tanks are the same.

When I first started with shrimp keeping, I was like everyone else and dived in at the deep end( who wanted Rcs Blah) and purchased S & SS grade CRS, I had done what I thought was the right thing and cycled my tank for 4 months purchased a chiller and $$$ worth of additives, Benibachi soil for substrate ,Etc ,etc ,etc. The big day arrived and I slowly drip acclimitized my shrimp( 10 only) over a full day and away we went.Shrimp added all looked good. about 48 hrs later I had my first deaths. To cut a long story short, after heaps of well intentioned advice, lots of research, and many ,many Crs, and Thousands of dollars later. I figured that all the hastles of raising exotic shrimp was not worth the effort.. I was going to chuck the whole thing overboard when I found some cherry shrimp locally, I put them into the tank and promptly forgot about them, just giving them minimal care , and of course they did what cherries do well and started to breed like rabbits. Nothing except water changes had been done to this tank, I just kept adding more cherries , DAS, DRS, and a couple of glass shrimp, I also added two small sponge filters to help the little Eden along. Except for adding and removing shrimp, and changing a few plants, water changes and bottom cleaning, removing the chiller,this tank is still the same today as it was at the start. I added 10 crystal shrimp to the mix about four months ago and a couple more about a month ago. Every crystal that I have added is still alive and well, with one berried female. Tonights PH is 7.4 and water temp of 26 deg c(just did it now to add here)my filter are still working fine and have not been cleaned since installing.

My point is that if you start slowly with tougher shrimp, be paitent, give basic care and attention, let nature and the tank do their own thing, keep additives away, dont continually fiddle adjusting things,give about 12 months for your eco system to evolve , then even the most touchy shrimp that we have in our hobby will survive very well.

It will take time, empty wallets,and a steep learning curve before we all learn by our mistakes. I have!

Regards

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Hey triggs, i have to agree , that there is nothing natural about a glass box full of water with a filter on it." BUT" have you ever just filled a container up with water and let it stand for a few weeks? What happens !! the water will start to turn green, algae will form and all sorts of other living microscopic critters will start to develope. Mate thats NATURE taking care of things,same thing happens in our aquariums, with a little help with airation, light and filtering our prisons " WILL" develope ther own micro eco system to benifit the inhabitants there in. the more unnatural junk we add to our tanks the more we kill off the benificial ecological state in the tank,resulting in more deaths, and even a complete wipe out.I know it is hard to stand there and watch your precious costly shrimp pass away. At this point the only thing you can do is to take a deep breath, watch, wait,and start again lower down the chain your system will right itself given time and you can start again with the higher level shrimp.

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@ triggs, sorry mate I think you may have misunderstood.

I don't and haven't been adding all those supplements at once.

Up until now I had 2 benibachi mineral balls in the tank. My water tips were done with a50-50 mix of RO and tap water and every now and then say every 2-3 weeks I was adding 1 spoon of benibachi mineral powder. That's it.

In a attempt to fix the current issues I was thinking of switching to RO and salty shrimp mix and nothing else.

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@ triggs' date=' sorry mate I think you may have misunderstood.

I don't and haven't been adding all those supplements at once.

Up until now I had 2 benibachi mineral balls in the tank. My water tips were done with a50-50 mix of RO and tap water and every now and then say every 2-3 weeks I was adding 1 spoon of benibachi mineral powder. That's it.

In a attempt to fix the current issues I was thinking of switching to RO and salty shrimp mix and nothing else.[/quote']

Ah, Sorry!

I was picturing someone doing a water change and adding all these minerals into the tank.

However, If your GH is higher than your tap water. Then there has to be a external factor raising your GH. Swapping to 100% RO and salty shrimp mix will help. But you really have to work out what the hidden variable is that's causing your GH to rise. GH Doesn't just go up without having something contribute to it doing so.

If switching to 100% RO and a normal dose of SSM fixes the problem then you know it was all the minearls + your tap water causing high GH.

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A bit of a update, it was suggested I put some carbon in the tank to rule out toxins in the tank.

Well it's been 6 days today and I haven't had a death since adding it. Touch wood it stays that way.

I did one 10% water change with RO and salty shrimp and have been doing daily top ups with the same as well.

It feels like shrimp deaths anonymous, it's been 6 days since my last death ha ha

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That's good news. Did you end up changing your filter media? Also has your GH dropped in the past 6 days since the water change with RO+SSM?

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That's good news. Did you end up changing your filter media? Also has your GH dropped in the past 6 days since the water change with RO+SSM?

I didnt change the media as I think its the sintered glass media.

I tested the GH 2 days after changing to RO and SSM and it had dropped 2 points. I do need to check it again

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Gh still at 10...

Have you had more shrimp deaths?

I really don't mean to come across as a nag, Or a know it all, Or anything like that. I really just think you need to work out whats raising your GH. There's no real quick fix, Just product of elimination one thing at a time.

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I had a shrimplet die yesterday but that's it in the last 7 days.

I guess I could try removing the noodles to see if they are raising the gh.

I have a suspicion it might b the shrimp sand .....

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If you think it's the shrimp sand you can always test it, heres how I have done it in the past.

1. Take a small glass and make sure it's clean and rinsed very well with RO water.

2. Carefully take a small amount of shrimp sand out of your tank, just enough to cover the bottom of the small glass

3. Fill the small glass with RO water and let it sit for around 24 hours

4. Test the water from the small glass to see if the GH has increased to much.

Be extremely careful when taking out any of the substrate so that you cause minimal disturbance to it as it may cloud up a little or it could even cause a mini cycle. I used a sand/gravel scraping tool to scoop small amounts at a time from different areas of the tank.

This method can be used to test a few pieces of your filter media as well.

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I havnt had another death for 5 days so far.

Im currently testing if the shrimp sand is causing a rise in the gh.

I also tested the gh of the RO salt shrimp mix and it was 9 which is high to start with.

That means something in my tank is causing it to rise approx 2 points.

Ive been doing the recommended mix of 3grams to 20 litres so I might have to reduce the amount I mix in to lower the gh.

I also tested the gh of the RO water I use from my LFS and it was 2.

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That's great news that you have not lost any shrimp for 5 days.

When I tested my RO water there was 0 GH, 0 KH, 0 EC. It's possible that the bottles that your RO comes in were used for salt water and not rinsed correctly or their RO filters/membranes may need replacing. It could also be the test kit I guess, can you have them test the RO next time you get some?

When I purchased 120litres to set up my tank one of the 20litre containers was showing GH 12, KH 12 and EC 568. Lucky I checked each container before using it, this worried me so I purchased an RO unit the next week.

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All was going well until Friday and Saturday 1 loss each day

gotta get myself a uv steriliser I think.

Slowly been trying to lower the gh but it is a slow process

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All was going well until Friday and Saturday 1 loss each day

gotta get myself a uv steriliser I think.

Slowly been trying to lower the gh but it is a slow process

Sorry about the losses mate. Just wondering if your area get quite hot and whether you need a chiller? I think my biggest losses was always in summer when the tank warm to 30c or over

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  • 3 weeks later...

Lost another 3-4 CBS and crs since my last post. I seem to have about 7-10 days of no deaths and then 1-2 days of dying and then good again.

So today I added a uv filter so hopefully that puts a stop to it.

I pretty much had to dismantle the tank to fit it in though.

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