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i set up a planted 31 gallon freshwater aquarium around July/August last year and introduced ten red cherry shrimp in November from one seller and about 5 more a couple weeks later along with maybe 5 mts. the mts were the first to go. for about a week i could see movement in the substrate and then they came up and didnt move for a while. i took them out and they started eating and moving around more but died soon after putting them back in the tank. i had a few shrimp deaths in the first week and thought it was just because of the move. since then the shrimp have been slowly dying off. in january i bought 20 morethinking they just werent breeding and went into shock from the move. since then they have been dying off and now there are only 6 left. i had one girl carrying only two eggs at one point but i think shes dead now as i haven't seen her around. my parameters are ammonia, nitrites and nitrates :0, copper:0, ph ~8, gh5, kh ~3. tds 130 anybody have any insights?

UK people, Morrisons (not all branches I suspect) now sell the zerowater filters and jugs etc at the same prices as the importer website! Simon

As Simon already mentioned, pH is too high for cherries. Driftwood or indian almond leaves will slowly lower this for you. Also just checking, you are dechlorinating yes? I've known a few people who never learnt about dechlorinating, but usually not shrimpers. All the best, Crabby

Sorry to hear you are having a problem usually cherry shrimp are pretty sturdy easy to keep! From the parameters you quote, the GH and TDS are a bit low so it would be worth trying some GH+ to try to get those figures up to nearer TDS 180 and GH 7. GH+ is pre balanced so those 2 figures equate using that product. Normally GH/kh+ is recommended for cherry shrimp but you already have enough KH. I assume you are using dechlorinated tap water? Usually tap water is fine with cherry shrimp but there may be something in the water that is causing a problem! Ultimately you may have to go RO water remineralised if the water source is the problem but that is unusual with cherry shrimps and a last resort at this point! In a tank of that size I wouldn't think they need any feeding for that many shriimps, but are you feeding them anything? I would try bringing those figures up with GH+ but do it a bit at a time (maybe one scoop per day), you can just use the TDS pen here as 50TDS will be about 2GH prebalanced in the powder/drops! Just retest the GH again when you have got to the desired TDS as a double check! I would also get some Indian almond leaves and Bacter AE if you can. The Indian almond leaves will help reduce your PH slightly/slowly as well! Don't be too surprised if you get the odd dead shrimp throughout this though as some may already be sick/weak! Simon

Sorry for the late response, thanks for enlightening me with your knowledge jayc. I guess I will just leave them as is if it needs that much effort in getting any result from breeding them. Many thanks to everyone that replied to this post ?

Breeding wild shrimps with the intention of getting something that resembles anything else apart from what it looks like now will take many generations of culling. Even getting it to change colour can take many, many generations with culling and patience. After all, mother nature, has taken many thousands of years to get them to look they way they look now. Imagine trying to undo it. Unless of course, IF, you get it to breed with a modern day Caridina that has already been bred for the colour - that will quicken the process a bit. This is of course hybridising, and those shrimps you have will never be native anymore. This will still take a lot of patience and culling to get results. Of, and you will need many tanks to hold all the various generation of shrimps. And a bit of luck thrown in for good measure. This is how we got the colourful shrimps we have now. None of them are pure/native, they are all a hybrid, a mix of species. Instead, I suggest enjoying and APPRECIATING the native shrimp in it's original form. I breed the local Australian native shrimps. I love them in it's natural form, colour and patterns. My tanks with these native Aust shrimp are pure line of course. And in the 5-6 years I have had them, NONE, I repeat, NONE have changed colour, or pattern. Some might be darker in colour, some might be lighter. But essentially, they have always been the same. Mother nature has designed them like that. Unless you get a mutation, which is rare. Or you introduce another species into the mix. At which point you will need to start learning about genetics and Mendel's theory of heredity.