Leaderboard

The most common death is due to water hardness, causing the shrimps problems with moulting. And this might be the case with these shrimp. For that you will need to test the water's GH and TDS.

Not necessarily a cause of disease. When shrimp die, they loose the pigment under the shell turning them an orange like when you see when you cook prawns to eat. The colour you see on shrimp is under the shell (notice when they moult, they don't loose colour), and when this colour pigment is destroyed, they turn orange. What you are seeing is normal for a dead shrimp. But if you see a live shrimp with pale orange internals, than that could be an internal infection caused by disease.

Did you drip acclimate them to the water over several hours, most newbies don't (me included when I started) and that causes deaths in the first week usually! When changing water in the tank in routine maintenance it is also best to drip the new water in if it isn't a huge aquarium! I can't see anything obviously wrong in the photo. If you can, also get a KH tester as well as the TDS and GH mentioned by JayC. I am assuming they are neocaridina (cherry) shrimp. There is this extremely good youtube video I recommend watching; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pO6iJPbmdk Simon

Oh, I didn't think to test that! Thank you, I'll pick up the stuff tomorrow.

Hi! I'm new to shrimp keeping, and today I lost two shrimp within a few hours of each other. I went over and the yellow one was on her back, legs kicking wildly, until she died (maybe a half hour later?), and a few hours later the black one did the same thing. Do they look sick? They were only introduced to the tank 3 days ago. We have two other shrimp in the tank (including a pregnant female), and I'm really worried about something happening to them. Yesterday they seemed completely fine: swimming around, sitting on the plants, eating fine. Water parameters: pH: 6.8 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Nitrate: 5.0 ppm Thank you for any advice you can give!