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TL;DR - I had a shrimp become paralysed and die with no obvious red flags and stable water parameters. I found about 10 hydra and would like to know if I can treat with LCA Planaria Fix without harming my shrimp, particularly my berried shrimp and new shrimplets. Hi everyone, First, let me say thanks to everyone for all the info on this site, especially Jayc and sdITBfanUK for your many years of patient advice, you've already helped me more than you know! I am a new blue cherry shrimp keeper and everything had been going pretty great for me shrimp-wise. I have a 41L/9 imperial Gallon tank which I cycled/matured for about 6 weeks before adding shrimp (the tank cycled in 2 weeks, but I left it a bit longer). I then got 11 blue cherry shrimp 7 weeks ago and as I said, everything had been going pretty well. 5 of my females matured and berried with what looks like a lot of eggs, and the shrimp always seemed happy and normal. About 1.5 weeks ago I found 1 dead male shrimp which looked almost stuck in the substrate at the back of my tank. It had turned white/pinkish by the time I found it and I have no idea how long it took for me to find. I wrote it off as everything else seemed fine. Then 2 days ago I saw what looked to be Scutariella on a few of my shrimp, including 2 of the pregnant ones. There was 1-3 little white things sticking up from their noses that seemed to move independently. So I salt dipped the affected shrimp, which cleared the obvious white things and the shrimp all seemed normal. Then yesterday I found a shed with some eggs still attached to it. I believe they were from my first female to become berried due to their colour, she had been berried for about 4 weeks. I thought that it may be from the salt dip. Things got worse that evening when I found one of my shrimp upside down, apparently dead. I went to get it out of the tank and it attempted to swim around before falling back to the substrate. It looked as though its body was paralysed, but its extremities could still move. It otherwise appeared fine, and had nothing obviously wrong with it. I put it in a small container with clean, prime-treated water as I had read of some people having a similar thing happen due to either toxicity or lack of oxygen. I also topped up the tank and threw in a small sponge filter to increase aeration in case (I don't think it was that as all the other shrimp and snails were acting normally). The afflicted shrimp's movements decreased until I thought it was dead, then about 1 hour later it appeared to be increasing its movements and even flexed its tail a few times but then movement decreased again and it actually died. My tank parameters have been stable the whole time my shrimp have been in there, and I was wracking my brain trying to work out what could possibly have happened. Tonight I found about 10 tiny hydra in my tank and I am wondering if there is a possibility that the dead shrimp could have been stung by a hydra? Especially if she had just moulted? She may have been the one that lost the eggs, but there is another shrimp with similar markings that I have seen wandering around with no saddle, and as all my females have been either berried or saddled the last week or so, I thought that that one was probably the female that shed her eggs. There were some other moults as well though. My tank parameters are: Ammonia and Nitrite: 0 Nitrate: 5-10ppm (this is what they are constantly, and I struggle to tell the two apart, if anything the colour was a little lighter) Temp: 22 celsius Ph: 7.2 Gh: 8 Kh: 3 TDS: 210 Phosphate: 0.25 I use a thermometer, TDS and a Ph metre, salifert phosphate test kit and API liquid test kits for everything else. I have been doing about 20% water changes once a week and slow drip the freshwater in. I use tap water (and this is what the shrimp were raised in) treated with prime. I have plants, driftwood, dragon stone, Indian almond leaf and a small piece of cuttlebone. These things have all been consistent since the beginning (I added the cuttle bone after cycling to slightly increase my Ph and its been very stable since. I use LCA shrimp safe all-in-one fertiliser at about .75 of the recommended low light dose twice per week, Seachem advance, and 1/8tsp LCA potassium sulphate added at water change. I was due to change water today, so I do not think it is that. All the other shrimp seem happy and normal. I did rearrange the tank about 2 weeks ago and got rid of some Vals that were spreading everywhere and looking scraggly and added a couple of new plants. There has been a bladder snail boom over the last week or so and brown dust and a little green spot algae on the glass. I have been having issues with getting the plants to grow nicely, but there is still a decent amount of growth. I should also mention that I get chemical triggered migraines and so there are no spray chemicals of any kind in the house, and am extremely careful of scented products and any chemical use, so I don't think anything could have gotten into the tank. I have kept frogs (who are very sensitive to chemicals) for 8 years with no mishaps. In good news, my first shrimplets were born today, I have seen at least two :), so it has been a roller coaster! I have some LCA Planaria fix as I found one hydra (bigger than the current ones) just before adding my shrimp. However, after removing that one I could not find any trace of more despite daily careful checking, so I held off on treating. Would it be ok to use that now? I can't seem to find what the actual ingredients are. I am worried about hurting the shrimplets and the berried shrimp, but obviously hydra are a danger to them as well. Please help :). I think I put in all the necessary info, sorry for the long post, thanks for sticking with it if you kept reading :).

Tank is still kicking on all these years later! now One of my first full tank shots. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

yeah, I'm hoping my last 5 make it. I'm honestly a bit at wits end. I don't think there's anything else I can think of about the tank to list. I also added a bubbling airstone today so perhaps the extra oxygenation will help. I do want to mention that the babaultis seem to not come forward and eat the shrimp king complete sticks that I use (or any of the 5 other feeds (maulbeere, krautermix, ultra supple, etc) and I'm a bit confused at that as well. Do they have some kind of special food they prefer? Hoping if anyone else with babaulti shrimp experience could chime in with some insight ?

Should just be able to drag the photo into the area indicated by the arrow below, or click on the choose file. The free forum accounts unfortunately, have a limit on the file size as well as a quota on overall attachments uploaded to the site. So you will need to edit the size of the photo before attaching it. Signing up for Platinum membership not only unlocks these limits, but also helps keep this forum running. Alternatively you can use a free image hosting site and pasting the link here. Hope that helps.

Today I saw a very tiny new born shrimplets. All my shrimp seem to be doing well. They seem active right now but there’s at least two molts. I decided I wanted 70% red crystals 15% tigers and 10%blacks 5% orange Tiawan bees. I know blacks are dominant colour that’s why i got only a few. One tiger is berried and she’s gorgeous... correction 2 wow. She actually has a orange tinge to her....no more crystals are pregnant though .The plants are looking ok I think my tank looks great wish I could figure out how to add pictures....

@jayc, Here are the parameters from the seller: - The only real difference I see is the temperature, although it seems babaultis should be able to go up to 80. ( I don't have a water chiller so I'm not sure if I can keep the water any cooler in the summer haha.) @sdlTBfanUK, I am using RO water (7-10tds) and remineralizing with saltyshrimp Gh/kh+ to about 180-200 TDS with a gh of 8 and kh of 3-4. Right now I think 5 or 6 of them are still alive from my original 15. I got them through a local seller in California. I'm crossing my fingers that they settle down and no more die. I would really like a breeding a colony of them!