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I'll take all help! It's a 125 gallon (~470 liters) so it's not a dripper. It's a hose trickle over the course of about two hours. Added roughly a half gallon per minute. Hose fills bucket, which overflows into tank. Prime is set up to slowly drip into the bucket prior to entering the tank. The amanos bum rush the area the water is being added. Made me want to find a way to treat the water prior to entering the tank. These two water changes in the last 24 hours are the first two since the shrimp were added. Tap water is pretty great itself. Comes out at pH 7.0, KH 2, GH 6-7. Double dip on using a probe thermometer and a laser thermometer to keep new water temp from fluctuating more than a degree. All plants were bought and added in one go. Same supplier I used for the shrimp - https://buceplant.com/. They refunded the first 12 deaths despite not being DOA. Went back and forth with their service e-mail on this and they didn't have any good ideas. Plants came with hitchhiker pond snails, which I did not self treat. Plenty of algae for now and excess snails is a future me problem. I feel pretty good about the source. I'm leaning towards mystery contaminant that needs dilution. Heavy handed fertilizing before I had live stock to do it for me? Still have to go out and get a second opinion on my basic water testing after I clean up here.

No problem with the obvious questions. I appreciate all feedback here. I would love this to be as simple as "did you plug in the t.v. sir?". I did dechlorinate the tap water. Have Shrimp Prep and Prime. Used Prime on the water change last night. I worked in a Local Fish Store for a decade prior to getting into animal health as a career. I like to think I have some idea what I'm doing, but confidence can be dangerous. I'm clearly mucking something up here. It is now 7am and I do not see any newly deceased shrimp. That is a first so minor progress. However, the heater clumping behavior is back. It is not entirely concentrated on the top few inches as before, but I have at least 40 shrimp hanging out on the heater. It's hard to count them. Dropping my temperature probe around again confirms that the tank water is +/- 1F everywhere in the tank, so the heater love has me unnerved. The tank is absolutely full of plants. I'd feel better if they were hiding in the rotala forest, the repens bushes, anything that isn't that dang heater. New set of at home tests have the water parameters the same as before. Nitrate might be closer to 0 as the orange tinge is almost absent now. Time to do another water change I suppose. They really liked that last night.

Absolutely, especially if you are out the whole day.

Thank you for the thoughts. It is already late here (almost 9pm now), but I can bring water for a second opinion tomorrow. They are now more spread out around the tank. The amanos in particular look much better. There are a cluster of ~10 neocaridina hiding behind the heater, but now the lower half. Improvement? If we work under the theory of ammonia I'm going to be out all day and possibly night tomorrow visiting a friend. What are your thoughts on another water change in the morning before I leave for a day?

Absolutely a good move. That was going to be my next suggestion. Add the bacterial starter as well. As you said something is better than nothing. If you can, get some water now for testing at a Local Fish Store for a second opinion.

I do not have another tank. This was my foray back into the hobby after a several year hiatus. I do have a bottle of brightwell brand bacterial starter that I never used. Can open that up if the idea of something is better than nothing. I wrote off ammonia due to the test results but there is absolutely something in the water slowly killing them. Despite not being a good idea from what I've read I am in the middle of a large (~75%) water change. Slowly adding water through a bucket that has a water conditioner drip. Figured if they are dying already then this was better than watching. The shrimp are responding very well in the first few minutes at least. They are all hanging out in the bottom half of the tank. Could be me being overly hopeful.

Copper poisoning is uncommon, unlikely to be the problem. Not impossible, but unlikely. Have you got another tank that you can squeeze the filter gunk into this tank? I am leaning towards ammonia being the problem, despite your test results. If you can squeeze more beneficial bacteria into the tank using old filters from another tank, it should help boost the ammonia processing abilities in this tank.

Tank was cycled somewhat accidently via plants rotting. I planted very heavily and some did not make it. Ammonia was high for about a week. Nitrite high for about a week. Then after everything was stable for another ~2 weeks I ordered the shrimp. Tank is slightly over a month old. Next Monday is week 6. Tap water. Sadly I do not have a copper test kit. Did not consider RO until right around now. Used it previously in reef set ups but this is "just" plants.

Clustering like indicates they are trying to escape something in the water that is stressing them out. I have a few questions ... How did you cycle the tank? Please elaborate on the method you used to cycle the tank. How old is the tank? What sort of water did you use? Tap / RO ?

Old to tanks of all sorts. New to freshwater shrimp. Set up a 125 planted tank recently. This week I ordered and added 80 blue dream and 80 amano. Had 1 blue dream DOA. Shrimp were drip acclimated over 4 hours after adding an ammonia detox to the containers. Everything seemed fine. Then the next morning 3 dead. Four more that evening after work. First 24 hours... okay. I overnight shipped shrimp cross country. Death total seems bad but maybe I can write it off as stress since water is good. Nope. Having 3-5 die a day over 4 days now. The water is stable. pH - 7.0 Temperature - 72.5F Ammonia/Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - ~5 KH - 2 GH - 6 to 7 The shrimp are eating. I see successful molts. No outward signs of disease. No water changes during this period of time. The morning 4 hours of CO2 diffusion was halted entirely after the first day of deaths. Behavior wise I've never had these guys before but they are largely sticking to the upper half of the tank, which seems odd. They are clustering on the top most java fern and even on the heater (the room gets cold so heaters were needed). Picture to show this heater clustering attached. I've used a laser and probe thermometer to ensure the water is in fact 72-73 in all zones, including next to the heater. Shrimp seem perfectly fine one moment and then I'll see a dead one front and center 30 minutes later. I'm grasping at straws now considering poisoning or lack of O2. Water circulation is via an Oase BioMaster 600 with a spray bar slightly above the water level to provide surface agitation. Filter only uses biological and mechanical filtration at this time. Should I add carbon? The only other animals in the tank are several dozen nerite snails which are fine. Plants are growing very aggressively even after stopping CO2 this week. There are API root tabs in the sand and dosed with Seachem Flourish in weeks prior, but not this week (did a series of large water changes prior to adding shrimp just in case). No other water additives. I am not knowingly adding aerosols or lotions or anything else to the water. I'm very open to being an idiot and missing something obvious. Too many shrimp at once despite no rise in nitrogenous waste? Water is actually awful and I'm ignorant? All insight appreciated.