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Hi ! I live in Seattle where the water is incredibly soft and I have a tap water pH of 6.7, GH of 0-1 and KH 2. My existing tank with plants already has buffered substrate. Would I have better chance of keeping CRS than RCS with my current water parameters ? Or would RCS do okay? I do have an RO system already, and I could remineralize my water with salty shrimp KH/GH+. Which would allow my GH and KH parameter to be okay for neocaridinas, but I already have a tank with active substrate. I’m 100% I don’t have space to set up another tank with inert substrate. Would do you recommend ? What are pH you have successfully kept neocaridinas and have them thriving ? Thanks ! I appreciate all the help as I am new to the hobby.

Hi guys. Tried shrimp twice before without much luck, and have some shrimp on the way from aquabid in hopes that the third time will be the charm. I heard that these three species are the easiest ones to keep and that is the main reason I went for them. In the past I kept RCS for about a year and they never did that great but they were in with large fish so no big surprise. There were a few holdouts for some time but eventually they all went the way of the dodo. Next I kept some ghost shrimp in a ten gallon and they were breeding like crazy and doing a great job cleaning up all my filthy plants from the other tanks, but eventually I added in too much plant matter that was too dirty and they all suddenly died off. This time they are in a 40 gallon all to themselves with a bunch of moss and aquascaping of various kinds so I hope they will do better. This has an aquabridge to a 60 gallon tank with plants and aquascape and a few small fish in it. I will keep the shrimp and crayfish alone in the 40g tank for now at least. Maybe if they take off enough I will add in a few tiny fish like white clouds and so on that won't affect the shrimp much. I believed my tap water parameters were good for virtually all aquarium needs but in some aquabid auction I saw that any kh above 8 would lead to shrimp being unable to molt and eventually kill them. The ghost shrimp actually bred like mad in the 10g, but the cherry shrimp never really took off even though there were lots of places to hide from the big fish. Is this water hardness a serious problem for those guys? RO water is really not an option because I am on a budget. Possibly I can afford to ameliorate the water with chems a bit if it is a serious problem though.

I have had a 20 gallon RCS tank for 3 years now. I have moss balls and some JAVA moss, drift wood, and mineral rocks. Only RCS in the tank and some soft shell snails I have in there I breed for my fresh water puffer fish in another tank,. My issue is that the shrimp live 1-2 years and they breed just fine but I never see babies. I see plenty of eggs but never babies. (Well 1 or 2 a month maybe but they disappear) The adults keep going just fine until they die off of old age or something else. I keep about 100 shrimp in the tank and have to replenish 50 every 6 months about. Water Temp I keep about neutral. PH- 7- 7.2 I use distilled water or sometimes Reverse Osmosis water because our tap water goes through a water softener which puts a LOT of salt in it which makes TDS very high so I try not to use tap water at all. I feed every 2 days with Azoo or other good food and not much. Its all gone by the time I feed again. I do add some powder food for the babies and a shrimp bacteria powder (just started that about 6 months ago but has not helped or hurt) Someone told me due to the distilled water my issue is LOW TDS. So I bought TWO different meters. I tested the distilled water and its about zero which is correct. I then tested my water and its about 700. I do top offs and just did a 20% water change last weekend with distilled water. So is that the issue? Should I pull out the mineral rocks? I am thinking tonight to take about 8 gallons of water and drain the tank down about 40% and then fill with the distilled water. I can repeat the process in a week and once I get the TDS under 150 I can add a little shrimp mineral to get it to the 200 range. The reason I am saying that is the TDS could be bad TDS and not the minerals they needs. I ordered some Salty Shrimp Mineral which I heard was good. Should I just give up? Jeff

Hi Guys, Over the last couple of days I have head some RCS deaths. One I am not sure why and the other one I felt like she was going to die as she could not moult (I could see her shell almost split in 2 at the saddle). All females in this tank are breeding exceptionally well and all other shrimp seem fine. My water parameters are:- 6.6ph0 ammonia0 nitrites10 nitrates200 TDS (a bit high for my liking prefer around 170, so will bring this down slowly) I keep these RCS with my CRS shrimp. So I am just wondering if it is my setup that is causing these issues or just coincidence that these two deaths happened at the same time?

I bought 7 RCS for my 2.5 gal tank yesterday (no filter/heater). I also have a marimo ball as well as some java moss. I was wondering if this no filter set up is okay for my RCS? This morning they were acting less active than yesterday. They weren't picking at the marimo ball or anything, and were all just standing still..

Three RCS dead: a berried female (who seems to have molted recently?), a juvie and a failed molt(?) shrimp A brief summary of my tank: Size: 28L Temp: 25C pH: 7.4-7.8 (the API test kit is hard to read) GH/KH unknown, TDS unknown. I do not have those two tests because they seemed unnecessary for RCS. 20% water change every 2 days RCS are fed alternately with blanched green pea, Hikari Shrimp Cuisine and leaf litter in the tank (boiled before putting in to ensure no parasites or anything) Substrate: Seachem Flourite Planted tank. No CO2, tank half-dosed with Dino Pee and Dino Spit Tank is fully cycled Noticed shrimp was molting a few days ago so I added a small piece of cuttlefish bone (boiled beforehand) to prevent molting issues. They were breeding and I saw one successful molt so I thought everything is fine and then I noticed this morning three shrimps were dead. Removed them immediately, tested water parameters and did a water change. At the time I discovered the dead shrimps, ammonia was 0, nitrite 0 and nitrate around 10-20ppm? (again, API test kit is hard to read!) Overall water parameters seem OK. But I did a 20% water change anyway just to be safe. Not sure what the issue is... From a short google search, seems that molting shrimps are very sensitive but how do I prevent future deaths? Very confused and saddened by their death. Please advise.

Hey all got some new RCS for my tank yesterday. Some of them are showing some good colour already I'm going to start selective breeding them very soon just need breeding box first. Any way here are some pic's.