CRS behavior

[Matuva]

Hi all,

through months and several joy & pain; I have now gain a little experience with neocaridinas. They are hardy, do adapt well to various conditions, and do "forgive" mistakes.

As for the caridinas, this is another strory. All my attempts have failed. Last try was around September last year, when I bought 12 white bees & 12 CRS. I put them with my red cherries, in a tank with following parameters ! KH: 3, GH: 10, TDS 170-190, temperature around 25°C.
They were doing not so bad, a white be female even got berried, but she unfortunately died before her eggs hatched The others were disappearing one by one...

Last Friday, I decided to move the 5 CRS and 3 white bees I have left in the new tank I have set for my local shrimps. This tank is chilled, temperature around 22-23°C, KH: 1-2, GH: 1, TDS 70.

The 1st day, none of them was appearing, or such a few. They spent most of their time hidding. But then, they change their mood & behavior: they are now wandering all around the tank, swimming, walking on the other shrimps. Sometimes they "run" all around like if they are doing the "male dance", but even the females are doing so.

Is that normal behavior for these shrimps? Do that mean they are happy now, or instead, are they suffering from something I ignore? As I said, I have a very few experience with this genus. I have double checked the water parameters and they are OK, the other shrimps look fine too.

[Zoidburg]

Caridinas typically do best in a KH of 0-1, GH 4-6, TDS 100-180 with a pH of 5.8 to 6.5. I can't imagine that they would remain happy in either condition for very long unless you have a way to buffer the water to lower pH and raise the GH up. The lower GH could result in molting issues which could lead to death.

[Matuva]

Yes, I'm a bit anxious about the GH value. Problem is that the local shrimps hosted in that tank come from an habitat where the GH is very low, just about 1, and TDS around 30.

In the tank, I let it raise to 1-2 (GH) - as far as the API test is trustable- and TDS up to 70-80.

I wonder if I raise again the levels up to, let's say 3 for GH and 100 for TDS, that would make a good consensus and allow me to host both species, the local & the CRS, and have them all happy?

[revolutionhope]

1kh and 3gh is probably adequate for crs imho. Tds 100ppm fyi is actually what salty shrimp recommend for bees but most of us in reality keep our bee tanks at tds 120-150ppm) You probably already do this but just want to add that it's always important to very slowly drip in new water with different parameters so the shrimp aren't don't suffer osmotic shock.

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Will