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Hi everyone. I recently rescaped my shrimp tank and added a Matten filter. The Matten filter is made from black reticulated foam with a PPI of 30, there is no flame retardant treatment applied to this foam, some clean PVC and an airstone. I drained out the tank while keeping my shrimp in a bucket with a heater and an air stone along with my old sponge filter. I re-scape the tank and installed a Matten filter. I refilled the tank back up with the old tank water plus 30% new RO water. I took the heater out of the bucket and put it back in the tank and started to re-add all of my shrimp to the tank. I put my sponge filter back into the tank so there would still be a lot of beneficial bacteria. The next morning I woke up and all 6 of my otocinculus catfish have died. Over the next few days I am slowly losing all of my shrimp friends and it's breaking my heart. They're stressed, moving slowly and sparingly, and not eating much at all. I have no idea what I've done wrong. I regret it so much. I thought it would be fun to update my tank and filter as ive learned so much since I've started. However all I've done is kill all of my friends. Does anyone have any advice? What did I do wrong? Why is the tank now killing them when there's nothing new in the tank besides a sponge Matten filter? Is there anything I can do to the save the rest? All water tests come back perfectly clean. Even with zero nitrate as I siphoned the substrate after they were placed in the bucket. PLEASE HELP

Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm having trouble with my 5gal, fluval spec cherry shrimp tank. I've tried everything I can find and they are still dying. Many signs point to molting issue but I can't stop it! I'm getting the white ring of death on many. I've tried adding cuttlebone, crushed oyster shell & feeding kale, reduced temp, increased GH ....and still deaths. Stats: ammonia/nitrate/nitrite: 0 ph: 7.4 tds: 300 temp:73 kh:4/gh:12 calcium:around 100 mg/l Weekly water changes with remineralized RO water. Tank is planted, no co2, occasional excel, no medications or chemicals for the most part. Help

So 3 out of my 4 amano shrimp have died in the past 48 hours and they all have this weird orange square bulging out of their heads. Anyone have any idea what is going on here?!

Greetings, Unfortunately my first post in this forum has to be sad. I have been losing shrimp at a very slow pace. 1 every month for the last 3 months at this point. Originally, I thought it was simply due to old age, but I just found a shrimp that may be infected tonight, and was wondering if that may have been the cause of the other deaths? Poor fella is now in quarantine. The spot sits just under the carapace of the shrimp on his right side, you can almost see a "bump" where it is located, the carapace bows out ever so slightly. It is whitish, with a smaller circle inside that is significantly more white. I only have one tank, 17g display with lots of plant life and everything has been pretty good for the last 9-10 months, not a lot of death that I noticed, unless the snails got to them first... Water params have been very stable, have not seen any swings: ph: 7-7.2 gh: 8 kh: 8 TDS: 250-300 temp: 70-73 I dose ferts for the plants at half dose (1ml) flourish excel. water changes once a week 20-30% the first picture in the link is the first dead shrimp I ever found, thought it was old age/bad molt? maybe I was wrong? Second/third picture are of the second shrimp, almost identical in every way to the first one, even the same spot of death in the tank. rest of them are the shrimp in question http://imgur.com/a/32JGi Thank you for your time!

I got some blue tiger shrimp about 2 months ago and they have been doing well up until yesterday. All the water parameters have not changed since I purchased the shrimp. I found one dead yesterday and one dead today. Here are my tank parameters: PH: 6.9 KH: 2 GH: 4-5 TDS: 140 Water temp: 68F Ammo: 0 Nitrite: 0 Nitrate: 5 I did add 2 nerite snails last week would that cause any problems? Are a few deaths here and there common? What should I do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Okay. So originally I had 13 shrimp to start off with and it's been around a month and they all seemed fine, molting from time to time. Then my parents just told me a few days ago (3 days) that when I was on my trip for a week, nearly a shrimp died every day. When I came back, the shrimp seemed fine and I didn't see any problems. Yesterday, I decided to clean the tank by sucking out some of their poop at the bottom of the tank that is always under the tiny black pebbles I put there (the filter doesn't filter anything). I was moving the pebbles around a lot and the black dust from the pebbles just whooshed up into the water and lingered there. The water looked disgusting. I had some tap water which I conditioned already so I took the shrimp (there were 5) and put them in that water. I cleared out all the water in that tank and filled it back with my conditioned water with the shrimp. My sister bought a new filter cotton thing to replace the old one cuz that has turned black from the dust probably. But today when I checked on them, the yellow ones had black stuff in their head, which has never happened before. They are still eating though. A red one just died. So I really don't know what to do. I know I shouldn't have changed all the water but I couldn't leave it there cuz the black particles were clouding the water. Someone please help!!

Imagine my horror when I looked in the shrimp tank this morning and saw a totally white shrimp. They nearly all are transparent to some degree normally so it stood out like a sore thumb. It wasn't mottled or anything just very opaque white. Checked my water parameters immediately and they are as follows: ammonia 0.25 ppm nitrite 0 ppm nitrate 10 ppm pH 7.8 temp 22.2C/72F TDS 285 I've tried to check how much free ammonia this is using an ammonia calculator and it says 0.007 ppm which doesn't sound so bad. However it does show that something has changed since I last checked the ammonia 2-3 weeks ago when it was 0. The filter was mature when I added these shrimp. I wasn't sure how to factor in the TDS since the calculator asks for the salinity in terms of conductivity, specific gravity or ppt. So I said 0 since I reckon it's trying to distinguish between fresh and saltwater. As you can see it was one of the larger shrimp that died, I have my fingers crossed that it was an old one. I am a bit concerned as the shrimp haven't been the same since I added the banana leaves and alder cones just over a week ago altho they are a bit more active now tho not as much as before the addition. The banana leaves and all but 2 alder cones were removed when the water went almost black with tannins and the shrimp looked stunned. I boiled the banana leaves for 5 mins as per the instructions on the packaging. Could that have released something toxic? I've only had these shrimp 3-4 weeks and the nitrate has only just begun to settle at around 10 ppm having usually needed water changes every 4-5 days to reduce it from 20-25 ppm. The last water change was a week ago. I'm planning to do a big water change today I have some Tetra Safe Start bacteria in a bottle. Would it be worth adding some in case the beneficial bacteria have somehow been knocked out or should I just do the W/C and see how things go? My knee jerk reaction was to add some, but now I'm wondering if it would be overkill. Sorry if this all sounds wussy. I may seem unnecessarily concerned over 1 dead shrimp, but I lost all but one shrimp from my first 2 batches of blue pearls within days due to gaps in my knowledge and I was just beginning to relax with these guys. <sigh!>