Interesting article about shrimp death

[ShortGirl]

Alot of good, common sense info. Maybe it could be a sticky to be referred to when we get general questions. Enjoy http://www.petshrimp.com/articles/whyshrimpdead.php

[OblongShrimp]

That is good article! Mustafa knows his stuff

[Darkcobra]

Great article!  A few things I can add:

 

1) Always drip acclimate!  I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned, especially since it was covered that new shrimp may be heavily pre-stressed.  A good long drip acclimation avoids additional stress.

 

2) As water temperature goes up, the amount of dissolved gas it can contain goes down.  Water in a hot water heater contains almost no oxygen, in addition to the other potential issues mentioned.

 

3) I haven't seen a common ick medication that contains copper.  Most contain malachite green and formalin.  Green often means copper, so for the longest time I incorrectly assumed it was a copper-based compound, but turns out it contains no copper.  Still, malachite green is a toxin.  That's what makes it work.  So just because it doesn't contain copper doesn't mean it's safe, and [Mustafa]'s warning that every treatment should be researched and possibly be considered experimental is sage advice.

 

4) I suspect that invertebrates may have varying levels of tolerance to Excel.  Ramshorns and pond snails have no problem with it.  For a few years we'd periodically try adding mystery snails.  They didn't live long, so we gave up on them for a while.  Recently we've been trying again.  I realized that in the past, all tanks they were put in contained Excel.  So this time around I took the extra step of discontinuing Excel use, and gradually reintroducing it in the same way you'd do to adapt sensitive plants like Anacharis and Vals.  It's not 100% conclusive, but no problems this time around.  As an experiment, I've been keeping two in a tank gradually pushed up to Excel overdoses, simultaneously with gradual introduction of Algaefix (another invert killer), and still no problems.  Have not tried any of this with shrimp, our few are too dear to us to experiment on them.  I assume they would be even more sensitive, and it's probably best never to use Excel at all.  But if you try anyway, at least introduce it slowly and give shrimp a fair chance to adapt.  Plus completely avoid the 5X "water change" dose in the Excel directions.