Sudden Death

[ricksza]

I took a look at my shrimp tank this afternoon, all my Blue Dream shrimp are dead or dying. This is a 10 gallon divided tank sharing water. No dead shrimp on the red side at all. Water parameters are: pH 7.6 ppm, HI pH 7.4 ppm, Ammonia 0 ppm, Nitrite 0 ppm, Nitrate 10 ppm, GH 8 dKH,  KH 3 dKH, TDS red side 204 – blue side 197, 76°. I checked the water before I did the 25% water change 3 days ago and the only difference is the TDS is 9 points lower now.  I have live seed shrimp on both sides. Both sides are feed the same food at the same time. Both side received 2.5ml of Flourish each after the water change. I've had the shrimp in the tank for 29 weeks. I never had a large breeding explosion like some report, but I constantly see shrimpets.

Anyone have any ideas what caused this?

[cwhittwell]

Have you noticed anything on the dead shrimp bodies? Such as sores on their outer shells or maybe some “fungus” on their underbelly?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JSak]

Are you using tap water or remineralizing your water? Also, do you typically do 25% water changes and add the Flourish or is that something new you are trying? If you can think of anything new that you might’ve done or added to the tank that might help to narrow down the possibilities. Sorry to hear about your losses 😣

[ricksza]

14 hours ago, cwhittwell said:

Have you noticed anything on the dead shrimp bodies? Such as sores on their outer shells or maybe some “fungus” on their underbelly?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I didn't notice anything unusual on the bodies. Under the plants, they were in various stages of decomposition.

[ricksza]

12 hours ago, JSak said:

Are you using tap water or remineralizing your water? Also, do you typically do 25% water changes and add the Flourish or is that something new you are trying? If you can think of anything new that you might’ve done or added to the tank that might help to narrow down the possibilities. Sorry to hear about your losses 😣

From day one, I've been using tap water with treatment.

 

Since the second week, I've been doing 25% changes with a slow reentry because of high Nitrates.

 

I dosed with Flourish in the beginning, stopped and then restarted in August to try to help my dying Salvinia Cucullata.

[JSak]

26 minutes ago, ricksza said:

From day one, I've been using tap water with treatment.

 

Since the second week, I've been doing 25% changes with a slow reentry because of high Nitrates.

 

I dosed with Flourish in the beginning, stopped and then restarted in August to try to help my dying Salvinia Cucullata.

The only thing I can think of is that your local water treatment may have either allowed certain chemicals or metals into the tap water that you used recently or they may have added increased doses of chemicals to treat your tap water recently. I’ve heard that tap water isn’t always consistent and that the amount of chemicals, hardness, etc. can vary. I’m not too familiar with the process of water treatment, but when I was helping my girlfriend set up her tank we used her tap water to fill it up and there were no problems initially. Then, I changed about 20% of the water about a week later to show her how to do it and replaced it with tap water and the Amano shrimp and a nerite snail ended up dying within the next day. It sounds like you treat your water to dechlorinate it, but that’s the only thing I can think of since it sounds like you’ve been doing everything pretty consistently for quite a while. In my experience, having massive die off of shrimp in a short period of time usually means something changed suddenly that shocked the shrimp. RCS are probably genetically stronger than blue dreams, for the most part, so maybe they were able to handle whatever sudden change occurred. No new plants or shrimp that were added recently?

[ricksza]

58 minutes ago, JSak said:

The only thing I can think of is that your local water treatment may have either allowed certain chemicals or metals into the tap water that you used recently or they may have added increased doses of chemicals to treat your tap water recently. I’ve heard that tap water isn’t always consistent and that the amount of chemicals, hardness, etc. can vary. I’m not too familiar with the process of water treatment, but when I was helping my girlfriend set up her tank we used her tap water to fill it up and there were no problems initially. Then, I changed about 20% of the water about a week later to show her how to do it and replaced it with tap water and the Amano shrimp and a nerite snail ended up dying within the next day. It sounds like you treat your water to dechlorinate it, but that’s the only thing I can think of since it sounds like you’ve been doing everything pretty consistently for quite a while. In my experience, having massive die off of shrimp in a short period of time usually means something changed suddenly that shocked the shrimp. RCS are probably genetically stronger than blue dreams, for the most part, so maybe they were able to handle whatever sudden change occurred. No new plants or shrimp that were added recently?

I'm thinking a similar thought about the tap water.

 

Nothing had changed in the tanks, because with the size, I didn't want to crowd it more and everything was going well the way it was.

 

Since new 20-gallon tanks are in the works at this time anyway, I'm thinking of using my lfs's R.O. water to eliminate the possibility of my tap water causing something like this. The new tanks will be heavily planted, so hopefully  the Nitrates will be better in control and water changes can be at a lower percentage.

[SudhirR]

Apologies on your loss... Both sides share the same water, so water params are absolutely the same on both side. If the cause was water quality related it should have been a problem on the red side as well yes? 

[JSak]

46 minutes ago, ricksza said:

I'm thinking a similar thought about the tap water.

 

Nothing had changed in the tanks, because with the size, I didn't want to crowd it more and everything was going well the way it was.

 

Since new 20-gallon tanks are in the works at this time anyway, I'm thinking of using my lfs's R.O. water to eliminate the possibility of my tap water causing something like this. The new tanks will be heavily planted, so hopefully  the Nitrates will be better in control and water changes can be at a lower percentage.

It sounds like you’re doing everything right, but if I had to guess I would think it’d be the tap water as treatment of tap water is the only thing that’s pretty much out of your control and it can be difficult to determine how they’re treating the water weekly or monthly. I’d definitely agree with your idea of using RO water and remineralizer since that will give you complete control of what’s going into your water. When I was in Washington, I had no success with shrimp keeping initially until I watched videos on YouTube and realized that tap water can be a bit of a risk. I found out that the tap water there was very chlorinated, which was most likely the cause of my lack of success. The more you can control in your tank, the better chances you’ll have of success. It can be a pain to get RO water if you’re not using your own RO unit, but it’s definitely worth it. I have to go to Walmart or Kroger for my water unfortunately since I live in an apartment complex and don’t have access to a hose faucet to hook an RO unit to, but all my shrimp are doing very well. Hope that helps!

[ricksza]

51 minutes ago, SudhirR said:

Apologies on your loss... Both sides share the same water, so water params are absolutely the same on both side. If the cause was water quality related it should have been a problem on the red side as well yes? 

The only parameter I ever noticed was a slight difference in TDS. Maybe caused by population size difference, difference in feeding?

 

The water will equalize between the two sides, but there is no actual flow. There are independent air powered sponge filters on each side.

[JSak]

50 minutes ago, SudhirR said:

Apologies on your loss... Both sides share the same water, so water params are absolutely the same on both side. If the cause was water quality related it should have been a problem on the red side as well yes? 

That’s true, but my thinking is that RCS have been in the hobby for so long that they’ve become genetically stronger than other types so they can handle a wider range of parameters and stress. The blue dreams ricksza got may be very high quality ones that are very blue and produce very blue babies, but as a result would be genetically weaker so they wouldn’t be able to handle stress or changes as easily. It can be a pretty fine line between parameters being okay for one type of shrimp and lethal to another. His RCS may be surviving, but if there’s something wrong with the tap water they may be surviving more than thriving, if that makes sense. 

 

It’s sort of like how different racial groups are prone to developing certain diseases, or how some individuals are more susceptible to getting sick than others . Although two different people may be exposed to the same disease, one person may become sick and the other may be fine, and a lot of that has to do with genetics and lifestyle. It sounds like ricksza is doing everything right and seems knowledgeable about shrimp keeping, so I’d think it’s got to be the water because that’s the only thing he can’t control.

[ricksza]

7 minutes ago, JSak said:

It sounds like you’re doing everything right, but if I had to guess I would think it’d be the tap water as treatment of tap water is the only thing that’s pretty much out of your control and it can be difficult to determine how they’re treating the water weekly or monthly. I’d definitely agree with your idea of using RO water and remineralizer since that will give you complete control of what’s going into your water. When I was in Washington, I had no success with shrimp keeping initially until I watched videos on YouTube and realized that tap water can be a bit of a risk. I found out that the tap water there was very chlorinated, which was most likely the cause of my lack of success. The more you can control in your tank, the better chances you’ll have of success. It can be a pain to get RO water if you’re not using your own RO unit, but it’s definitely worth it. I have to go to Walmart or Kroger for my water unfortunately since I live in an apartment complex and don’t have access to a hose faucet to hook an RO unit to, but all my shrimp are doing very well. Hope that helps!

My lfs has RO water available, I haven't checked elsewhere. If I do 10% changes for my 2 - 20's and 1 - 10,  that's only 5 gallon so I don't think it's worthwhile to have my own RO unit.