Will too high of a gh/kh kill neocaridina?

[skoomz]

Hello all. I recently set up a 6 gallon neocaridina shrimp tank. The past few mornings I have awoken to dead shrimp. The tank stays around 70-76f and the water parameters all appear fine pH 7.5, ammonia 0pp, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate 5-10ppm. I inject co2, the drop checker stays green (30ppm) and I use flourish root tabs and dose thrive s. I just bought a gh/kh kit and my tap water is very hard. 14 drops kh(250ppm) and 19 drops gh(340ppm). The gh/kh seem much higher than whats recommended but is this enough to kill the shrimp? 

[JSak]

Hi skoomz! One thing I think of with tap water is the possibility of chlorine/chloramine in the water because most test kits don't test for those. Chlorine and chloramine are highly toxic to shrimp and can kill them pretty quickly. Also, your local water treatment plant may be adding chemicals into the water that may be affecting your shrimp as well. The only reason I think this when I hear tap water is because I used tap water when I first started the hobby, but once I switched to remineralized RO water I had much more success. 

 

Your gh and kh does seem high, but I've heard that the taiwanese breeders also keep their water extremely hard with their neos so I'm not too sure if that's the reason. How long have you had the shrimp?

[skoomz]

I have had the shrimp 9 days now. I started with 10 and now I only see 3 😕

 

I started to try and bring the levels down slowly over the past couple of days by doing water water changes with bottled RO water but am still losing shrimp. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. They always seem to die at night and when I check the tank in the morning.

[afeather]

+1 to what JSak said. I started off with regular tap water as well and slowly watched my shrimp die despite my best efforts. It's truly worth it to invest in a small RO/DI filter set up with re-mineralizer.