first time keeping shrimp, having a couple of issues

[Gem]

Hi! First of all thank you for having me I will jump straight in as I think this post might already end up a bit on the long side (sorry!).

About a month ago I bought 2 female cherry shrimp from my LFS,one was berried. I'm not sure what happened to the babies but I never saw any - they share a tank with 4 blue ram fry so I assumed they'd been eaten even though there were copious places to hide.

A week or so later I was browsing in an LFS a bit further away and bought 4 more cherry shrimp as they were a much higher quality than my first two. These all turned out to be females however, and one died within 24 hours. Within the next 24 hours one of the other new shrimp started losing its colour and I assumed it was dying too. However by the next day it had actually changed to a dark blue colour and has now been like that for a further two weeks, otherwise appearing perfectly healthy. I would buy it in a shop as a blue shrimp if I didn't know it was supposed to be red. It actually looks very pretty and not at all cloudy or washed out.

Back at my local LFS yesterday I bought two more shrimp (in hindsight I wish I had waited to find out why the blue one turned blue) so that I could finally get a male. I selected them myself so I got a male and another berried female. Acclimated them extremely slowly this time in case that had caused problems with the others. Unfortunately found the berried female dead this morning.

I had read about removing the eggs and hatching them in a sepeate container so I did that (tank water in a measuring jug only ever used on this tank) and have been squirting tank water at the eggs. One time I was doing this something came loose and it was a worm type thing which I think after googling is a scutariella parasite (sorry I don't have a proper camera). I removed it from the container and cant see any more. I also cant see any on any of the other shrimp, including the male purchased with this female. I also wondered if it could be just a scavenger organism having a munch on dead shrimp, it certainly looks like the scutariella pictures I've seen though.

Will I need to treat the remaining shrimp? From what I've read people only seem to treat shrimp that appear infected? The original 2 shrimp came from the same lfs as the one I found the worm in, is this parasite likely to be the reason for the first lot of eggs not producing any babies? The mother didn't die in that instance though. Is the blue shrimp likely to be blue because of this parasite?

Thank you to anybody with the patience to read though this entire thing! Cherry shrimp are supposed to be easy and here I am writing an essay on 8 of them.

Any advice is appreciated, thank you for your time!

[JamesHe]

To solve your problem, I will suggest to buy shrimp from hobbyist, Most LFS is not good source to buy shrimp from.

 

How long do you setup this tank? what's your substrate? water parameters?

 

and never keep fish with shrimp. 

[Gem]

Tank is 10 months old. 150l. Sand substrate. PH 6.8. Currently 28°c for the baby cichlids but will be lower once they're gone as I'm turning it into a peaceful community tank

How do I treat the shrimp for the parasite? They're in my care now so going to a hobbyist for more will just add to the problem.

Also will I need to treat the eggs somehow?

[Gem]

Sorry for double post just clarifying my question regarding treatment - I know the standard approach seems to be a salt bath, but should I do this with every shrimp or just if they start showing signs of being affected? Should I give the eggs a salt bath also?

[Chiumanfu]

Are you sure it wasn't a detritus worm or nematode? I would not treat anything unless you know exactly what it is. I've never heard of scutariella causing shrimp death and it is easily treated with a salt bath of the infected shrimp. 1 tbs pure salt (no iodine) to 1 cup water for 30 seconds.

 

To diagnose the deaths, we need tank hardness parameters. TDS, GH, KH. And ammonia, nitrite, nitrate.

[Gem]

I did consider the possibility of a detretus worm or something just snacking on the shrimp. Especially as the sand is hard to clean and baby cichlids don't really pick food up from the floor (this was originally just a display tank hence having substrate at all. The rams I put in had always eaten their eggs immedietly after laying so I thought I'd put them in this setup. Apparently they really approved but most babies were eaten by other community fish. I saved a bunch by distributing the other fish in the tank across 3 other tanks). So you make a good point saying to delay treatment until I am sure.

Ammonia and nitrite are 0, nitrate is about 5ppm. I use RO water and add tap water to the desired ph as my water supply is fairly hard. Shameful as it is GH and kh have always been the part of fishkeeping that confuses me the most and I don't even have a test kit for it! And I think I know exactly what you're going to say now - the eggs can't develop properly if the hardness is too low, however my rams would thrive in such low water hardness. So this may be the culprit.

[JamesHe]

Rams like soft water, but RCS likes hard water.

 

I would use tap water, and not mix with RO water.