Kessil

My Peppermint Shrimps all died, why?

HiFidelity

HiFidelity

Guest
BARcard
Hi, a couple of you read about my long process of teaching my peppermint shrimps to eat Aiptasia, they survived for over a month in my QT system where they had a solid diet of Flakes then Aiptasia, the first died in QT because it was significantly smaller than the other 2 I had in there and they ate it.
Now the 2 main shrimps that were moved to my DT, the first died a week after being placed in DT which I assumed happened at the hands of the other pepp because it disappeared right after it molted, the second never molted and when I got home today I found it laying sideways on the sand bed in the back of the tank, I haven't tested param's yet but I plan to do that later on in the day or evening.
My guess at what happened is one of the following;

- Too little feeding? I feed twice daily an abundant amount of flakes of several kinds and/or frozen food
- Parameters? (we'll see when I test) but my nitrates never have climbed above 10ppm since I had the tank in my home & I'm pretty consistent with water changes
- CUC too big and no left overs for shrimp to eat at night? I have about 12 hermits & 12 snails
- Salinity changed too quickly? I'm topping off by hand, I have a new peristaltic dosing pump but haven't had time to install it.

My stocking is very low as there is only one pair clowns + CUC in a 45G tank, any ideas?
 
Sorry to hear about the loss! Can you think of any sources of heavy metals leeching into the water column? Perhaps toss a piece of polyfilter in there and see if it changes color?
 
I have parameters now & I'm pretty sure I know what killed them....

Saliniti - 1.026
Temp - 78
Ammonia 0
Nitrite o
Nitrate 20 (water change due today)
Phosphate 0
PH 8.1
KH 5.6
Calcium 460

So I'm guessing it's the Alkalinity causing PH swings late into the night after the lights are off and mid day when the lights have been on for a while, I have slacked on dosing KH :(
can anyone tell me where I can get some pickling lime? or sell me a bag maybe?

Any other ideas are welcome as I can't think of anything else.
David I'm not sure what could have leached into the water column since I haven't added any new equipment to the tank, all other inverts are doing very well too, how long should I wait for polyfilter to change color?
 
They couldn't molt due to low alk IMO.. one got caught in a bad molt phase, the other probably couldn't molt.

I highly doubt you have a metal issue, you'd be loosing more than just shrimp.
 
It shouldn't take the polyfilter more than a day to change color if there is a problem, but the polyfilter suggestion was more of a wild stab in the dark. Now that you have some water parameters I would suggest addressing the alkalinity issue first. Best of luck! :)
 
Be careful changing Alk too fast. Track your PH. Wild swings can damage everything.
In fact, those numbers seem a bit odd. I would have expected a lower PH wit that KH.
> PH 8.1
> KH 5.6
Measure twice - dose once. ;)
 
It is odd I agree, and for some reason my PH has never dropped bellow 8.0 or risen above 8.4 regardless of KH measurement and I've tested w/ 3 different test kits, I'll consider myself lucky because had the PH gone out of whack I would have probably lost more than the pepps. On the bright side I don't have my pepps anymore but my corals and fish are doing great, I'm slowly growing SPS with healthy polyp extension, LPS look great and softies are growing almost faster than I'd like them to. KH currently stays between 8-10 and that is in extremes. I'm still trying to sort out my dosing and trying to find the right pump without spending a ton, I'm in the middle of reverse engineering a precision 300ml/h peristaltic pump to run on a timer instead of the original design, I'll figure out my kalk mixture once I get this thing dialed in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top