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Why are my Shrimp DYING? 7 of the MOST COMMON reasons with SOLUTIONS!
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Jun 8, 2023
Sometimes, shrimp die, and it is important we know why so we can prevent further deaths. In this video, I share what I believe to be the 7 most common reasons shrimp die, and what you can do to prevent further shrimp deaths. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? FREE copy of my new Neocaridina Shrimp eBook - https://fishkeepinganswers.com/shrimp-ebook/ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Filter intake sponges ? https://fishkeepinganswers.com/tk1i (Amazon) API Master Test Kit ? https://fishkeepinganswers.com/pceu API Copper Test Kit ? https://fishkeepinganswers.com/ia8i When you are new to Red Cherry Shrimp keeping, there is so much information, and misinformation, that it can be hard to know which is which. I don't think Red Cherry Shrimp keepers need to worry about;
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0:00
So I think it's fair to say, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is Richard
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why did my shrimp die or why are my shrimp dying? And that can be such a tricky question to answer because every tank is different
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There can be so many reasons. So I thought I'd make this video to share with you from my experience what are the seven most likely reasons your shrimp could be dying
0:22
Of course, there are many other reasons and I might make a follow-up video for people who feel, well, none of those seven are
0:29
to them so what else could it be but for now here's the seven most likely
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reasons your shrimp are dying so let's kick straight off with reason number
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one and reason number one is unfortunately because the shrimp were poor
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quality to start with breeding shrimp especially reds yellow blues breeding near
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caradena shrimp is relatively easy and once you've got your set up right it is
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possible to breed hundreds if not thousands of shrimp every month now because it's
0:59
so easy to breed shrimp. It's so easy for somebody to set up as a breeder to supply either
1:06
over the internet or to supply stores. Part of the problem is it's very difficult to know what
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quality of shrimp you're buying, especially if you're buying online. You look at a fabulous picture
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on the internet. You think you're ordering these superb shrimp and when they turn up it's a bag of
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not quite so good looking shrimp. You acclimate them, you add them to your tank and before you know it
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some or all of them have died. The only way you can really work around this is to find a source
1:34
that you can trust. Now that can be tricky. If you have a local store and they supply shrimp
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then try and get to know the store, try and get to know the employees, try and monitor their
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stock. Go in frequently. Are they churning the shrimp really quickly? Is that because they're
1:54
selling them really well? Or is that because they're dying? Are the sales tanks
1:58
full of dead shrimp or do they look healthy? Are they always on the go always active
2:02
If you're buying online it can be a lot more tricky. Maybe you need a recommendation from a friend or a colleague
2:08
Maybe you speak to someone at your local club and say have they used any on loan suppliers
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The number of online supplies does vary depending on where you are in the world
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Some places may have lots of choice, others very little at all
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But often you won't know the quality of the shrimp until you buy some and that can be really tricky
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If you've got new shrimp and you've added them to your tank and they've all died fairly quickly
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then one of the most likely reasons is because they're poor quality to start with
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So in my experience, reason number two that your shrimp might be dying is because you're keeping them in the wrong water parameters
2:44
Now, no matter where we get our water from, it naturally has a set of parameters, it has a pH, it has a hardness
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you know, there are a set number of dissolved minerals in the water to start with
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Now depending on which shrimp you're keeping, they may love or hate that water
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If you are keeping Caradena shrimp, then they like a soft water and acidic water with not
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many dissolved minerals. If you keeping near Caradena shrimp so red cherries blues yellows etc they prefer a hard water a higher pH maybe 7 7 whatever it might be They like dissolved minerals in the water My water naturally comes out with a pH of around 7 7 we have a lot
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of dissolved minerals. We have what would be described as a hard water. Therefore, I keep near
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caradena shrimp. My water is perfect for them. If I ordered a bag of caradena shrimp and plop
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straight into my tap water, there's a good chance I will lose those shrimp. My water is not
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conducive to those shrimp. Now there are ways you can manipulate your water. You can use RO water to
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essentially reset it and then and then mineralize it however you want it. In my experience
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that's far too much work. If your shrimp are dying and you don't know why, test your water
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Does your water's pH suit the shrimp you're trying to keep? Does the amount of hardness you have
4:04
in your water suit the shrimp you're trying to keep. If you don't have a test kit, I personally use the API Master Test Kit, that suits all my needs
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I'll put a link in the description for a good one that you can try out. But essentially I would always recommend knowing what your natural water is and then trying
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to keep shrimp that like that water. Don't try and manipulate your water to match the shrimp
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In my experience, it's just far too much effort. Now for me, reason number three your shrimp might be dying is because the tank itself
4:34
is not mature enough. Shrimp love to eat biofilm. They love to eat algae
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They love to eat all that natural slime that builds up on everything inside your tank
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That is probably one of the main sources of food. If you look into a shrimp tank
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you will see them constantly. Pick, pick, pick. They're picking at leaves, at rocks, at the substrate
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at the edges, the glass, whatever it might be. That biofilm, that natural source of food
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is almost irreplaceable. Yes, we feed our shrewdeme. shrimp, yes, we had algae wafers, we had bloodworm, we had, you know, sinking pellets
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whatever it might be. But in my experience, your tank needs to be mature for your
5:14
shrimp to thrive. It's hard to say how long that maturing takes. If you set up a tank today
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brand new tank, brand new substrate, you plop them, plop it all together, drop the
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shrimp in, there will be no biofilm in there. Your odds do seriously increase if you add
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live aquatic plants. Biofilm develops on all the leaves and the stems, and, and
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every part of the live plant. But even so, from day one, that biofilm takes time to develop
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I would always recommend setting up a tank and leaving it for a week or two for that biofilm to develop
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For the algae, once you start to see algae grow him, you know you're probably ready for your shrimp
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I do find, I talk to people, they'll say, I bought six shrimp, but they all died. What happened
5:58
Okay, how long has your tank been set up? Well, I just did it yesterday. And that can be a major problem
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Tanks take time to develop, and I'm not talking about cycling. Cycling is a different issue
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Cycling the filter is for a completely different video. I'm talking about the biofilm, the algae, the microscopic crustaceans that naturally form in an aquarium
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and provide the basis for, essentially for an ecosystem, they provide the basis for the shrimp to feed them
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If your tank is brand new there be no biofilm there be probably no algae and your shrimp will be lacking that in their diet and that unfortunately can prove fatal So reason number four is unfortunately the shrimp actually being eaten by one of the other aquarium inhabitants
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Now, I keep shrimp in just about every single tank I have. I have a 155 planted tank next door
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which has Congo tetras, pearl garamis. It has a number of fish in there that will happily eat shrimp
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But the shrimp do okay because they have a massive cover. The bottom third of the tank is essentially solid
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If I were to keep shrimp in there with Congo Tetras and very few decorations, the Congo Tetras would pick them off quite quickly
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Unfortunately, shrimp, they're quite far down the food chain. And baby shrimp are microscopic
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To a baby shrimp, a neon tetra is a predator. And if you don't have sufficient cover, there is a very good chance that a fish in your tank is coming along and picking those shrimp off one at a time
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How do you know if fish are eating your shrimp? The chances are the number of your fish are you're eating your shrimp. are the number is dwindling but you never see the dead bodies. When shrimp die they typically
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end up just laying on the substrate. You'll go in, you'll see a body, you have to remove it. If you're never seeing those bodies, there's a good chance it's because a fish in the tank
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is eating them. Now on similar lines to number four, number five is because the shrimp unfortunately
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being sucked into the filter. Canister filters and hang on back filters are notorious
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for sucking shrimp in. They have the intake pipe that comes down, they have a strainer which does a
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fabulous job of keeping fish out but if you've ever watched a shrimp moving down
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that pipe it gets near the bottom gone again this may well be the case if you
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are losing your shrimp but you never see the bodies fortunately this one has a
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simple fix which is all you need to do is place an intake sponge over the
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intake to your canister or your hang-on-back filter now these sponges have a
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number of benefits they don't just stop the shrimp getting sucked in they stop I
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and food and plant leaves being sucked in, both of which will just rot in your filter
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and could potentially cause ammonia spikes. They also provide a place for the shrimp to eat
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Everything will stick to that sponge rather than being sucked up the filter and the shrimp will gather on that sponge and that will basically become a buffet for them to sit
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at and eat all day long. Canister filters and hang on back filters can quickly suck your shrimp in and again the population
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will dwindle, dwindle, dwindle on your side. suddenly go, well, I have 20, I've only got four, what's going on? I never see dead bodies
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I've got nothing in there that would eat them. I would say look at your filter. There's a great
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chance that your filter is sucking the shrimp in, they hit that impeller, generally they're done
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for. You do occasionally open a canister filter and you find a small population of shrimp living
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in there, but that is, that is rare. Normally, a filter is the end of your shrimp, unfortunately
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Get yourself an intake sponge. Again, I'll link in the description to the one I use
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but get yourself an intake sponge and that should stop the shrimp getting sucked him
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So at number six, it's actually fish medications that are killing the shrimp
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Now, fish medications often use copper as one of their ingredients, and copper is fatal to shrimp
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In large enough doses, it will kill the shrimp and it will kill them quickly, not just your shrimp, your snails and other invertebrates living in the tank
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It really important if you have to treat your sick fish that you check that that medication whatever you using says safe for aquarium inverts It might say safe for snails or shrimp might say safe for aquarium invertebrates
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If it doesn't, or worse, if it says will prove fatal, then the chances are that is what
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is killing your shrimp. You're dosing to treat the fish and it just wipes your shrimp out
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There are, for almost every single fish ailment, there is a medication available that is
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and it's really important that you check that information. Once you've added it to the water
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it can be very difficult to get it out unless you're going to use a chemical additive to your
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hang-on-back or canister filter that will take it out. Now I say this from first-hand
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experience when I was new to shrimp keeping. I had a problem with some of the fish in the
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tank. I treated, I wasn't aware I treated and next morning lights came on we just had a
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blanket of dead shrimp and I have absolutely no doubt that was the problem
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Lesson learned, medication disposed off, and I've used others since that don't have any problems at all
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But it's really important if you're treating your fish with a medication, that it's shrimp and snail safe
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Now, at number seven, it's, again, very similar lines to number six, and it's just an unknown contaminant in the water
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Now, anybody who has watched my 100-day shrimp breeding challenge video series will know that I went from 15 shrimp down to 4
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in the early days of my challenge and we believe it's because I somehow got a contaminant in the water
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Now that could have been airborne, an aerosol being used in the room or a, you know, a flee spray being used
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or it could have been something on my hands. The trouble is with unknown contaminants, you don't always know what the problem is
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So what I did as soon as we kind of decided that was the issue, I added carbon, activated carbon to my filter
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and carbon will suck contaminants out the water. It will also suck out medications and fertilizers and stuff you might want
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want in the water, but if you're a shrimp adine and you cannot source the reason, I would
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always recommend add some carbon to your filter and that will take out so many contaminants
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That will essentially clean your water of many of those things you can't see that could be
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killing your shrimp. I was fortunate. I put 15 breeders in. They died down to about four I lost
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in the end, but the carbon seemed to solve the problem and then the colony built itself up
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But had I not have added that carbon, I have no doubt that A, I would have lost all of those shrimp
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and B, I would have never known why. I have no idea what it was. Could have been on my hands, could have been airborne
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I genuinely have no idea. We never got to the bottom of what that problem was. But we did make sure produce a decent batch of shrimp
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So contaminants in the water, they really can be a problem. If you can't fathom any other reason your shrimp might be dying
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I would whack some activated carbon into the filter and see if that stems the problem
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Now based on my experience, these seven reasons are the most likely your shrimp are dying
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And as I say, I think I may do a follow-up video with probably at least another seven
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Tip number one was the fact that you're buying poor quality shrimp and that can be really hard
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And if you're thinking of buying some shrimp, you should check this video next
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Thanks for watching
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