I guess shrimp aren't for me...

[ian8834]

I got several nice shrimp about a month ago. I bought 10 crystal reds, 6 crystal blacks, 6 greens, and 20+ bee shrimp.

My crystal reds and crystal blacks all went in a 20 gallon. One by one the crystal reds started losing color and dying. Water parameters were fine, and nothing was going on with the crystal blacks, so I had no clue what was going on. My crystal reds were down to about 5, and I went to check on that tank tonight, and all of them were dead. I have no clue why. My crystal blacks were all fine, as were the three furcata rainbows I had in there. I moved all of them to my 125-gallon, and cleaned the tank.

All of the shrimp I put in my 125 about a month ago are (apparently) doing fine. They are the only fish in there, other than a few furcata rainbows and an African butterfly. Actually, I have two berried bee shrimp right now.

I was really excited when I got these crystal reds, and was hoping to breed them. However, now that I flushed $50 down the drain, it's really discouraging. Any clues as to why they died?

 

[brucie]

for starters, you should start with ghost shrimps or amano shrimps, they can tolerate more extreme conditions, the crystal red shrimps are for experts which require really good water quality. bee shrimps should be okay and cherry red shrimps can tolerate a wide range of water as well. its better to keep the shrimps in your 125gal since water parameter does not change drastically as on a 20gal tank when you do water changes, you should get some vampire shrimps, they get big and dont harm anything in your tank plus they can survive in many different water parameters as i've moved mine around and they do fine and they clean the bottom of your tank too i wouldnt mess with crystal red shrimps because they are too pricey and hard to raise...oh yea the african butterfly will eat your shrimps if it gets the chance to, i had a couple of them and these guys would even eat my guppies

 

[sostoudt]

http://www.arizonainverts.com/speciesinfo/crystalred.html
read this if you, if you did everything possible including ph buffering to follow the advice look into your water source as it may not be suitable to CRS.
to add to the article you should have zero ammonia, nitrites and nitrates that are less then 20.

 

[msjinkzd]

crs are not easy shrimp, they like soft water of cooler temperatures then alot of the other dwarf shrimp available on the market. What is your ph, gh, and kh on your source water?

 

[swede]

even nitrate levels above 20 can really jack up your crs. I found this out the hard way. I also found that the only thing i could effectively use to keep the ph in range (around 6.8) was the amazonia aquasoil. don't throw in the towel yet. just come up with a better game plan