Sulawesi cardinal died

[Mount_Prion]

Should I be worried about this?

I had one of my group of 20 Sulawesi cardinal shrimp crap out and die yesterday. It almost looked like its arms and legs and feelers were like, curly?

Params: Temp 80.2 pH 8.0 Ammonia 0 Nitrates 7ppm

It's a new tank but with cycled media and some "live" rocks from my swamp. Only other inhabitants are white spotted sulawesi rabbit snails.

Haven't seen any other deaths.

They've only been in there about a week and a half. Should I just chalk this death up to a random weaker/sickly specimen? The temperature went up to 81.5 or so the other day cause it got warm in my apartment, but there is an insane amount of oxygenation in the tank so I doubt it was an issue. (I made a DIY moving bed filter out of substrat, a shampoo bottle, and a bubbler so that pumps a lot of air into the tank.)

Also, there's a ton of new algae growth going on in the tank right now, but I figured the shrimp would dig that.

UPDATE: Just looked around, think I may have had another death. Crap.

 

[Oddball]

Can you get an accurate count? You may be seeing molts.

 

[Mount_Prion]

Can you get an accurate count? You may be seeing molts.

I wish I was. There were some molts, but those were clear and these definitely contained shrimp. The one with the curly digits actually was not quite dead when I first saw it but clearly almost there, and is now wedged between some substrate and fuzzed up. (Didn't bother taking them out as they're snail food and they're tiny and shouldn't foul up the water considering its volume/filtration.)

I also contacted the vendor and copied the above post to him, as not that many people keep these guys successfully and he bred mine.

 

[Oddball]

Does the breeder add iodine to his systems? Crays and shrimp require iodine to facilitate their molts. I add iodine to my cray tanks at a rate of 2ppm. Never had a failed molt since adding the iodine. Using iodine intended for marine systems works, too. But, use only 50% of the marine aquarium recommended dosage on the label.

 

[Fat Homer]

Temps are a little low, since this species actually prefers temps of around 28'C and not too much lower or higher...

And unlike regular shrimp they prefer different parameters to shrimps such as CRS and prefer a slightly more alkaline setting... I think people recommended using a crushed coral substrate to raise parameters and keep them stable if im not mistaken....





Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[Mount_Prion]

Breeder got back to me. He actually said he keeps his temps at 76-8,range, which is lower than I'd read. And yeah, I've got a small canister hooked up to it with filter pads and a bunch of crushed coral, plus lace rock in the tank and a bit more cc sprinkled in the sand.

Asked him about iodine, still waiting on a response to that.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

 

[Puddles]

Sulawesi need a well aged aquarium with lots of biofilm. They really struggle in a new tank. How are you maintaining your gh and kh?

 

[Mount_Prion]

Sulawesi need a well aged aquarium with lots of biofilm. They really struggle in a new tank. How are you maintaining your gh and kh?

Yeah I'm thinking that may be the issue. I actually haven't checked either, as I haven't even seen those parameters listed on the care sheets I read for the species, which were limited. And lots of people seem to keep them in different parameters, based on talking with the breeder and somebody on this forum who's bred them in China.

Do you know the appropriate GH/KH levels? I sort of figured that the amount of crushed coral I have in the filter and substrate would help raise them to a more or less acceptable level as they've done with the pH.

BTW, I think at this point I may have managed to kill them. Haven't seen any in a while. There are also some whitish worms that came in with an early algae wafer I threw in there when I first put in the shrimp, and a large explosion of MTSs that came along with some plants and rock, I think. Would either of those threaten them?

Only other living things in the tank are 5 largish spotted sulawesi rabbit snails.