alexhk

Thanks for your tips. I did water change 1-2 a month. Now I am doing weekly with RO water and trying to bring the GH down. The tank is already established well with plants, biofilm and algae. The 3 gallon jar has baby yellow shrimp so I guess even with hard water, they still doing ok. How often do you feed your cherry shrimp and what do you feed them? I prefer not to change the substrate totally...cause I heard some people doing well with Eco Complete for shrimp tank.

I have a 20 gallon planted tank with Eco Complete substrate since December. I added some zebra snails, 4 Amano shrimp and 10 cherry shrimp. But the cherry shrimp keep on dying. I did water change weekly but didn't work out well still. Then in March I got another 10 cherry shrimp, again, they were fine for a few weeks but then start dying and now only one left. But all Amano shrimp and snails are fine. So I don't know what went wrong. Also I have a small glass jar for 3 gallon without filter, I use Bio Stratum as substrate and some plants. I started with 10 yellow shrimp and they are all fine and breed. So I wonder what went wrong with the 20 gallon. I tested the water, KH is very high for both tank for 300ppm, I am not sure if is because of the hardness cause I do see those dead cherry shrimp has "White Ring", so maybe is molting problem. But if I use the same water for both 20 gallon and the 3 gallon jar, then why the cherry shrimp are not doing good but the yellow shrimp are good. Now I am trying to mix with RO water and see how it goes. It just with the same hardness of water, cherry shrimp are dying but yellow shrimp are good and breeding. Don't know why is that. I first thought about maybe is the substrate, but now is too late and too much work to change the substrate for the 20 gallon from Eco Complete to Bio Stratum.