Trouble with shrimp

[ChefConfit]

I've tried twice now to try and establish a shrimp colony in my 29g hex. The first time I had very low gh and kh and the 10 Blue Dreams I got disappeared within 2 weeks. The were also young juveniles when I got them. 

I did some research and thought it was the low mineral content that may have caused the problem. I bought wonder shells and ran two of them one after another until both were gone and now run crushed coral in my Hob. 

My second attempt was with 5 Blue Dreams, that's all my LFS had gotten in that day. They went about a week before I found one dead then a second a few days after. About a month letter one molted, then the other 2 did. The second 2 went into hiding to molt almost 2 weeks ago and I haven't seen either in a week. 

Any ideas why I'm having such difficulty with shrimp?

Tank specs: Dirted (mineralized top soil) and heavily planted 29G Hex, aquaclear 50 w/prefilter sponge and small coop sponge filter

Inhabitants: 2 male guppies, 12 neon tetras, 4 corydoras (3 peppered and 1 emerald), 5 ottocinclus and a ton of I think bladder snails

Water peramiters: taken with tetra 6in1 strips nitrate 20, nitrite 0, gh 300ish maybe a little under, chlorine 0, kh 40 and pH 7ish(it's between the 2 colors)

I do 20% water changes every 2 weeks and dose 1 pump of easy green 3 times a week, 1 pump easy iron a week and 1 cap of excel after water changes.

I feed the bug bites for shrimp, omega one super color flake, Hikari mini algae wafers, Hikari fancy guppy, Hikari freeze dried brine shrimp, Hikari bottom feeder wafers, frozen baby brine shrimp and occasionally Sera onip tabs

Picture was taken about a week ago.

[Cory]

I'd say start a dedicated shrimp tank and start with cherry shrimp. Also buying shrimp the day they come in to the store is likely not helping ya much. You'll want well established shrimp. Fish are all shrimp predators, being hunted adds stress. Typically things can handle 1 stress factor. However being moved to a new tank, being hunted, and possible different water parameters can often be too much for the shrimp to handle. This is why I recommend starting a shrimp only tank first. Then you can start playing with fish as well once you have a thriving colony so you don't go broke trying shrimp several times. 

[Kat_Rigel]

Interesting, as I have a pretty similar issue. Similar planting, stocking, etc. I have heard that excel is not so great for, well, life, and once I stopped dosing that I did see my assassin snail population rebound. I was hoping that was a sign that inverts would be ok in there but no dice. (To be fair, I changed a few other things too.)

So... my only recommendation is stop the excel. But Cory probably has the best idea with the dedicated shrimp tank. I also failed with the blues, and its quite expensive!

[Saltinthedesert]

Guppies in particular are generally not shrimp-friendly. Even when they don’t eat them, the constant harassment and nipping can kill them off.  Like Cory said, start with the most resilient of shrimp and work your way up to more delicate/complicated types. 

[ChefConfit]

I have a 10g set up to house a bunch of baby Java Fern and extra floaters that I'll make into a shrimp tank. I was hoping that was the next course of action but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some thi g with my water parameters 

[binkysmom]

I had trouble with shrimp until i started putting them in my longest running tanks and bought from local breeders. It's not 100% all the time, but my success rate went way up.

It helps if it's shrimp only as well. I've had tanks where the shrimp were "fine". Then when i took the fish out, the colony exploded in growth.