Noecaridina are dying after thriving

[sannick]

Hello everyone,

We have a 330l tank ( about 88 gallons ) with guppy's, corydoras, rasboras, cardinal tetras, khuli loachs and some hillstream loaches. All of these smaller fish are in the same tank as our blue dream neocaridina.

The tank is drilled and has 2 eheim external filters on it and a external heating.

The water parameter are

- Ph: 7.5

- No²: 0

-No³: between 5 to 10 max

-NH3/NH4: 0

- GH and KH: 10

-Po4: 1,5

At a temperature of 23c are 73,4F

Every 14 days we clean out 1 of the filters because the flow is getting less. And every week we do a water change of about 10%.

The tank has been running like this since May 2020.

Because the tank is drilled and the suction side of the filters is close to the bottom of the tank with reasonable openings the smaller shrimp get sucked up by the filters. But because of the design of these ehiem's the baby and smaller shrimp get trapped in the filters but can't get to the propellers and just stay alive in the filters and no fish can touch them. Every 14 days we where catching baby shrimp. At the top we had 120 baby and small shrimp in 1 cleaning.

About half a year ago we started notice that we where catching less and less shrimp ( last weekend we had only 3 ).

About 1,5 years ago our plants needed some fertilizer and we gave them profito and it helped for the plants. After a while we started to get some bba. We have bin trying differed things and nothing helped for the bba until we tried some bio exit green about 3 months ago and the bba is gone.

But our shrimp colony is slowly dying of but i don't know why. The tank is aged, the water parameters and temperature are stable the food has stayed the same, the tank is not overcrowded at all i don't know what we are doing wrong are whats going on

 

This is an older photo ( about 8 months old ) the breeder box is for the baby and younger shrimp.

Anyone any idea on why our shrimp are not breeding anymore and slowly dying off?

[Guppysnail]

I’m so sorry you are having problems. Are you seeing them dead?

 

Here is my guess because I have shrimp in all my tanks and have randomly experienced this. 
 

As your fish grow and get older they eat more and more of the new shrimplettes and they do so faster. They are also able to eat larger shrimplettes since they are larger meaning shrimplettes need to stay hidden much longer to avoid being prey. 
 

Add more things like rock piles, cholla wood stuffed with moss etc. Also add a powdered food. Glass garten baby shrimp, hikari first bites etc.  this allows food to travel to all those nooks and crannies more so the shrimplettes stay hidden longer vs venturing out to soon looking for food. 
 

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/24/2023 at 2:30 PM, sannick said:

Every 14 days we clean out 1 of the filters because the flow is getting less. And every week we do a water change of about 10%.

The flow decreasing to a noticeable amount like that is going to be a concern.  You'd likely want to verify the pump is working.  I would also recommend 20-30% WC as opposed to 10%.  You may be dealing with this syndrome, among other issues.

 

On 8/24/2023 at 2:30 PM, sannick said:

Anyone any idea on why our shrimp are not breeding anymore and slowly dying off?

What foods are you feeding, how often, etc?  Maybe they might not be getting the nutrients or minerals to breed.
 

On 8/24/2023 at 2:30 PM, sannick said:

khuli loachs and some hillstream loaches.

I think the loaches might like shrimp snacks too and that definitely isn't helping.  to @Guppysnail's point.  Floating plants might help or using that basket even as a nursery for the shrimp.  (add a bunch of moss to it).

 

On 8/24/2023 at 2:30 PM, sannick said:

Because the tank is drilled and the suction side of the filters is close to the bottom of the tank with reasonable openings the smaller shrimp get sucked up by the filters. But because of the design of these ehiem's the baby and smaller shrimp get trapped in the filters but can't get to the propellers and just stay alive in the filters and no fish can touch them. Every 14 days we where catching baby shrimp. At the top we had 120 baby and small shrimp in 1 cleaning.

Is there any way to put a fine strainer on the intake or something like the marineland prefilter sponges?

[sannick]

On 8/24/2023 at 11:49 PM, Guppysnail said:

As your fish grow and get older they eat more and more of the new shrimplettes and they do so faster. They are also able to eat larger shrimplettes since they are larger meaning shrimplettes need to stay hidden much longer to avoid being prey. 

The fish are all smaller fish and not really hunters ( when there is food in the tank the shrimp sometimes just sit on top of the corydora's 🤷‍♀️ ). However the fish do eat some but the thing is there have been much more fish in the tank and we had more than 100 baby's every 14 days. At this moment we are understocked by 10 are 15 guppy sized fish. so i don't think this is the big problem.

 

On 8/25/2023 at 4:43 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

What foods are you feeding, how often, etc?  Maybe they might not be getting the nutrients or minerals to breed.

Every morning the we feed the flakes ( top left ). Every evening they get frozen foods every day we switch between bloodworms, brine shrimp and daphnia. 3 times a week the get half a tablet of spirulina are half a tablet of the o-nip. And once a week half of an algae wafer. ( monday the wafer, wensday friday and sunday the tablets ) ( the wafer and the tablet is at the same time as the frozen food )

On 8/25/2023 at 4:43 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

I think the loaches might like shrimp snacks too and that definitely isn't helping.  to @Guppysnail's point.  Floating plants might help or using that basket even as a nursery for the shrimp.  (add a bunch of moss to it).

The khuli's will get them but there is only 5 of them and the hillstreams won't touch them because how there mouth is they can't get them. We have seen the cory's eat them more than once and bigger once. The only thing is when the shrimp is 100% ok its to fast for the cory's so are they eating them because they are sick, are already dying of age are some other reason we don't know.

 

I'm not sure what is going on but i'm sure something is up. We used to be unable to count the pregnant once so many and now we can't even see one. We don't really see death once but i don't know if the fish just eat them are ....

On 8/25/2023 at 4:43 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Is there any way to put a fine strainer on the intake or something like the marineland prefilter sponges?

I am not a big fan of this. At the moment they go in the filter and survive there and are safe there.

An other change is when we cleaned the filter the white filter pad used to be brown and there was some brown stuff in the bottom of the filter. but for some reason the filters are starting to have less muck in them. 

 

however i can report this. When we where at the top of the shrimp breeding the cory's where jealous and started breeding to. Yesterday evening for the first time in about 1,5 years the cory's where going for it again. No eggs yet but they where going nuts again. 

 

1 more question. Is it possible that its just because its all from the same gene pool and we need to get some more? We started with about 40. In 2 years we sold about 800 and we had about 100 in the tank. So thats more than 1000 baby shrimp all from the same 40 parents that maybe also came from the same x amount of parents ?

[JettsPapa]

Adding fresh genetics may help.  I try to do that with my shrimp every year or two.

While I can't promise it will help, increasing the water changes to at least 20% weekly probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/25/2023 at 1:29 AM, sannick said:

1 more question. Is it possible that its just because its all from the same gene pool and we need to get some more? We started with about 40. In 2 years we sold about 800 and we had about 100 in the tank. So thats more than 1000 baby shrimp all from the same 40 parents that maybe also came from the same x amount of parents ?

Do you have the ability to put ~20-30 shrimp in a tank by themselves?

On 8/25/2023 at 1:29 AM, sannick said:

The khuli's will get them but there is only 5 of them and the hillstreams won't touch them because how there mouth is they can't get them. We have seen the cory's eat them more than once and bigger once. The only thing is when the shrimp is 100% ok its to fast for the cory's so are they eating them because they are sick, are already dying of age are some other reason we don't know.

 

I'm not sure what is going on but i'm sure something is up. We used to be unable to count the pregnant once so many and now we can't even see one. We don't really see death once but i don't know if the fish just eat them are ....

While it wouldn't matter if there is 1 or 10, the kuhli is likely going after shrimp. The other loaches might, but it's difficult to say. Especially at night, the loaches may be extremely active and trying to feed.

The corydoras might not bother the shrimp, but they are a very active fish and may lead to the shrimp not wanting to be on the substrate level of the tank. This means a reduction in places to graze, especially if you're main food for them is wafers. They do have a food called shrimp baby or other versions of powdered shrimp food that you can feed and will give the shrimp the opportunity to graze easier and get access to minerals they need. Something like a "shrimp baby" food and another one is called "mineral junkie" which will both be powdered and help them to eat as those land on the rock piles.

For shrimp, a feeding dish is highly recommended, which is complicated by the corydoras as well.

[sannick]

On 8/25/2023 at 4:29 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

especially if you're main food for them is wafers

What we have seen is that they will eat the wafers and don't mind them they will prefer the spirullina tabs and they go nuts for frozen bloodworms. When i have time i will give them some in a pipette and the will take them out of the pipette and eat them as a snack.

I don't really think its got something to do with the fish are the food. Because we have been feeding the same foods since may 2020 also the fish are the same ( only the guppy's have past on and we got new ones ).

 

X amount of time ago our bolbitus was not doing so well so they ( local fish store ) recommended us profito ( fertilizer )( half the amount as the label said because slow growing plants). After about a bottle of 3 we started to get black beard algae. We tried everything ( no more fertilizer, lights out for 1 week at the time and some anti po4 because this was high ) but noting helped for the bba. Than we tried bio exit green and this  after 2 bottle's the bba was gonna.

All these products are shrimp safe but i have a feeling in started to go wrong with the anti po4. The anti po4 is now about 2 months out of the filter and about 2 weeks ago we quit using the bio exit green so the water shouldn't have any things in it anymore after some time.

 

Or maybe it just is food related ? Because we turned the lights of for 1 week at the time to try and kill the bba, put the anti po4 in to kill the bba and at the end put the bio exit green in again to kill the bba no other algae could survive. And no algae no food ? Only if they are fast enough to steel it from a fish? We used to have just not a plague of snails and at the moment i can almost count them so little do we have and i think last time i cleaned our windows would have been February and they still look like they have just been done.

I'm just thinking loudly here and maybe something comes to the front or someone say yup thats probably it.

[tolstoy21]

So, are you seeing a lot of dead shrimp, or just a slow down in breeding? 

If you are seeing an unusual amount of dead adults, then your water is off or the fish are picking at them. If not, then they have either slowed down breeding or the babies are getting eaten.

Things I have experienced personally when noticing a decrease in shrimplets --

• I let the water quality slip away from me
• The population of shrimp has reached its max for a given tank size (but this is also a LOT of shrimp in my experience)
• Male-to-female ratio is very disproportionately male
• The tank is exposed to natural/seasonal lighting or a seasonal change in water temperature (that is, if the tank is unheated and not in a climate controlled house or building).
• A baby fish has hitched a ride in on a plant, is hiding from me and snacking!

In regards to the last point, I have found in a community tank setup with other fish, the fish will eat the shrimplets. At first they might ignore them, but sooner or later they discover how tasty they are and start munching. The only way around this is lots of hiding spots that the fish cannot get into, like rock piles, wood with crevasses, etc.

As for food, do you feed any kind of powdered food? The baby shrimp have a tendency to stay put, in hiding (when shelter is available), and wait for things to float to them on the current. A combination of food not getting to them and fish snacking when they venture into the open could be a cause.

As for lighting, my gut instinct tells me that variable light as would come from a window may cause the shrimp to decrease breeding during the winter months. A lot of people claim that caridina shrimp won't breed in the winter, and attribute this to barometric changes or something, but my experience is that they will, and do, breed like mad in my basement on a lighting schedule that never waivers. I feel like I heard Grant Eder at the Garden of Eder Shrimp having a similar observations. For me, if I keep the temp and light static and unchanging, they never take a break in breeding (excepting the above bulleted conditions).

As for overcrowding, I am currently experiencing this in my Crystal Red cull tank. There are just way too many shrimp in there and breeding has stopped dead cold. However, the same line of shrimp, when kept in smaller numbers in tanks dedicated to selective breeding, are still breeding fine. 

Anyway, just my thoughts. But if I were a betting man, I'd bet on them being eaten (unless your filter is suddenly killing them for some unknown reason).

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/25/2023 at 10:50 AM, sannick said:

All these products are shrimp safe but i have a feeling in started to go wrong with the anti po4. The anti po4 is now about 2 months out of the filter and about 2 weeks ago we quit using the bio exit green so the water shouldn't have any things in it anymore after some time.

You can run carbon in the filter to ensure the residuals are removed.

On 8/25/2023 at 10:50 AM, sannick said:

Or maybe it just is food related ? Because we turned the lights of for 1 week at the time to try and kill the bba, put the anti po4 in to kill the bba and at the end put the bio exit green in again to kill the bba no other algae could survive. And no algae no food ? Only if they are fast enough to steel it from a fish?

It definitely could have had an impact on the algae and biofilm on the tank which does impact the aufwuchs and things the shrimp interact with. As such, you need to be sure the shrimp are getting calcium and other minerals which are not common in certain foods. It can be important to make sure.the food is "complete" so to speak for shrimp. There are a plethora of things that will work and it doesn't have to say shrimp to be acceptable. It's just a note and something to look into. If you're.not seeing saddled females I would lean towards water quality, food, etc. Water changes trigger breeding as well. Not changing enough water comes into play at that point.