Shrimp parameters

[wwjond]

I'm wanting to start keeping shrimp but after researching I'm finding a lot of confusion on parameters. Based on my other tanks and tap water testing my ph is 6.4, kh is 0, and Gh is 150.

I cannot understand why the gh is so high when the kh is 0 my understanding is that they usually are either both low or both high.

I think caridina shrimp like soft water but the gh in my tap seems way to high for them and everything else seems way to soft for neocaridina shrimp. Any ideas?

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Find the shrimp that you want bred locally and you’ll have way less issues. 
 

My water parameters say that I should be keeping caradina shrimp. However, I’ve never kept them, and my neos crush in my water. That being said, I started with shrimp that were bred locally so they were born and raised in local water. 

[wwjond]

Unfortunately I don't know anyone locally who keep shrimp, there is no aquarium club within 100 miles of me, my local fish store is a petsmart that doesn't carry shrimp either. I've checked things like Facebook marketplace and eBay for local stuff too, but i appreciate your insight on the matter!

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Have you checked Craigslist? That’s where I got my first 15 shrimp. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/12/2024 at 7:55 PM, wwjond said:

Unfortunately I don't know anyone locally who keep shrimp, there is no aquarium club within 100 miles of me, my local fish store is a petsmart that doesn't carry shrimp either. I've checked things like Facebook marketplace and eBay for local stuff too, but i appreciate your insight on the matter!

Are you on the west coast?
 

On 4/12/2024 at 7:40 PM, wwjond said:

I'm wanting to start keeping shrimp but after researching I'm finding a lot of confusion on parameters. Based on my other tanks and tap water testing my ph is 6.4, kh is 0, and Gh is 150.

I cannot understand why the gh is so high when the kh is 0 my understanding is that they usually are either both low or both high.

I think caridina shrimp like soft water but the gh in my tap seems way to high for them and everything else seems way to soft for neocaridina shrimp. Any ideas?

So the long and short of it is that there's a lot of confusion out there because a lot of people really don't understand what the shrimp need.   Things happen in the water, deaths happen, and it might be a nutritional issue, but they test water and see GH is of a certain number and blame that.

Personally I've kept amano shrimp in a massive array of parameters. When pH gets too high, then you run into issues. I do keep Neocaridina shrimp and the main thing there is to have some KH, and to have GH within a range that makes sense.  (more than 6 degrees, less than 14 or so)  The rivers in Taiwan is a place you can research and get water test results to compare values to.  From my research, their GH is around 12 degrees naturally.  I've also been told many times that it MUST BE 6 or else you will run into issues.  I keep my tanks in the 8-10 range.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I encourage you to absolutely keep shrimp!  However, please go grab a liquid GH+KH test kit and start there.  Test the tap water where you would get your water change water from and then test your tank.  Let us know those values.