Top 5 Reasons Why Shrimp Die

I've got a dead shrimp in this tank. I think I saw it in that corner somewhere. Oh, not again. Two of you today. Why, why you keep dying? What's wrong with you guys? If your shrimp die, you're not alone. They die on me as well even after many years of experience in this hobby. They are very delicate creatures and there are lots of reasons why they might die. So today we're going to talk about the most common reason why shrimp die in your aquarium. Let's start with reason number one and it's wrong water parameters. It's very common mistake among the beginners when they buy the shrimp without any research. I don't blame them. I did exactly the same thing when I started this hobby. I just bought a few shrimp and I dumped them in my fish tank and they won't live for very long there. So there are a few different aquarium shrimp species and they thrive in different water parameters. For example, Caridina shrimp, they prefer soft water with a low pH and Neocaridina on the other hand, they prefer like a more hard water with a higher pH. So do your research before you get your shrimps and make sure that you have the right water parameters for them in your tank. The reason number two why your shrimp die is the high temperature. The shrimp are very sensitive to high temperatures and they might start to die if it's too hot for them. Caridina shrimp are the most sensitive to the high temperatures. Ideal temperature for them is between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius and they might start to die if the temperature is above 25 degrees. And of course, Neocaridina is more hardier. Shrimp is not as sensitive as Caridina so they can survive in high temperature and I would say they would be okay in the temperatures up to 29 degrees Celsius. So keep an eye on your tank temperature especially in the summer when the weather is quite hot and invest in air con or at least just to buy a fan and make sure your temperature won't go above the temperature I just mentioned before. Otherwise, you might start losing your shrimp. The reason number three is fast changing in water parameters or water temperature. Shrimp don't like any changes so if you change the water parameters be it GH, PH, KH or temperature the shrimps won't be happy about that. So when you do your water change make sure you don't do it too fast and always drip your new water into your tank slowly and make sure that your new water has more or less the same temperature and similar water parameters with the water in your tank and always slowly drip acclimate your shrimp before you put them in your tank. And reason number four is toxic soil. Before I start making this video I watched bunch of other videos on YouTube on the same topic just to see what other people saying about why shrimp dying in the aquarium and to my surprise nobody mentioned about toxic soil but the toxic soil actually is very common reason why your shrimp might die in your aquarium. So let me explain what is the toxic soil is. So if you have a thick layer of soil in your tank eventually all the waste such as little food particles, dead plant matter, shrimp poop, everything is get into your soil and make your soil quite toxic and at some point normally in several months it might take up to one year depending on your thickness of your soil these toxins can build up, build up, build up and get very close to the surface of your soil and this is when they become very dangerous because they basically can poison your shrimp. It's also quite important not to pull out any rooted plants in your shrimp tank because when you do that a lot of toxic soil might get into your water column and poison your shrimp. Normally you're going to get more build-ups in the area where you feed your shrimp. The shrimps are very messy eaters and when they eat they break their food into their little particles and a lot of them sink down to the bottom of your soil where they're going to create toxins. That's why it's very important to use feeding dish in your tank because feeding dish will prevent some of the food get into your soil but instead I prefer to create a large feeding area at the front of my tanks with only thin layer of soil to completely avoid these build-ups. The reason number five is bacterial infection. This is really the worst possible thing that can happen in your shrimp tank. The bacterial infection can wipe out your entire colony of your shrimps within weeks and there is almost nothing you can do about this. That's why you have to avoid it at all costs. It happened with me like once or twice in the past and it's actually happening right now at this particular moment. This is the main reason why I decided to make this video just to share this with you guys. So first let's talk about symptoms and how can you find out if you have bacterial infection in your shrimp tank. So your shrimps become very weak very inactive the most of the shrimps start to hide and not many come to eat when you start to feed them and the shrimps who come to eat they're not going to attack the food they're not going to fight for the food they're going to eat very slow and of course shrimps start to die a lot and when this happened to me I normally find like one to three dead shrimps every day. That's insane. It could be really depressing. Imagine if you only have one shrimp tank and if it's happened to you and you lose all your shrimp it's going to be really hard to find motivation to continue this hobby. So now let me tell you the story which just happened to me. I have a very big issue in one of my tank with my black galaxy shrimps and the issue is that the shrimps start to die without any reason and I already lost a lot of shrimps from this tank. A few days ago I added this filter which has some purigen and some activated carbon inside and I was hoping to kind of clear all the toxins from the water but it didn't help the shrimps continue to die and I probably lost already like a third of the colony from this tank. So I gave up and I decided to move all the shrimps from this tank just because I'm sure they're going to die and they're all here in this jug you can see them here. So I probably have about 40-50 shrimps left from about 100 shrimps since a lot of them died. I still have a few sick shrimps here in this tank. Let me just touch this one you can see it's still kind of alive but it's very weak it doesn't react on my touching this one I think probably completely dead so you can touch them they're not gonna go anywhere so and they're not swimming very well and this shrimp probably the same here you can see they still still react on my touching but they don't go anywhere so this is what happened with the shrimps I think it's a bacterial infection so they become very weak and very sick first and then they're gonna slowly die some of them I can see they're not very active so I'm gonna move them into this tank which is my recent tank and there's no problem in this tank I have a very active shrimps here this is my nursery tank which with a lot of babies the babies grow up a little bit and I think this shrimp is going to be okay in that tank I hope. Then I added a few fish in that tank with bacterial infection just to quarantine it for a month or so with the fish for the first few weeks the shrimps were doing okay in the new tank maybe a couple of them died because they have been probably sick already but after about one month sadly I noticed the same symptoms in this tank the shrimp started to become weak and die daily this is when you saw me taking two dead shrimp from this tank at the beginning of this video maybe it's a coincidence but I really believe that I transferred this infection when I moved this shrimp here I didn't want to do the same mistake again so I decided to catch all the remaining shrimp and move them back into that 50 liter tank with the fish which had been quarantined for months already and I was hoping that the bacterial infection had gone by then. So now it's been two weeks since we moved the shrimps from this tank where we had bacterial infection to the tank just behind me where we used to have bacterial infection hopefully no more bacterial infection in that tank so now let me just give a quick update and show you the shrimp. All right guys so this is our tank this is our shrimp and you might have a question do they still die in this tank yeah I'm afraid they they do I just found one dead shrimp today and last time I found another dead shrimp two days ago you see I just feed them I think they're still a little bit weak and they're suffering from this infection still I don't know if this tank still has bacterial infection or if the shrimp still just kind of sick from another tank I'm not sure hopefully the shrimp is going to get better I can see some improvements so they don't die as much as before maybe because not many shrimps left here but anyway I'm going to leave the shrimps alone I'm not going to do anything else because I don't want to move them in the healthy tank and I don't have any spare tank so now let me quickly show you this 90 liter tank where we had bacterial infection so it's no shrimps anymore here but we have some fish here so the idea is the same I want to quarantine this tank with the fish hopefully it's going to help to get rid of the bacterial infection in this tank but I think it would be better just to simply reset the tank and start it over but I have such a beautiful plants here it's a shame to reset this tank take a look at this I have a nice carpeting plants over there nice moss on the coconut shell and we have a nice stem plants as well and the fish quite happy here and now since I added co2 here these carpeting plants like htc cuba start growing insane I'm so pleased with this tank I don't want to reset this I'm gonna add a few shrimps later maybe in one month I'm gonna start with some calls I'm not gonna put some expensive shrimps here and see how they're doing if they're gonna be fine and well then I'm gonna add more shrimps in this tank later so now let's make a conclusion and talk about what can we do to avoid this from happening the bacteria thrive in warm temperatures that's why it's very important to keep the temperature under control I think this is why it happened to me at the first place after it happened I bought a new aircon unit for my shrimp room to make my room nice and cool nice aircon yes it's just a cheap portable ac unit and I had to drill the hole in the wall for exhaust but it does the job and I only need it for like two three months in the summer so I didn't want to spend a fortune so now the temperature in all my tanks is about 21 22 degrees celsius that's what you want for your caridina shrimp the second thing that you need to do is to make sure you avoid anything that can rot in your tank make sure you remove all uneaten food or dead plants another thing you must do to avoid introducing bacteria in your tank is to wash your hands before you even come close to your tanks you can have millions of bacteria on your hands which can be dangerous for your shrimp so wash them before you do anything in your tanks and avoid putting any decoration leaves or corns without washing and boiling them first so now let's quickly talk about what can you do in order to save your shrimp in case it's happening in your tank it's not really many options other than moving shrimps into the healthy tank and hoping that infection won't get into your healthy tank like in my case I would recommend quarantining your infected shrimp tank with the fish for at least one month like you saw me doing before but honestly a complete reset would work much better I know you need to spend some money and time for doing this but by the end of the day it's gonna work for sure 100% when I had bacterial infection in one of my shrimp tank for the very first time a few years back I tried many things to fix it but none of them really worked the first thing I try is to do the massive water change and I change about 100% of water but because bacteria mainly lives on the surface it didn't really help the second thing I try is to dose some hydrogen peroxide into the tank and it also didn't help at all and I also tried to put some active carbon and purigen in the filters it also didn't work I guess if you had experience with bacterial infection in your shrimp tanks drop me a comment and let me know how you deal with that I would love to hear from you so hopefully you got some useful information today about why your shrimp might die in your aquarium actually I think I missed one point is hydra and planaria I think most of you know that hydra and planaria they both bad for shrimp so if you have any of them in your tank or both of them in your tank to better to treat them as soon as possible and the best way to do it is just to buy no planaria treatment is cheap and very effective and also very safe for shrimp I used it before without any problems and now if you want to know how to breed your shrimp successfully then watch this video next there is a lot of useful information in this video on how to keep your shrimp alive and what to do to make it breed a lot thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one bye