dead Blood Red Fire Shrimp

kurt72

New member
woke up yesterday to find my fire shrimp lying on its back, barely moving. i noticed that his ecoskeleton was looking a little milky. so, i assumed it was molting again. came home for lunch, booom.....dead fire shrimp. he died 3 weeks to the day i bought him. so what gives? it was eating heartily, it was cleaning whatever went to it. in fact, it was eating right before lights out the night before. bad brine shrimp?

i know proper iodine levels must be maintained for proped molting. but would not enough iodine kill it? i loved that little guy!! :( i checked all other levels, everything was at 0, with exception of nitrate, 10. it was at 20 last week, but i did a 35-40% water change, and then nitrates went down. i am stumped. i have one false percula clown, watchman goby, alive and kickin'. one clown died last week, but the lil guy WOULDN'T eat.

i still want a cleaner shrimp, but i don't want to shell out another $25.00. any input is appreciated. thanks!! :smokin:
 
I wouldn't add iodine. Was it getting enough food? Most foods will provide more than enough dietary iodine.
 
fed it 2-3 times a day. sometimes it would come out and eat the pellets i dropped in the tank. but most of the time, i would give it shrimp, place on top of the LR it hid behind, then it would come up and take it. sometimes eat it right away, or save it for later. either way, whenever i looked, the food was gone. nothing else was eating it's food.
 
45mins-1hr total. 15 minutes floating the bag, then adding/removing water from the bag every 10-15 minutes. it did live for 3 weeks with no problems. i bought it on a fri., and it molted sun. night. look alright, then bammmm....dead.
 
Shoot $25.00 for a fire shrimp! I paid more than that for mine and I rarely see him! I am also in California and we took a trip to Vivid a long time ago and I fell in love with him! so I feel for your loss....we have had him for 9 months and I have only seen him molt 2 times....I dose iodine ever so often, not to often cause the food has it in it.
 
yeah, mine barely came out as well. my brother on the east coast had a fire shrimp too that died. well........maybe i will get another one. just don't like to see one die, or anything die. :( lost one clown as well.

anyone else out there have a similar problem fire shrimp???
 
When I first had my tank cycled I too lost a pair of clowns, but since my tank has been stable and all readings were testing perfect I got another pair of clowns! a pair of Clarkii's and I have had them for over 2 months and they are great little fish I must say! are you testing on a weekly basis...check your ammonia and seeif if is to high, thats what killed my fish along with having high nitrates.
 
i wouldn't bother with the iodine, my cleaner shrimp molts every 2/3 weeks - IO salt, sg 1.025, only additives are seachem reef advantage & reef builder.

he also seems to molt more if i feed him spirulina flakes, but not sure if this is co incidental or not.
 
I've had some fire shrimp live for years, and lost others within a few months of purchase. Same tank, same acclimation. Maybe the animal was already quite old, or perhaps diseases, or maybe it just had a bad molt. You could post all your other water parameters, I suppose.
 
thanks

thanks

thanks for all the input. as far as my water parameters go, they are all at 0 with the exception of nitrates at 10. guess i will never know what killed my shrimp.

now, my one clown who has survived.......he looks so lonely. will do some research here to find out how to pair up an unpaired set of clowns. dont want to ask questions which are easy to find here. thanks again!!
 
How do you guys feed your shrimp? If I try to target feed anything in the tank, the fish pretty much get it before I can feed the target.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7494650#post7494650 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tygger
How do you guys feed your shrimp? If I try to target feed anything in the tank, the fish pretty much get it before I can feed the target.
with my cleaner, i can stick my hand in with a small piece of shrimp and he will walk right up and take it from me. he will even try to steal food from my anemone, but the clowns usually chase him away. when i feed frozen meaty food, i just pour a little in at one end of the tank to get the fish moving then move to the other end where he is sitting waiting patiently. when i pour a little more in for him he starts climbing the walls to get it. he also has figured out the flow of the tank and knows just where to stand to feed from the buffet.
 
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