My Shrimps keeps dying on me, please help!

[yiliyang]

Hi:

I am good at keeping fresh water fishes. 3 Month ago I got a 55 gal saltwater tank from a guy who was moving. THe tank is fairly healthy, sand bed, 50 lb live rocks. 10 small to medium size fishes.

THe fishes are eating well and grows pretty good, snails are lively and grazing, even a few pieces of corals. I take my water to the LFS for testing often, other than my PH @ 7.9 everything else is normal, but my shrimps keeps dying. Coral banded, skunk cleaner, pistal all came and went. I acclimate them properly also. The toughest part was a mentis shrimp (3 incher) died on me after having him for only 1 week.

I heard that they are really hardy. I am trying to find out why, my amonia, nitrite are all fairly low, I have protein skimmer, and 2 canisters on the tank.

Any ideas? I assume the tank is copper free cause my snails are all alive.

Help please

 

[Sk8r]

The fix: IMHO, slowly phase out the canister filters, rely only on the live rock and sand. By slowly I mean over a period of weeks. They are the source of your nitrate and ammonia readings.

Wait until nitrate and ammonia are zero before adding more specimens. Try to keep it there, not overfeeding.

Do you have bristleworms? You should.

Do you have test kits? You can use test strips for ammo,nitrate,nitrite, because any color is unacceptable: reading should be 0. Your alkalinity should be at least 8.3-9.3; your calcium should read 420-450. There are additives to help you achieve this, and that will also tend to solve your low ph, which is not at the good level of 8.3. I recommend Salifert tests.

If you cannot get your tank to stabilize at those readings, check your magnesium levels. The mg should read 1200-1300.

Do not rely on the lfs for tests. You need your own kits, for at least alk and cal: you should be testing nearly daily until you get this tank stable.

You also need pure water: ro/di is best.

If you do all these things you should see a big improvement in corals and in invertebrates of all sorts.

Hope this helps, and good luck to you.

 

[chocolateblnt]

ammonia and nitrite "fairly low" ... these must be at 0 ... nitrate should be less than 10-20 ppm for a shrimp to survive or else it slowly poisons them and they seem drunk and die.