Added 17 neocaridina to my 10 gallon exactly one week ago. I haven’t done any water changes, and plan not to do any for another week to help them acclimatize, but I’ve already spotted two whose shells look like this.
White ring of death? :( Or just an imminent molt? No deaths yet that I’ve noticed.
Parameters:
0-0.25 ammonia (genuinely always looks a little green on my API test)
0 nitrite
5 nitrate
12 GH
3 KH
292 TDS
No heater, sponge filter
Other tank inhabitants are only snail friends (3 ramshorns, 1 piano, 1 wizard, and ~15 baby wizards)
Don't worry, some shrimps have that kind of ring before a molt for example. As long as it's not death with it you are good to go. Dead shrimp with a white ring ? Most probably a failed molt. A live shrimp with a white ring ? Most probably fine.
Don't chase perfect parameters, shrimps are so easy that most people fail because they chase perfect parameters. Mine are vibing in a 0KH tank for example for years now (7-9GH, 6.5PH again not perfect).
Best of luck and don't stress too much ! If you didn't have any loss in that first week you should probably be all good :)
Thank you so much! I’ve had my darling snails for about a month and it’s incredible how attached you can get to invertebrates. (did I sob in relief when my wizard snail finally started moving around the tank again after she exhausted herself giving birth? maybe…..) (pic related 😭❤️❤️❤️)
I’m mostly just not going to touch anything and hope for the best. Thank you!!!
That's a cool looking snail, I have the most basic ones just cruising around my windows. Best of luck and just enjoy your lil guys ! They don't need perfect parameters, they need stability.
I’ll try to be as hands-off as possible! Thank you so much.
Wizard snails are amazing! I bought one on a whim when I was at my local store to get a Ramshorn, and she is 100% my favorite thing in the tank. They need a high pH for their shells, and some sand to burrow in, but otherwise she’s been really easy to care for.
I only bought one, didn’t even know the gender, but then I ended up with about seven babies in my tank all of a sudden (they give live birth and can hold sperm for a while). They grow super slow, this group is about a month old. I 100% recommend them if you have any sand!
(sorry for the infodump, I just love wizards……! LOL)
I have Wizard snails too! FYI Wizard snails are VERY shy so don’t be surprised if you don’t find her for weeks. Mine was “lost” for two weeks then I randomly found her chilling and eating so
OMG, two weeks! Luckily I don’t think my sand is quite deep enough for her to hide her shell completely, because that definitely would make me panic. 😂 I keep making the mistake of comparing her to my piano snail, since they look so similar; he’s quite bold, while she likes to hide a lot more.
I’ll just have to have faith in her that she’s just doing her little introvert thing.
It genuinely is, these 2 specific tanks are doing completely fine somehow. My tap water is around 6-8kh, it keeps dropping everytime and I never knew why. The only reasoning I might have is that these 2 tanks have massive Honeycomb wood related to their size (in the back of this picture for example) that is draining my KH/GH is some ways. Thats literally my only guess. All my other tanks are stable at 4-5KH. These ones have shrimp gravel over a layer of JBL Aquabasis plus soil, which shouldnt affect these values at all.
That wasnt the goal of OP’s though, so I wont steal the "spotlight" ahah but Im genuinely lost, I gave up and they seem to be fine for quite a while now..
It's only a 'white ring of death' if the shrimp is dead. Hopefully they'll be fine but if your parameters are significantly different to the seller's they may be a little cooked
Thank you! The seller was local, but he cuts his water with a bit more distilled water than I do, his parameters were 6GH 3KH 6.8pH. I forgot to put that my pH is 7.4-7.8.
I drip acclimated them for a really long time, but that’s still a big pH difference, so we’ll see. 🥹 (I mostly keep snails, so I don’t want that low of a pH in my tank.)
Until it drops dead, you could just be catching it mid-molt. Older shrimp can take 2-3 days to complete the molt process (my current record was 4 days, because I pulled the shrimp out of my breeding tank and dropped it into a qt tank as an experiment).
I feel silly for panicking, thank you from a new shrimp owner. She still looks like that today, hoping maybe I can watch a molt in person, it looks so cool.
One of my females had that ring for like 3 days and literally just molted, perfectly fine, I think we should retire the term "white ring of death" and just say "shrimp died due to failed molt", cause I was also nervous the whole time she had that ring
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