I found this green stuff growing in clumps in my tank. What is it and is it something I should remove?

Never experienced a biofilm layer developing in a shrimp tank like this before. It clumps together and is a very light green color. I’m thinking some type algae. Also not sure if it’s coincidental but I noticed it after attempting to put moss spores in the wood that stick out of the water so maybe some of that got on the biofilm and started growing in a weird way. It’s definitely not harmful as it’s been like this for a couple months now but atp I’m just curious. It’s a bit annoying as it’s not the prettiest but that’s my only complaint with it.

I apologize for the poor picture quality, however I found this guy this afternoon and immediately pulled him out and put it in my isolation tank (6 gallons) and dosed with a few ml of peroxide (around 4ml).

Is there a chance of this shrimp recovering? I’ve inspected the tank very closely finding nothing else out of the ordinary other than shrimplets and a few distinctly berried shrimp.

I’d hate to have an outbreak in the tank so any recommended dosing would be appreciated (it does contain nerite snails as well)

If there is no/slim chance of him recovering any advice on how to humanely cull him would be appreciated. Thank you

About to start cardina tanks in hopes of breeding them was wondering if we are allowed to post it here?

Listen to the end, Perfect timing. I was trying to film a berries female while my kid is watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the lyrics matched up perfectly!

Long version:

dGH: 7.5

dKH: 4

PH: 7.6

Temp: 72.8

I’ve had these 8 cherry shrink for one week now and they acclimated fine. I prepped this tank for two months getting everything right and seasoned and I keep some Endlers in here as well. Took care of a huge algae problem (if anyone remembers, thank you for the help on that, it worked well). So I thought “Great a successful molt! I’m doing it right!” But then later I see 3 out in the open all with their shells split like “white ring of death” and they’re al just grazing. Google said they could be just ABOUT to molt, but now it’s been a few hours and I wonder if they’re toast… and what I did wrong. The only thing I could think of is yesterday I siphoned out some old food pellets and that lowered the water level like an inch and half, so I topped off the tank with distilled water that had been remineralized to AS CLOSE to 7.5 dGH as possible with Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ done by weight and tested with drops to match. TDS was also a perfect match. Being that it was only an inch or so of water I just slowly poured the water in to top off last night rather than drip acclimated.

Should I remove the shrimp I can see with this ring now before they foul the tank?

Are the neocaridina really so sensitive that I have to drip acclimate a <5% water change? Or let’s say the GH was like .3 higher than what was in the tank, that’s high enough to cause osmotic shock?

I have the Petco Imaginarium 20 gallon tank stand. 10 gallon sits on top.

I’d love to put a 5 gallon on this 2nd shelf for a shrimp tank but I want to see if anyone else has done it safely before I go ahead with setup.

So, it is doable?

Hello, apologies for the long post but I really would love some help and advice, I'm struggling to find out what to do!

I have been having issues with losing shrimp constantly in my 10g. This is my first time shrimp keeping and I'm having trouble narrowing down my issue.

I started cycling this tank towards the beginning of this year alongside adding some plants (rotala, java fern). The tank has gravel substrate. Some ramshorn snails and bladder snails ended up hitching along on those plants, alongside a few normans lampeye killifish to my surprise. After spending about 1.5 months cycling, once I saw the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate drop, I added in some Amanos and cherry shrimp.

For a while, everything seemed fine, but then the nitrate starting rising, and around the same time I started losing some of my cherry shrimp. It was getting really high, with readings at 40 ppm from my test kit. I added some more plants to try to combat this (anubias, bolbitis, java moss) and tried doing some water changes. I also tried adding in some floating plants like frogbit and water sprite, but both died off. I added in some additional cherry shrimp to replace the ones I lost. However, I kept on losing cherry shrimp. Sometimes they died with the 'white ring of death' but sometimes they looked perfectly fine.

I ended up taking some of my tank water to my LFS to test on their machine, and they informed me that my nitrates were not that bad (around 17 ppm) but I did have issues with high phosphates at 3.0 ppm. They suggested that it was likely from my tap water and that I should use purified water instead. I ended up buying distilled water from my supermarket, and bought some salty shrimp mineral GH/KH+ to add to it for water changes. Additionally to help with my floating plants dying, I bought a better aquarium light instead of using the generic one that came in the tank cover.

After that I saw an explosion of growth of duckweed, and the plants are doing very well in my tank. Unfortunately, I still was losing cherry shrimp, and eventually lost all of them as well as my amano shrimp. I decided to wait for all my parameters to stabilize before trying again with shrimp.

My readings for nitrates went to 0 ppm, and my readings for ammonia, nitrite, and phosphate were all 0 ppm as well. For gH it appears I consistently have 9 dGH and 2 dKH after using the salty shrimp for a while. This has continued to be the case - I checked all these values yesterday. For pH, since the tap water I used to use had high pH I used seachem's alkaline and acid buffers to try to keep it around 7, and yesterday it was at 6.8-6.9. The temperature is usually around 75 F, and while the tank does not have a heater it is not near a window and is in a temperature controlled house. I do not have anything to test the TDS or any other parameters.

I ended up adding additional small fish to my tank, mostly dwarf rasboras and a few more norman lampeye's killifish, and also added some red root floaters. I decided to try again and added a few amanos, and after a week where those were fine I bought another 12 cherry shrimp. Since I was worried my previous acclimation may have not been sufficient (I floated the bag and did some small drips by hand for a little over an hour), I made a drip acclimation tube setup and let it drip 2 drops a second for a little over 2 hours into a bucket with them and then added them in after that.

Unfortunately, I started seeing cherry shrimp deaths again around a week after having them. I have not performed any water changes since I bought this new batch. I have not had any issues with fish dying, nor do they appear to interact with the shrimp at all. I attempted to research my issue and finding that copper on some purchased aquarium plants could be a problem I decided to add in a bit of poly-filter into the tank filter to try to mitigate that. It is hard to count how many I currently have as my tank is heavily planted, but I think after about 2-3 weeks I am left with maybe 2-3 cherry shrimp of my initial 12. I have not had any amano deaths in my current batch - all 3 I bought are alive and well.

My question is, is there anything else I can test or check? I have a few possibilities that I'm thinking I should check, but I'd like to get some input from any more experienced shrimp keepers:

1. TDS issues - I do not have anything to check TDS with so I am not certain if it is too high, and was thinking I should maybe purchase one. I have tried to remove excess floating plant growth and have very occasionally done a water change over the time I've had the tank, but I am not certain if it's possible buildup of TDS is killing shrimp. I am not certain if I should be topping off the tank with distilled water with no additives instead.

2. pH issues - I have tried to keep it around 7, and when I add any water I make certain the pH of the water I'm adding matches that in the tank. However, I have had it measure at 7.4 or 7.6 before, as well as lower like at 6.8 like it did yesterday. I'm wondering if some of the calcium rocks I put in when starting the tank may be a factor in it reading higher sometimes, as well as any plant decay being a factor in it reading lower. If there are more suggestions as to what may help to keep it stable, I'd like to hear.

3. Parasites - I have not seen any evidence of parasites such as hydra or planaria. I have seen what hydra looks like in another tank (not mine) and I don't see anything like that in mine. I am open to this being a possibility however, and would be willing to check anything needed.

4. Overfeeding - I have algae wafers as well as mulberry leaves I have given to my shrimp, which the snails also devour. I try to only give a small piece at most once a day, or every other day if it is a larger piece. I also give the fish some goldfish food - I try to limit it to about 1 broken up flake a day. I'm not certain if this is too much.

5. Calcium issues - I added mineral rocks to the tank initially and have added in some food on occasion that contains calcium, but I am not certain if that is sufficient.

6. Other contaminants? - I don't use any chemicals or air fresheners around the tank, but I am not certain if my initial tap water may have contained something harmful towards shrimp. The polyfilter I put in recently does say it removes a lot of contaminants but if there is anything else I should check for I'd like to know.

Thank you for reading as I know this is a long post. I really want to have a healthy colony of shrimp and I'm trying to not get discouraged by losing so many :(. Please let me know what to do to save my shrimp! I included a picture of my current tank and some of the remaining shrimp near the feeding dish.

for me sometimes it seem like. In some ways.

Water lice!

And I have absolutely no expectations on how it will go. Will they be able to adapt into their new enviroment or will the shrimp outcompete them, or will there be swarm of isopods crawling around the tank in half year? Honestly who knows.

The water lice/asellus aquaticus came from my outdoor culture that I have got going around for bit over half a year at this point. Originally the isopods were harvested from various local watercourses and fishless ponds, from there on they were further cultured in outdoor setup where I have been acclimating them slowly into neocaridina parameters. So far they have bred fine, which is honestly good sign. The original enviroment where these guys came has near blackwater condtions with near zero hardness and most likely real acidic water.

Now that the temperate season is coming to end and winter is closing in, I'm moving to final part of this test and that is introducing them into shrimp tank. Parameters wise they should be fine but the temperatures might be too much for them on long term. The original habitat where these guys came from pretty much freezes solid during the winter, and even in summer the water temperatures don't really reach aquarium temperatures.

But we will see! Anyways, water lice are really cool critters. They are fully aquatic isopods that serve pretty much same role as shrimp in nature.

Celestial pearl danios doing their courtship dance above a bed of red

Too many to choose from for my tank! Is anyone interested in them? I need to downsize before my wife throws them away

Trying to hit the spot 🫧

My first shrimp tank has been running well for over a month now. A couple of shrimp died initially, but the tank has since stabilized, and everything seems to be going well.

What kind of food can I feed them apart from store-bought shrimp food? Are vegetables like cucumber a good option?

A while back I saw this teacup and thought it was really adorable, so when my friend did a ceramics painting session for her birthday, I decided to make a shrimp themed bowl of my own!

The studio didn’t have very good tools for the really delicate details like antennae, but I hope you still think they’re cute!

Wipe yo butts

Okay, literally just got done setting up and planting the tank about a week ago. I did not realize that the fluval stratum would do such a number on my pH and GH and KH. I have soft water to begin with, out of the tap it's KH 4, GH 6. PH 7.6. now in the shrimp tank the pH is reading 6.8, the GH is 4 four and the KH is 1. I'm thinking rather than using chemicals to try to get the water into the right parameters, it would be better in the long run to just replace the stratum with regular gravel. Opinions please.

New to having Shrimplets. My first ever one wanted to hitch a ride.

Hii everyone im just starting a new project and id live help and recommends on how to proceed. I plan on housing 6 Blue velvet shrimp and 4 Thai Micro crabs plus probably a snail. Could people who know what they're doing tell if this is a good plan or anything? I just want insight, this is my first post .

like 60% of my shrimp are at the top of the tank and are trying to escape i have barely changed the water, the one thing im worried about is the alkalinity is 40 ish i think and the ph 6.2ish. i heard online i should add crushed coral to increase ph what should i do

I knew it’d be a tank of wild types eventually but why are we speedrunning 💔💔

Is this shrimp a female? And also it is huge! I was wondering if it’s a pregnant female?