# Why do CRS die after water changes?



## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

I've read about it, but I didn't really believe it until now. I did a 20-30% WC with 40% tap and 60% RO water. I dripped the new water in over a period of 90 minutes, and still, I got a shrimp death. This is the first time I've done such a large WC. The shrimp that died was a juvie, about 1 inch length.

Does anyone know why this happens?


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

solarz said:


> I've read about it, but I didn't really believe it until now. I did a 20-30% WC with 40% tap and 60% RO water. I dripped the new water in over a period of 90 minutes, and still, I got a shrimp death. This is the first time I've done such a large WC. The shrimp that died was a juvie, about 1 inch length.
> 
> Does anyone know why this happens?


reduce your w/c to 10% ro water every week to 2 weeks. Feed very little.


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## jimmyjam (Nov 6, 2007)

I had the best success with great filtration, 5 percent wc every week, with lots of plants. Stability is key. I had my whole colony produce with that setting, with 2 deaths in 8 months.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Okay, but *why* does it happen? What is it that new water has or lacks that could cause CRS death? I doubt it's temperature shock, as I've seen the tank temp vary much greater on hot summer days. If it's pH shock, shouldn't the drip over 90 minutes have removed any sudden pH changes?

If it's something else, then what is it?


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

Heh, my WC lasts 2 days... but I've had deaths before so I'm just being extremely cautious.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

splur said:


> Heh, my WC lasts 2 days... but I've had deaths before so I'm just being extremely cautious.


ROFL, at first I thought you did a WC every 2 days. Then I realized that you meant it takes you 2 days to do a WC.

So what's the % over 2 days? Do you find that this prevents shrimp deaths?


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

It's a 10-15% change and it drips once every 5-10 seconds or something. I've never had a shrimp death due to a WC, but I've had shrimp deaths relating to other issues with water quality (typically I would do a WC after a shrimp death, not before). So I guess yes it does prevent shrimp deaths, but it's excessively careful if you ask me.


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## matti2uude (Jan 10, 2009)

I haven't done a wc on my crs tank since before the summer. I only top off with RO/DI water with minerals added into it. I've had a much greater survival rate this way. 


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

matti2uude said:


> I haven't done a wc on my crs tank since before the summer. I only top off with RO/DI water with minerals added into it. I've had a much greater survival rate this way.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Yeah me neither,
If your tank is over 10 gal with a good filter you don't need to do w/c.

They ket lies in feeding and bacteria.

Use mosura bt-9 or ada bacTor balls to increase nitriying bacteria.
Also feed about a finky worth of organic spinach every 2 days and that's it. Don't over feed.


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## novice (Mar 14, 2006)

I have no clue about GH/KH/TDS and dont bother to check - i only check pH - but i am guessing with a 30% water change - there must be a change in the GH/KH/TDS and probably causing the instability of the water parameters and hence causing the issues.- smaller % of water changes (if it is a must) might be better.


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

I suggest if you have a tank over 15 gal + canister filter don't do w/c. Crs love a stable enviroment and will breed more easily. When I top up with r/o water (10-15%) just dump it right in. No need to drip.

I haven't done a w/c for over 2 months now and my crs are always actively grazing and swimming around. The key is to NOT over feed and have plants to absorb the nitrates. This will ensure a balanced eco-system.

W/c can kill for many different reasons.
-parameter difference will stress them even if it's over a 2 day drip.
-lack of benificial bacteria
-tempurature change
-avoid tap water would be my main advise. Each time you use tap you have to use conditioners that can harm crs if over dosed and with tap you have to do a ammonia/no2/no3 test each time.


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## Beijing08 (Jul 19, 2010)

I agree with all of the above..

however, have you ever thought it could have been a random death?
Occasional deaths are nothing to worry about.


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## Bwhiskered (Oct 2, 2008)

My wife looks after the CRS 10 gallon tanks and only follows my advice. They get a 30% water change about once a week with a couple of liters of RO water and the rest put straight into the tank with a garden hose. We have never had a death and new young ones are showing up all the time. From the dozen that we started with early last spring the tank is starting to look over crowded. Shrimp are scavengers and eat almost everything and eat more than fish. Blood worms are part of their natural diet. Ours get blood worms every night and a cooked snow pea and flake every morning. There is a inch long bushynose and six spixi snails to take care of any surplus food or algae. The substrait is an inert black gravel with a piece of driftwood with Java fern and Christmas moss. The tank gets late afternoon sun from a west window and has no heater. The temperature can vary but stays in the low 70's the shrimp are always chasing each other. I am sure the big Asian shrimp breeders are not using any of the products that they are selling for raising shrimp your under feeding and these products are what is possibly killing your shrimp. The only thing I add is an oak leaf that I collect in the fall.

I have been in this hobby for 60 years and still raise at least 5000 fish a year many are rare. Shrimp are only a fish with their skeleton on the outside. Why should they be any harder to raise.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Beijing08 said:


> I agree with all of the above..
> 
> however, have you ever thought it could have been a random death?
> Occasional deaths are nothing to worry about.


while that's always a possibility, the fact that it happened right during a water change seems kind of "suspicious".



> My wife looks after the CRS 10 gallon tanks and only follows my advice. They get a 30% water change about once a week with a couple of liters of RO water and the rest put straight into the tank with a garden hose. We have never had a death and new young ones are showing up all the time. From the dozen that we started with early last spring the tank is starting to look over crowded. Shrimp are scavengers and eat almost everything and eat more than fish. Blood worms are part of their natural diet. Ours get blood worms every night and a cooked snow pea and flake every morning. There is a inch long bushynose and six spixi snails to take care of any surplus food or algae. The substrait is an inert black gravel with a piece of driftwood with Java fern and Christmas moss. The tank gets late afternoon sun from a west window and has no heater. The temperature can vary but stays in the low 70's the shrimp are always chasing each other. I am sure the big Asian shrimp breeders are not using any of the products that they are selling for raising shrimp your under feeding and these products are what is possibly killing your shrimp. The only thing I add is an oak leaf that I collect in the fall.
> 
> I have been in this hobby for 60 years and still raise at least 5000 fish a year many are rare. Shrimp are only a fish with their skeleton on the outside. Why should they be any harder to raise.


Well no, not really. Shrimps are invertebrates while fish are vertebrates. Just because they both live in water doesn't make them similar. They're about as similar as lizards and grasshoppers.

However, I do appreciate your experience, and I agree with you somewhat. From what I've read, there are wildly varying accounts of difficulties of raising CRS. I wonder, what grade of CRS do you keep, and from whom did you get them? I am thinking that perhaps different "lineages" of CRS have different levels of hardiness.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Another shrimp death! Should I do a water change or leave it be?


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

You'll have to tell us all your water parameters and tank specifications now, this just became a diagnosis thread lol.

I had deaths when I first got my shrimp as well, are they new? When did you buy them?


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

splur said:


> You'll have to tell us all your water parameters and tank specifications now, this just became a diagnosis thread lol.
> 
> I had deaths when I first got my shrimp as well, are they new? When did you buy them?


Tank is cycled and the shrimps have been there for 2 months now. Nitrates was high, 40 or 80 ppm (can't tell the difference between the colors), which is why I did a water change.


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## Will (Jul 24, 2008)

Bwhiskered said:


> Shrimp are only a fish with their skeleton on the outside. Why should they be any harder to raise.





solarz said:


> Well no, not really. Shrimps are invertebrates while fish are vertebrates.


 That's what he said... like exactly.

But he's saying he's treating them as he does almost every other fish, and having great success, while so many shrimp guys are tinkering around with their various imported products, breeding stimulants and such, still wondering why young adults die or counting hatchrates.

I've seen his CRS tank, and it's identical to the Yellow and Cherries tanks, and chock-full of CRS of all sizes. Shrimp keeping is one of the biggest newly popular interest in all of the aquatics hobby. The money people spend on the shrimp specific products is probably only second to the money they spend on the various shrimp they keep. It's really nice to see someone having such success without following the most current product and care trends.

The CRS in the tank are mixed grades. I'm not an expert grader, but probably mostly A, S, and S+ (V bands and Tiger Tooths), but did not look at them long or close enough to say there were SS or higher. None are C grade but there are some all creamy white shrimp with no red traces, whatever they are. (Hopefully I'm not stepping on your foot C.)

Perhaps at sometime CRS were a lot more unstable in captive conditions, but it seems by now, like so many fish species they have adapted very well- to even very simple care techniques. Every single peice of advice Charlie has given me and other's I know, has yielded perfect success so I hope there are some people who are willing to give it a go and compare the success to their current methods.


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

The thing with shrimp and many other inverts is that they're much poorer at maintaining good osmotic balance than fish are- they don't simply have their skeletons on the outside, they also don't really have a protective skin there too.

There are pretty significant differences in their physiology (zoologist in the hose ready to jump in yet?) - so differences in their handling must be in place.

Now, at the very basic levels, there aren't that many differences, yes - don't use chlorinated untreated water, don't leave them without water for a long time, don't pH shock them, etc etc, but I think there's a bit of a difference in merely keeping and breeding them, and getting them to really flourish and display their full potential.

I know in my tank, when the water quality starts slipping, the CRS still reproduce - but do they look as good and produce as large broods? Nope. Only after the parameters are not only within acceptable, but optimal levels do they really shine. The same holds for fish, but again, I find that inverts are even more succeptible to sub-optimal conditions.


To get back to your point, if your nitrates are at 80, and you bring them down rapidly, you're probably shocking them. And if they're in a tank with nitrates at 80, they're living in a poor enviroment and they're already stressed and not able to deal with changes as easily - like the differnce between a healthy and already diseased person getting sick. I'd say, smaller more frequent WC to get your parameters in line (nitrates of 0 - 10 ppm), and at the same time you have to figure out why your nitrates got that high and what you can do to prevent that (I recommend claning your filter as step one).

I'm in no way a CRS expert, but I haven't lost one to a water change yet. I see a dead one here and there, but neve due to a water change. And I do a 5g change in a volume of about 16g, so it's not a small one either. I change water with temp adjusted (by the hand temperature feel-ometer under the tap) Prime dechlorinated water dumped right in.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

I'm still a beginner in this hobby, so take my advice with a hint of salt. I had shrimps dying on me up until two weeks ago... now they're berried so I'm slightly confused on what was wrong with my tank. Anyways, deaths stopped when I added floating plants which decrease the nitrate level naturally. I haven't done a water change since, been topping up with untreated RO/DI water. If you don't have floating plants, you should pick yourself up some frogbit and water lettuce. They're amazing, I wish I had enough to put in all my tanks and they're way less annoying than duckweed.

Mind you my tank hadn't been fully established so it may have been a bacterial bioload issue as suggested by someone else and my nitrates never reached the levels your did, maximum ~10 ppm. Nitrate of 40-80 ppm is scary, I'd think even fish would have problems at that level.

How often do you feed your shrimp and how long do you leave the food in for?


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

As per the comment that the crs products is what kills a lot of CRS. I would have to absolutely agree on that one. Most begineer hobbyists aren't knowledgable enough to know how to use some of them. 

Solarz, your tank's eco system isn't balanced because nothing is absorbing the no3 produced by the nitriying bacteria. Get your hand on some duck weed/ frog bite asap and stop all feeding. Avoid large water changes for now as your crs are already stressed and very sensitive. Keep your lights on atleast 14 hrs per day. (This will help the algae) if you can get some barley pellets as they are great for removing no3. But stop feeeding immediately.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

I suspect that the nitrates are due to a liquid plant fertilizer I used. I had added what I calculated as a really dilute concentration, but apparently, I was mistaken. Either the concentration labeling is misleading, or I misunderstood it. Anyway, I won't be doing that anymore.

As for feeding, reading Bwhiskered's comments, I'm now wondering if I'm actually underfeeding them. I think in the last month, I've fed them Hikari micro-pellets 2-3 times, and a single flake of fish food twice. I've also been giving them algae-covered java moss from my cherry tank, though I don't know how much help those are. What do you guys think? Am I underfeeding?

Another issue might be temperature: the last few days the water temp has been hovering around 78F for some reason (no heater).

I like ameekplec's suggestion of doing multiple small water changes. I will test for nitrates again tonight, and see what I need to do. I really should've done this two days ago, but I've been too busy.


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

I've found the best this is if you want a really nice planted tank, setup a nice planted tank. If you want a shrimp breeding tank, setup a shrimp breeding tank. Don't try and mix the two. CO2, ferts, Excel, decomposing plants due to not enough light, too much light to raise the temps, etc, that all come with a planted tank usually don't well with crystals. Cherries, sure, you can breeding them a shotglass, but crystals, setup a crystal tank or a planted tank, but not both. Especially when you get into things like high CO2 or doing the EI dosing method wherein you have to do like 50% WC's a week and stuff, crystals don't handle that well. Some driftwood with moss, floating frogbit is about all you should have in a crystal tank. I don't dose anything anymore in my tank. I'm sure the shrimp hanging out in the moss most of the time and pooping in there provides enough food for the moss, frogbit eat nitrates provided by the cycle, both low low CO2 depend plants and get enough from the shrimp and general exchange with the water. My tiger tank has a piece of DW with xmas moss on it and a under-the-kitchen-counter fluorescent bulb over top and grows great, so much so that I have to trim it lots. No ferts, no CO2.

As for temps, an old computer fan over the water will give you a 5c or so water drop. My crystal tank stays at 72c, tiger tank at 70c and my Neo's are without a fan and all around 78c, all in the same spot of the house, so the fans really help.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Yeah, the ferts were a mistake. I won't be doing that anymore. I'll probably need a better light too, as Crystalmeth suggested. I don't think I have enough algae in my tank.


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

solarz said:


> Yeah, the ferts were a mistake. I won't be doing that anymore. I'll probably need a better light too, as Crystalmeth suggested. I don't think I have enough algae in my tank.


Yes, I overun my lights too and get some good algae growing on the sides of the tank. I saw Igors tanks and his were the same way. Just pull any black-hair algae you see as thats a bad algae. I know people say "babies don't need algae" yet I look at the side of my cherry tank with over a 100 babies in it and they are all over the walls of the tank stuck there like little red dots, so they like something. lol.


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## novice (Mar 14, 2006)

solarz said:


> Yeah, the ferts were a mistake. I won't be doing that anymore. I'll probably need a better light too, as Crystalmeth suggested. I don't think I have enough algae in my tank.


"the ferts were a mistake." problem solved -


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## Bwhiskered (Oct 2, 2008)

There is no algae in my CRS tank as I find them to be more of a scavenger than an algae eater. My 10 gallon tank only has one soft white 9 watt compact flourescent bulb from Dollarama.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Bwhiskered said:


> There is no algae in my CRS tank as I find them to be more of a scavenger than an algae eater. My 10 gallon tank only has one soft white 9 watt compact flourescent bulb from Dollarama.


what would you recommend feeding them if one doesn't want to use things like blood worms and such?


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## Bwhiskered (Oct 2, 2008)

solarz said:


> what would you recommend feeding them if one doesn't want to use things like blood worms and such?


I would use flake and a meat type pellets such as Ken's Earthworm Pellets also meat wafers with spurilina algae. You can pick these up from Sugarglider.


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## matti2uude (Jan 10, 2009)

I also feed the veggie sticks with calcium from him. 


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Just saw that one of my CRS is berried! I hope this is a good sign!


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