# I've got shrimp arriving on saturday and I'm not sure my water params are enough..



## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

Just a little background:

My tank has been running for a good 3 years. I stripped it down the first time at around the 2 year mark to convert it to a shrimp tank. It's a planted tank with spiderwood, staurogyne repens and some java moss tied to the tree. I wasn't doing much maintenance because I got caught up with other things and my shirmps were okay. 

a couple of weeks ago, i sold my moss (here) and all of the crap settle down the substrate. All my shrimps started to die one by one (first mistake.) I decided to do a major water change 3 days ago - about 70% and the substrate is full of detrius that whenever i move the substrate, the water gets mucky. I tried to take some out, but I largely left the substrate untouched. 

Now I havent changed the water yet, but ill do another one tomorrow. I already ordered my shrimp so I just wanted to know if my params are alright. I'll do another round of gravel vaccuuming to take out as much detrius as possible.

I ordered about 20 ultra red cherry shrimp

So I tested my water as of this morning:
Amonia - 0
Nitrites - 0 
Nitrates - 0
GH - 20
KH - 6

I dont have a TDS readeer so I dont know.

My tap water is 
GH - 11
KH - 5


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## Splak (May 1, 2013)

You sure your gh is 20?!? 

That seems very high to me, my shrimp have always been kept between 6-8gh and 1-2kh.

They might be okay in that, probably wait for an expert to chime in!

Best of luck!


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## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

Splak said:


> You sure your gh is 20?!?
> 
> That seems very high to me, my shrimp have always been kept between 6-8gh and 1-2kh.
> 
> ...


Yeah it took me 20 drops to turn the colour to green. I gonna do a water change tomorrow morning and wait until the night to see if it changed.

This is my first time testing the GH since I've never had the testing kit before


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## woopderson (Feb 12, 2014)

If you bring your gh down you should be OK.

Are you able to test your TDS? Mind you, your tap water should be fine for cherries.


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## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

woopderson said:


> If you bring your gh down you should be OK.
> 
> Are you able to test your TDS? Mind you, your tap water should be fine for cherries.


I dont have a TDS reader at the moment. The big als at my location sells it for $75 bucks but amazon sells it as cheap as $7 so im not sure :S

I heard that Indian Almond leaves or Alder cones lower GH, I will probably get those tomorrow.

I'm also looking at getting RO water somewhere


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## Splak (May 1, 2013)

Shrimp fever sells a good TDS meteer, think I paid 30$ for it


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## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

Splak said:


> Shrimp fever sells a good TDS meteer, think I paid 30$ for it


Im actually going there tomorrow lol. I'll see what he says about lowering water hardness


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## infolific (Apr 10, 2016)

Make sure you note what measurement scale your TDS meter uses vs. your target values. You can get one that uses ppm (more common I believe) and one that uses microsiemens.


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## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

I'm panicking a little because I put distilled water to try and lower the gh. That ended up lowering my ph to less than 6 and the shrimps that I just put in after acclimation for 2 hours are dying one by one.


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## shrimplife (Jul 16, 2016)

Sorry to hear about this. I think in your situation you should have started a new tank from the beginning... 
if you want to keep shrimp, and add them to a tank you already have set up, test your parameters well before buying shrimp. If they are that OFF then just restart your tank. 
Adding distilled water, doing a huge water change, stirring up the waste and then getting a reading of 20 GH - all just complicating things at this point and upsetting the balance in the tank, thus leading to shrimp deaths.


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## Aceken (Nov 9, 2015)

shrimplife said:


> Sorry to hear about this. I think in your situation you should have started a new tank from the beginning...
> if you want to keep shrimp, and add them to a tank you already have set up, test your parameters well before buying shrimp. If they are that OFF then just restart your tank.
> Adding distilled water, doing a huge water change, stirring up the waste and then getting a reading of 20 GH - all just complicating things at this point and upsetting the balance in the tank, thus leading to shrimp deaths.


Yeah I scrapped my tank not too long after all my shrimps died. I haven't had the time to set up a new tank but I'm definitely going to do it right the next time I house shrimps


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