# killer shrimp?



## fly4awhiteguy (Dec 27, 2011)

well it was an interesting week... 1st on monday, I came home to a dead gourami.. 2 days later, i came home to a dead ram, then yesterday it was a dead chinese algea eater. I have tested the water every day this week, and they always showed the same result- low nitrates and nitrite, no ammonia, ph is 7.2... the only thing i can think of is my shrimp, about 2 months ago I put in some baby shrimp, they dissapeared and I thought the fish ate them, then the day before the gourami died, all three showed up outta nowhere(and they got much bigger), and fish started dropping like flies. has anyone heard anythin like this before?


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## df001 (Nov 13, 2007)

Doubt the shrimp are killing your fish, more likely the fish have caught an illnes(parasite?virus?) of some sort. The shrimp are probably hiding less now that the ram/gourami/cae arent there to intimidate. What type of shrimp are they anyway?

I'd keep a really close eye on your remaining fish, more tank details would be helpful, what stock do you have, tank size etc whats your water temp and nitrite/nitrate level?(ppm), how often waterchange and how much etc

Any recent new additions to the tank? Flora or fauna?

Hopefully you want lose anymore fish!


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## fly4awhiteguy (Dec 27, 2011)

thx for the reply, the tank is a 20g planted, with co2 injection(1.5-2 bps), and t5ho. i dose with flourish every other day. I do 25% water change every weekend, and add prime when I add new water, water temp is 74, nitrate 0.25 ppm, nitrate 0 ppm. livestock(as of now) ...

2 x platys
3 x guppy
3 x rasboras
6 x bloodfin tetra
10x neon tetra
1 x electric blue ram (male died)
1 x chinese algea eater (#2 died)
3 x black algea eating shrimp

so far I havent seen any sign of any illness, fish all seem to be behaving normal ( active and social) then I go to work and they are dead when I get home... also no signs of aggression from the other fish


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## mrobson (Mar 5, 2011)

my money is on the algae eater they can be aggressive


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## fly4awhiteguy (Dec 27, 2011)

ok thx..i heard they can get aggressive... i will keep a closer eye on him


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

fly4awhiteguy said:


> thx for the reply, the tank is a 20g planted, with co2 injection(1.5-2 bps), and t5ho. i dose with flourish every other day. I do 25% water change every weekend, and add prime when I add new water, water temp is 74, nitrate 0.25 ppm, nitrate 0 ppm. livestock(as of now) ...


If that 0.25 is supposed to be nitrite, something is wrong and you shouldn't have any nitrite readings at all. Nitrites are toxic at even lower levels than ammonia and you should almost always have some reading of nitrates, so I would think something is wrong with your cycle. How long has the tank been setup?


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## fly4awhiteguy (Dec 27, 2011)

the tank has been up and running for about 8 months..I thought it was strange because I have not added anything to the tank for a long time now and always got zeros across the board on my water tests- except ph. then all of the sudden i had .25 ppm nitrite. mabey more frequent water changes might help?


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

fly4awhiteguy said:


> the tank has been up and running for about 8 months..I thought it was strange because I have not added anything to the tank for a long time now and always got zeros across the board on my water tests- except ph. then all of the sudden i had .25 ppm nitrite. mabey more frequent water changes might help?


What test are you using to get .25 nitrate? My (and all others I've seen) for nitrates go 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160. Nitrites go 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 5

I don't know how you are measuring .25 nitrate?


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## fly4awhiteguy (Dec 27, 2011)

Oops i meant nitrite


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

Ok, well you should have any nitrite and it can be toxic, even at a 0.25 level. That's why it's measured in decimal increments, because small amounts can kill. How soon are you testing after doing a water change and do you use prime? Prime can sometimes give a false reading on ammonia but not usually nitrite but could be possible. 

The other thing is the first dead first, started to decompose, created an ammonia spike, ammonia eating bacteria multiplied and ate the ammonia and created nitrite, which the nitrite bacteria could keep up and eat it fast enough, which create nitrites, which killed another fish, which started a cascade effect. IIRC, nitrite eating bacteria is slower to reproduce than ammonia eating bacteria and could be the problem. I would slow down or cut feeding down to every other day and give you water a chance to catch up and stabilize with no more ammonia being added to the tank from food or poop and do small water changes to get that nitrite down. You should never have nitrite in a balanced tank.

Same thing happens when someone adds like 10 new fish to a tank at once. The bacteria can't multiple fast enough for the new bioload.

What type of filtration do you have on that tank? It's a fairly heavy stocked for a 20gal so you really need lots of filtration to allow bacteria to multiple fast and have the room and space inside a filter to do so.


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