Cherry shrimp disease. Need urgent help.

Heyo guys. I noticed a shrimp has a VERY dark spot in it's head to the side and ahead of it's organs. a few hours later the shrimp died. I'll post a pic but PLEASE, I really need to know what's going on. I only got 7 shrimp left and 3 berried females which I do NOT want to lose.

My PH is about 7.6, temp is 79 ish, TDS is 110 (Tapwater, but I will be feeding them powdered eggshells to suppliment calcium) and I have no idea what my other parameters are. Can't afford a testing kit and the nearest petstore that can test the water is an hour's drive away (the car is screwed up/was in an accident)

I will have some catappa leaves monday or tuesday.

(Pic is of the dead shrimp and the spot. none of my others have this spot yet and i hope to avoid it.)

 

I did some searching and it resembles black spot disease but they say the spots will be over the whole body and will make a hole in the shell of the shrimp so I don't think it's that. My shrimp all have a black spot but its black sand they pick up while feeding. RCS are very hardy shrimp but there's two things that will kill them fast. One is water changes and the other is nitrite. With each water change they will molt and if you are doing one wc a week that's a molt a week. After a few weeks their shells won't harden and they start to die off. Nitrite kills them when the tank isn't cycled or the filter lost its bacteria colony. Chlorine and some meds kills the bacteria.

I almost lost my first batch doing water changes weekly, everything was fine for a month and then they started to die one by one. I stopped doing water changes and the remaining 6 out of 30 survived and started breeding. You just do top ups with aged water and a small 20% water change every couple of months. The longest I've waited to do a water change is 6 months.

Your tank temp is perfect, all mine are also at 26c or 79 farhen and your other parameters also looks good. Hard or soft water doesn't matter that much with rcs I've got 3 tanks and one of the tanks has a gravel in it that buffers the water to a ph of 8 and hardens it as well and they are doing fine. The other 2 tanks are ph 7 and 6. Catappa leaves is a good start in case it is black spot disease so do that. Adding a little piece of cuttlefish bone somewhere also helps their shells. How long has the tank been running? If it's a new tank I would add prime immediately as it locks up the ammonia and nitrite. After the prime I would add stability to recolonize the bio filter. Prime holds the nitrite and ammonia for about 2 days so I'll re-dose accordingly.

The trick so to say with RCS is to put them into a well cycled tank where you don't have to do water changes for a long time(also the reason I don't keep fish with them) because if you have a nitrite problem it's hard to correct without water changes. If you can't find catappa leaves they say that any tannins will have the same effect so driftwood or anything that gives off tannins is also an option.

 

Just saw it now. If you look at the shell between the head and tail of the dead shrimp you will see a gap, that indicates to me that its been molting too much and died trying to molt. You see this gap before a molt as that's where they crack open and jump out of the old shell.

 

Good grief, so the culprit might be wither a bacterial thing of a failed molt? shoot... Ok, yeah, I'll slow down with the water changes.

Currently they are in a breeder tank in my main tank that's been running for 3 months. it has corydoras, neon tetras and 2 baby plecos while I'm cycling a tank specifically for the shrimp.

I've fed my shrimp a mulberry leaf and it's full of holes this morning.

I can't get my hands on cuttlebone, but is powdered eggshells alright too? I could sprinkle that in there with them.

 

Why are you wanting to add calcium? Theres more than enough in Randwater's supply...

Dont over complicate things!!

As with most fish, inverts, etc...STABILITY is key...dont keep adding more and more things. Also make sure the mulberry leaf is dry...if it was plucked from a tree there might still be sap trapped inside the leave...that's why you should only collect fallen leaves from trees that you know wont be sprayed with pesticides...

 

I took a green leaf, (very young actually) and boiled it for 2 minutes. they've been eating it like crazy. The ones on the ground are somewhat rotten.

Where am I over-complicating things?

My tapwater is at 100 PPM, which is very low for shrimp and means there is very little minerals in it. Meyerton has soft water.

 

Who told you that's soft? Have you done a water analysis yet...how do you know there's very little minerals in it??? What do you think the 100 parts are made of...dust?

PLEASE tell me you not basing your definition of 100TDS being soft on youtube videos and the like of guys in america. Yes, their TDS values for soft is 200 and hard is over 400...but only coz most of the dissolved solids in their water is LEAD

Rather than using TDS as a measure for how much calcium you need to add to your water, which is baseless anyway, rather check your GH which is directly attributed to magnesium and calcium!

You are over complicating things by adding "calcium" which is not needed. In any way...IF i was thinking of adding calcium...i'd rather add a piece or two of crushed coral for them to graze on. A few pieces wont alter the pH or hardness really...

Most people in SA breed neocaridina in anything from a 60TDS upward without any issues...

THAT's why I'm saying you are over complicating things...just take a step back and make it as simple as possible. You are talking about cherries after all...they are bulletproof...

 

The low tds is why I recommended the cuttlefish bone. I use the ones you buy for the birds and just break off a little piece. Eggs shells also work.

 

@Deadpool I put a little piece in. I desolves slowly and they pick at it sometimes. I do it for their shells not to alter hardness.

Isn't tds gh+kh? So 110 tds is soft?

 

Remember...TDS = TOTAL DISSOLVED SOLIDS. So everything you add to water that's soluble will alter the TDS, which is why it's a good indication of hardness, but not something that's set in stone. If you add Seachem SAFE to your water as treatment...it will increase your TDS (I've noticed 1/8 of a teaspoon raises my TDS in a 100L bin by 3 points). Something like fish poop will ALSO increase your TDS

KH (Carbonate Hardness) is basically your buffering capability and thus has a direct "partnership" with your pH. The higher your KH the more stable your pH, the lower your KH the more your pH can fluctuate. That's why your pH drops in a tank when injecting CO2

GH (General Hardness) is the measurement of magnesium and calcium ions in your water

 

Hey, No one asked you to be rude, ok.

That's why I say my water is soft, because I know TDS accounts for absolutely everything.

Btw, I don't have GH/KH testing kits.

 

@Deadpool thanks for the info. I'm going to start altering water soon so I need all I can get.

 

I know what those things mean. we all do.

 

@Umbra I don't have any scientific proof that the eggshell and cuttlebone works but it makes sense to me. They eat their shedding after all and after multiple molts I believe the the bit extra calcium will be beneficial and not a bad thing in any way.

Lots of waterchanges does screw them up. I saw this with my rcs and crs. I mentioned the different water conditions to prove their hardiness. I think my advice here was sound and not complicated.

 

Yeah, it's quite simple and easy to understand. makes sense to me atleast.

Thanks. I'll add some egg powder today and see if I can maybe find some cuttlebones while I save money for a mineral rock.

 

Things will go much better when they have their own tank too.

 

Agreed. Only a week left to go for that to be a reality.

 

Oh, now I know why my rcs didn't survive . Had 4 of them in with my guppy fry I couldn't understand why they died cause my water parameters were perfect.

 

There has seriously been given some bad and inaccurate information here, but each to their own I guess