My guess is if you’re reading this post, you’ve been trying to keep ghost shrimp in the past, or you’ve been trying to keep ghost shrimp right now, and you’ve been having them die off and you’re looking for a couple of the reasons why they’ve been dying.
You’ve come to the right place, because in this article I’m going to cover a bunch of different reasons why ghost shrimp died in aquariums, and I’m going to give you a bunch of useful tips on how to prevent them from dying in the future, and maybe some reasons why you should keep ghost shrimp.
Make sure to acclimate your ghost shrimp
The first reason why a ghost shrimp might be dying is something that is pretty obvious, and you might not even think of and that’s because they were either already sick when you got them, or you stress them out when you add them to the aquarium.
Acclimating the shrimp is very important because they are so sensitive.
It’s common that sometimes ghost shrimp do die in aquariums because they get stressed out when you add them to the aquarium, and that’s because you haven’t acclimated them properly.
Since shrimp are so sensitive in the aquariums, a lot of people just put the shrimp into a net and just chuck them in the aquarium, and that’s not good at all.
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I’ve done this in the past, and I’ve done it with really expensive shrimp and it’s just a massive loss when you have to spend so much money on the shrimp and then you just lose them in a few days.
So make sure that you drip activating your shrimp before you add them, and make sure that you’re checking that they are healthy before you buy them and they’ll guarantee that this doesn’t happen to you.
Water could have chloramine – use Seachem prime
The next reason is that your water supply could have chloramine as a disinfectant in it. This is something that a lot of people aren’t usually used to because they don’t realize that a lot of water supplies in urban areas using like chemicals like chlorine to disinfect the water and make it safe for us to drink.
These are super toxic to shrimp, especially the little sensitive ones like the Crystal Red shrimp, and it’s important that you are using something like Seachem prime I would recommend, and now this is a disinfect and get rid of all that chloramine and make the water safe for your ghost shrimp.
So make sure you are using a dechlorinator to prep your water before you add it to the shrimp tank.
Some fertilizers have Copper or lead in it
Copper or lead is really easy to add if you are adding fertilizer to a planted aquarium with shrimp in there. Most of this fertilizer has copper and lead in there for the plants to grow, and this is a massive mistake because these are lethal to the shrimp, and that will kill off all your shrimp if you’ve added them to the aquarium.
so my piece of advice is, first of all, check the fertilizer you’re using on your aquarium, and make sure that it’s shrimp safe, and do a bit of research on forums and stuff and ask about what kind of fertilizers you should use in a shrimp aquarium.
Copper and lead are absolutely lethal to shrimp, they are a BIG NO, so don’t add copper and lead to the aquarium accidentally. I don’t use fertilizers in my tanks, I’m completely natural, just make sure that you are doing your research before you add any fertilizers to your aquarium.
Ammonia spikes due to overfeeding the tank
The next reason is quite simple and you were just overfeeding your aquarium, and this is causing ammonia spikes and just creating an unsafe environment for the shrimp to live in.
Ammonia spikes are really easy to make if you are overfeeding the fish because there are so many nutrients in the aquarium, and it increases nitrous ammonia – it’s just nasty.
So make sure you not overfeeding the shrimp, and you’re doing regular water changes to keep the tank as steady as possible because if you are creating an unsafe environment, and you’re creating big spikes and ammonia and nitrates it will kill the shrimp off.
pH spikes in the aquarium
The next reason is you are having a pH spike, this is common if you are changing the water and you’re using a lot of pH up and downs, and I don’t recommend this. You’ve got to pretty much keep shrimp that suited for your environment.
Make sure that you are not trying to change the water parameters in your area, and not trying to adjust the pH, just keep the pH at what it is, and the easiest way to avoid having pH spikes in an aquarium, or like having this issue where you have a pH spike, is to make sure that you are buying shrimp from local breeders because it’s most likely that local breeders will have the same parameters as you for their water, and if they’re keeping shrimp successfully then you shouldn’t have a problem.
Make sure you ask what they are doing and get as much advice as you can from them. But this is a common reason why ghost shrimp do die because people are tampering with the water parameters.
Medication can have copper or lead
The next reason is something that’s common to people keeping shrimp in a community aquarium, and it’s that you’ve medicated the fish in the aquarium but the medication has copper or lead or something in there that’s nasty and it’s killed off the shrimp.
A lot of antibacterials will kill shrimp, so it’s important that you do your research before you buy any medication or add any kind of fertilizer, or medication to your aquarium. Make sure that it is shrimp safe.
Go look in the forums, I can’t give you all the examples because they take way too long, but go and look at some natural remedies to heal fish, or make sure that the medication that you want to add is safe, and then you shouldn’t have any issues.
Plants can have chemicals on them
The last reason is that you’ve added a plant but with some chemicals on it and that’s killed off the shrimp. This is quite common, some people go to a pet store and add a plant, and then the plant has some copper or some nasty stuff on it, and that kills off the shrimp.
Make sure you’re not making this mistake, it’s really easy to make that mistake I’ve done it in the past where they have some sort of like copper on it. So you need to wash the plants before you add into a shrimp aquarium because they’re that sensitive but.
In conclusion
The biggest tip and the thing that I want you all to take out of this post is to make sure you know what you’re adding to your aquarium. Do research before you add any substance to the aquarium, and make sure you’re always washing and not adding other people’s stuff to your aquarium like don’t add other people’s water when you’re adding fish and you won’t have any problems.