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willhoward
06/18/2007, 03:31 AM
Sorry, I know this post is long and boring, but please bear with me and help me :(

This weekend was one of the most hectic and fullest this year, and I made the error to purchase some new items for my reef aquarium. Now, it's never, ever a great feeling to lose something, but making the same mistakes twice is just unforgiveable. Despite the fact that I made shocking mistakes this weekend, I still don't know which was the fatal ones, and that's where I need you guys to help me, please :)

Right, this is how it all begin:
My girlfriend came to visit me the weekend and we went for an outting. We also met with a friend of mine which I promised I'd show him a few good LFS (she's got a freshwater setup and after seeing mine, she want's to go over to marine reef) And when we came to one of the LFS, my girlfriend spotted the shrimps, and said she wanted to get me one for my upcoming birthday this week. I was hestitant, coz I knew my tank wasn't stable, but I wanted to keep shrimps eventually so I thought keeping the shrimp in quarentine for 30days would give me enough time to stabalize my tank. I also saw a very nice Yellow Longnose Butterfly, so we bought the 2 (cleaner shrimp and butterfly). I also purchased some frozen plancton and all the dosens of testing kits to get my tank stable.

Now the first mistake was that this was at the beginning of the outting, so they had to stay in their bags for about 4 hours. When we arrived home I immediately dripped them, doubling the amount of water in just over an hour, and slowly filled/dripped the rest of the 50liter quarentine tank with water from my tank (which had undergone a water change and cleanup the previous day) and some clean RO water, set the airstone, heater and pump. And mistake 2 is that we went to the movies.

While in the movie, I remembered that I didn't purchase salt that day (coz mine was completed) because both LFS didn't have stock. And I usually keep my tank at 1018 - 1020 (fish only atm), and after the waterchange and cleanup, the salinity would probably be 1014 - 1016 in my tank, and therefore the tank water and the RO water would have diluted the quarentine tank's water. After the movie I returned I was suprised the see the butterfly and the shrimp both alive and moving around in the tank. I went grumpy to the kitchen coz it was 11pm and there was no place I could get salt now and my girlfriend went to go and talk to the fish and shrimp. After watching the behaviour of the fish for about 1minute, she told me something wasn't right. I told her I knew about the salt and they are in a new enviroment, blah blah blah, but she persisted. When I had a look, I saw steam coming from the water. Immediately pulled out the temp meter - 29'C (84'F). The bloody heater! The same one I used every month, and set to 22'C (72'C). I pulled out the plug and let the water cool by itself, and checked the salinity - 1016 - 1018 (fine for fish I guess, but not for shrimps) Eventually the temp was stable on 25'C (77'F), but there was nothing I could do about the salinity. And I went to bed

The next morning I came at the quarentine tank expecting the shrimp to be dead, but it wasn't. It was still doing fine? I then rushed to a fish store in a surrounding town, bought some salt and return about 2hours later. I threw in some salt and raised the salinity to 1019 and paused there (thought I didn't want to do it too quickly) And the me and the girlfriend went for another outting - mistake 3.

When we arrive later that afternoon, we found the fish doing fine, but the shrimp was lying on his back on the bottom of the tank. I was stunned, and could figure if it was because of the sudden salt change, or the long period without the propper salinity. After about 5mins, my girlfriend said he was still alive, and what do you know, some of his mouthparts moved every now and then. I decided to raise the salinity to 1025, and soon after that, the shrimp showed more and more signs of live. He started to move his antennas, he started moving his legs, and those little flippers under his tail. And on the occation he tried to turn himself the right way around. And then mistake 4 - I had to go to church.

While sitting in church it never crossed my mind that the shrimp would recover, coz in my books he was getting better, but when I arrived at home later that evening (first had to go to the usual coffee appointments after church) I fould the shrimp still lying on his back, but this time lifeless. And I'm stunned! Now I know I made alot of unexcuseable mistakes, things I never do, but I really thought the shrimp would pull through.

So, could anyone please shed some light onto my subject of why the shrimp might have died? :(

PS: the yellow longnose butterflyfish is still great, swimming around, playing with the sides, etc. He hasn't started eating yet, any ideas on how to invoke this?

Thanx all

mamagoose45
06/18/2007, 09:26 AM
For the shrimp, my advice would be to drip acclimate them VERY slowly and for a few hours. We lost a handful of shrimp when we first got into the hobby because we didn't realize at that point how sensitive inverts are to water parameters. We would drip them for about an hour and put them in the tank. Since we've started drip acclimating the shrimp for ~2-3 hours, we have had great success, loosing only 1 shrimp out of probably the last 20 we've purchased (I'm shrimp crazy - one whole tank dedicated to the little guys!) Double the initial water volume, dump out half, double the volume, dump out half, double the volume. We've used this method on peppermints, cleaners, fire, pistol, and sexy shrimp and had good luck so far with all of them...

As far as getting the butterfly to eat, we've had no luck with butterflies, so I can offer no suggestions there. Good luck with him though!!

Boomer
06/18/2007, 09:53 AM
One of the issue with loosing shrimp is a times there are in their molt/ecdysis cycle and changing water parameters can be deadly.