I am sooo stupid...

[colinsk]

So last night I got home late and thought I would check my 10 gallon aquarium before going to sleep. I have had a problem keeping the smaller Amano shrimp out of the filter so I did a quick head count and noticed one lying on the bottom of the tank upside down.

I have only had them for a few weeks so I was hoping that it was a casualty of the transistion to my new home but I thought I would check the tank paramaters. Everything was normal except the nitrites were not quite 0 but not .25 either. I decided this was a response to the changes I had made in filtration.

I was about to get my water changing stuff out since I have no idea how sensitive shrimp are to water paramaters when I decided the first priority was to remove the cadaver. I picked it up by hand and it fell into dust. In was simply an exoskeleton. One of my shrimp had molted (if that is what it is called with shrimp).

So an hour of drama for nothing...

:duh:

[msjinkzd]

hahah, good for you for being so conscientious!

[snoopy65]

Awesome!

[pik01]

at least you know what a molt looks like now :) glad your critters are okay.

[leeser28]

I did the same thing with my first shrimp! I thought like 5 shrimp died and panicked, but I couldn't figure out why the cadaver was so transparent and had no eyes :) It is nice, though, when you realize they're all OK. Laughing with you colinsk!

[belfastbabe]

You know something simlar happened with my first crab moult.... i thought it had spawned into 2

i always check where he is before i stick my hands in to clean
he was under the filter... so i started
n noticed another crab... on the heater
AHH lol i was convinced for some time i had 2 crabs before i got the courage to poke the exo lol

[7itanium]

I did the same thing with my shrimp.. I thought it died and I took it out-- then an hour later I noticed I still had two.. it freaked me out for like 2 days untill I read up on molting

dont feel dumb.. it happens to all of us haha