TDS recommendation for Neocardinia

[fabsroman]

Is there any range of TDS for neocardinia? I have seen a recommendation of 75 to 150 for Cardinia. Just wondering if there is one for neocardinia.

The reason for my worry is that I had 30 RCS some 6 months ago and now I have absolutely none and I am scratching my head as to why. The tank never had ammonia in it because it is heavily planted and my tests showed that there was no ammonia. In fact, it hardly ever has a nitrate level above 5 ppm.

[msjinkzd]

What are your other parameters? I dont know what the TDS is as I don't have a way to measure that here. Neos typically like moderately hard water with a higher ph in order to maintain reproduction. That being said, they are usually versatile and can acclimate to a range of conditions. Can you tell us more about your tank and parameters please?

[JuanitoW]

If you put in CO2 for your tank, it might have dropped the pH below their comfortable range. I live in an area with ppm of 170, and they're thriving, but this is without CO2. The pH of my water is 7.4. If you have fish in there, they probably at the babies, but a few should still survive in a heavily planted tank.

[fabsroman]

What are your other parameters? I dont know what the TDS is as I don't have a way to measure that here. Neos typically like moderately hard water with a higher ph in order to maintain reproduction. That being said, they are usually versatile and can acclimate to a range of conditions. Can you tell us more about your tank and parameters please?

My other parameters are:

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - between 5 and 10 ppm
ph - fluctuates between 7.4 and 7.8 with injected CO2 It never goes below 7.4.
phosphate - between 1.0 and 2.0, but I don't even know if this parameter is relevant.

What other parameters do you need to know?

I've thought about this and thought about it, and about the only thing I can come up with is my failure to do weekly water changes. Water changes were at most often once every 2 weeks, and sometimes once a month. However, all of my other parameters were just fine during those time periods. I am using dry ferts on the tanks, and think that my TDS may have been too high and that is what resulted in the shrimp dying off. It isn't too costly to retry, but I would like to get everything right.

[msjinkzd]

Do you know your hardness? your parameters sound perfect for neocaridina. Perhaps the fact that you are dosing dry ferts (I assume using EI method) but not doing the weekly water changes is allowing the fertilizers to stay in the tank at levels which are too high for the shrimp. Typically people dosing EI do weekly 40-50% wc's to remove excess fertilizers as its an estimate of what the plants will use. Here is an article on EI dosing whihc you may find helpful: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142895

[Nue]

ya im with jinx. If you were doing dry ferts and not doing 50% water changes weekly, your gonna have issues. Here is another good article.
http://www.planetinverts.com/Dosing%20Fertilizers%20with%20Shrimp.html

[fabsroman]

Do you know your hardness? your parameters sound perfect for neocaridina. Perhaps the fact that you are dosing dry ferts (I assume using EI method) but not doing the weekly water changes is allowing the fertilizers to stay in the tank at levels which are too high for the shrimp. Typically people dosing EI do weekly 40-50% wc's to remove excess fertilizers as its an estimate of what the plants will use. Here is an article on EI dosing whihc you may find helpful: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142895

I know I will not be able to do weekly water changes regularly, so I don't dose ferts as heavily as recommended by the EI method. I'll give this another shot and see if I can change the water more frequently. I figured the ferts might be the issue, and that is why I was wondering about TDS. I'm guessing the ferts raised the TDS to an unacceptable level for the shrimp. If I knew what the acceptable level of TDS for the shrimp was, I could at least use a monitor and know when it was absolutely critical for me to spend time changing water versus spending time doing something else.

[leeser28]

Any Fish?

[msjinkzd]

well I dont have any way to measure tds here, but I keep my nitrate under 10 for my invert tanks.

[fabsroman]

Any Fish?

No fish. The only thing in this tank was shrimp with brigs, pond snails, ramshorn snails, and a ton of plants. Now, I have the exact same thing, but sans the shrimp. Actually, scratch that, I just put some Amanos in there on Friday. I'll do a water change tomorrow.