Oh, and I cleaned the tanks with bleach and vinegar before putting them into service. It's not copper leaching into the water because the polyfilter didn't turn any shade of green.
Yep. Even Rachel O'Leary says so. So. I'm going to wait and see. Wait till all the shrimp are dead, and then nuke it all, with bleach and/or potassium permanganate.
Do you know what the GH and KH are in both of your tanks as well as out of your tap? Your PH is pretty high... that speaks to a fairly high KH which most likely comes along with a pretty high GH. If you have big differences in these between the tanks it could explain why you're having a tough time keeping shrimp alive in the 10g. I've witness first hand shrimp deaths caused by a sudden jump in GH.
Do you have any floating plants? These are a really good natural way to pull potentially harmful things out of your water (duckweed has been used for sewage treatment, for example). I have either amazon frogbit or water lettuce in all of my tanks for this reason. They never suffer from a shortage of CO2, being exposed to the air, and thus are able to grow and pull nutrients out of the water much faster than submersed plants. They really do help, in my experience.
I haven't tested for either the gh or kh, and believe the test to be irrelevant, as my 55 gets larger percentage water changes, and the RCS in there are doing fine, without these mysterious deaths. The major difference between the 55 and the 10? I put a about a dozen RCS in there that I bought to diversify the gene pool, in addition to transferring RCS over from my 55. Even in places that are hard for fish to get to (in the 55), I haven't seen any RCS corpses. Those deaths you saw that you believe were caused by a rapid change of gh, did the RCS have a black thorax or tail? If not, I believe the causes of those deaths is different from what I've been dealing with.
There are fast growing stem plants (bacopa) and peacock moss in that 10 gallon tank, as well as java fern.
just sayin' , every time I've had shrimp die off it was from feeding too much. (well okay except the one time I didn't realize what voracious monsters Von Rio tetras could be.)
Maybe cut back heavily if not entirely on feeding, let them scavange biofilm continuously as they do in nature, and see what results? Looks like you've tried nearly everything else....good luck. And don't nuke the tank till the very last of these little survivors is gone.
Sorry, PB. I think I came across as grumpy at you, and that wasn't the intent. I've just got a lot of frustration with this tank, and it got voiced inappropriately.
just sayin' , every time I've had shrimp die off it was from feeding too much. (well okay except the one time I didn't realize what voracious monsters Von Rio tetras could be.)
Maybe cut back heavily if not entirely on feeding, let them scavange biofilm continuously as they do in nature, and see what results? Looks like you've tried nearly everything else....good luck. And don't nuke the tank till the very last of these little survivors is gone.
I rarely feed if I have less than 20, because it's too much work to not overfeed when there are that few. They are definitely eating biofilm and such, and have been for weeks, now. If I had to guess (with complete lack of pertinent data, to boot), I'd wager that the deaths you experienced were due to overfeeding making the water quality poor. I have Orange von Rios in my 55, and they totally ignore the shrimp in there. That's not the experience you had?
I won't nuke the tank, if I do, until at least a month after I determine the RCS are *all* gone. I saw 6 yesterday, so, we'll see how it pans out.
