I always use warm water from the tap when doing water changes (tuned to the right temperature with my infrared temp gun). I don't add any treatment either since I'm on well water. I have happily breeding colonies of RCS, Malawa, and blue pearl / snowball shrimp with zero issues so far. I'm pretty sure I have copper pipes... my place was built in the mid 80s.
The tank is the same tank they were in before, except marginally cleaner (algae wiped from glass) and with new water -- so there's nothing left in it to poison the shrimp
I'm just not seeing them come out anymore. This morning I found two cherries laying on their back, not moving. I feel like crying; I watched these little guys grow up and now I don't know what to do as they slowly die.
I forgot to mention, I've got a couple ghost shrimp in this setup. Unlike the cherries, they're swimming around, crawling over things, etc. There's also a snail who. He also appears to be fine (moving around, eating, etc).
I bought a batch of 6 blue pearl shrimp a while back that all arrived in great shape but died off within 2 days of being put in one of my tanks. To this day I have no idea what killed them... it was pretty frustrating, but I just moved on. I have fry in that tank now and some assassins, but no more shrimp.
I also keep golden clams in all of my tanks. I find that they keep the water cleaner and reduce algae on plant surfaces. I don't know if they help improve shrimp health by gobbling up possibly nasty bacteria and protozoans, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Could temperature be enough to kill them off? I'm stretching for answers, but I'd like to save my remaining stock. I suppose the room they're in is a little cooler than where they were before; it could be lowering the temperature.
I have less than a dozen left, and only two or three are male (good from a breeding perspective, I guess, but I'm worried I'll lose my only remaining males).
I'm gonna see if the LFS will test my water for me tomorrow.
Sudden, large temperature changes are very bad, but gradual changes won't hurt them as long as it stays in the 70s to low 80s I would think. What is the tank at now?
