How to keep snails and shrimp alive in a 5

excuzzzeme said:
Did you acclimate them before adding them to the tank? They are sensitive and require acclimation. I have shrimp and snails in a 5 as well and have no problems. Leaving an algae wafer in over-night is usually no problem. I use only 1/2 of a large tab for my tank. I break up the half into multiple pieces (2-3) and try to keep it scattered in the tank due to the overabundance of occupants. Many times it will last 2 days.

Copper in your system is not healthy and you might want to check for that although the Prime should help with heavy metals. Have you checked for it? Tank needs to be fully cycled and your parameters look good.
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Yes i acclimated them. They had already been floating for a while to temp acclimate then i added small amounts of my tank water every 10-15 minutes for an hour or so. I have copper out of my tap, but not in my water change water. I bought some cuprisorb that absorbs copper and i run my water change water through that for a while before i add it to the tank. Even though i have been told by people that they have copper pipes and have no problems. I like to err on the side of caution. So i don't think it is that.
 
saram521 said:
I think it could be a possibility that the nitrates are part of the problem if they were not as high before the wafer was added. Did you happen to test the water right before adding the 5 shrimp and 1 snail?
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I tested ammonia and nitrites which were both 0. DIdn't check nitrates though because i had just done a 50% wc and my nitrates are 0 out of the tap so i didn't think it was needed.
 
Ok, i've been thinking and i think i may have figured it out. Since i just did a 50% wc last night. With only five shrimp and a snail there is no way the nitrates should be 10ppm already right? So maybe the algae wafer cause an ammonia spike sometime last night and by the time i checked the params it was already converted to nitrites. Sound reasonable?
 
It could happen, but I don't think a wafer would normally decay that quickly... It's hard to say without knowing your parameters right after the WC.
 
JPDVM2014,

I don't believe it was the wafer. Let me explain. I have 12 shrimp in a 1.5 gal hex, they're small shrimp. So far, I've had them for about 2 weeks. I feed them several times a day, they eat everything that I feed them. I also once fed them a wafer overnight, and was too late to take out anything that was left. That was the first night I got them, after acclimation, very similar to your situation. The wafer was exploded the next morning, with some fungus on it, I removed it immediately. It was mush by then, and no shrimp was on it. I was worried. I added bio-max with bacteria on it, and some gravel from my established. All 12 shrimp survived, and are doing great, molted a few times since then.

I wish I have an answer for you, but my experience tells me that it probably wasn't the wafer. I fed them expired Hikari Sinking Wafers for bottom dwellers. It was the only thing I had and they love it.
 
I kept a ghost shrimp in a five gallon with nitrates that constantly sat around 40ppm for half a year. It was always healthy and active, molting several times and tearing away at any food I dropped in. Shrimp are weird though, especially ones you buy from a store. I've found that store bought shrimp have a high mortality rate when you first put them in. When I bought that one, it was one of three or four, but the only one to live more than a day. They could have simply been mishandled before you bought them.

Other than that, you might try only adding one at a time and waiting a week before the next one. Sometimes adding too many fish at once to a tank that size can cause a swing.
 
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