What exactly killed them?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

nicolej

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Feb 27, 2013
Messages
35
Location
Duncan, BC
Hi all, so ive been trying to get some healthier plants growing, so I started dosing my tank heavily with potassium, iron and amazon elements. It did nothing for the plants at all, and killed off my entire population of trumpet snails and rili shrimp within a week or so. I also have nerite snails but they have been very inactive and their shells are missing patches of color. I moved them to my new invert only tank and they immediately perked up, so obviously the water chemistry isn't agreeing with them either.

I stopped dosing any fertilizers since the big die off and have done a few water changes. All the fish in that tank are doing totally fine it just effected the invert population. I did a water test but just with test strips and the GH is very high, pH is on the acidic side.

Just trying to figure out what specifically it was that killed them so I don't make that mistake again. Any ideas?
 
What product did you use to dose iron? Did any of the things you dosed have trace elements of copper?
 
Nicolej I had something similar happen in my tank. I started off with 10 shrimp. Over 5 months had more than 70. Made some changes to the tank with new sand, added more plants/rock/decor too. Every shrimp in the tank died within a few weeks after. I cleaned the tank. Tested for everything, added media to absorb metals and toxins, and for 2 months tried adding a single shrimp that would die within a few days.
So I removed all of the stuff I had added before the die off. Except the sand. Did another good clean. Waited another month, and now 5 months later have been able to add shrimp back to the tank and they live. I will never know what was leaching out of the items I added.
 
Shrimp do not like high gh or lots of TDS which is likely a possible contributing factor.

also check back in the dosing directions of the additives you used and make sure you were dosing the correct amounts. Also sometimes one product is fine but combined with others possible to duplicate the same minerals and therefore add too much of something causing a toxic amount.

So sorry to hear of your losses. Shrimp in tanks don't always prefer a lot of ferts.
 
I came to the conclusion that it was the iron. I bought a test kit and my iron levels are very high in that tank ( obviously, since I was dosing daily). I read about the fact that iron is actually often used to kill slugs and snails in the garden! I think possibly what happened was the hughbiron killed off my trumpet snails, and maybe even the shrimp, but even if it wasn't what killed the shrimp the huge die off of snails probably caused some spikes cause the shrimps followed shortly after. Either way, the shrimp have thier own tank now and I'm trying to bring my iron levels down now to curb the algae growth since the loss of my snails and shrimp so I can reintroduce my nerites back in there.
 
Back
Top Bottom