KimAnnKitz
Aquarium Advice Regular
I have bought and mostly killed 
three different "colonies" of Cherry Shrimp and it's driving me crazy. I'm think my first little colony of 15 died because of an ammonia spike. The second colony of 10 had a die off after I added a new plant to my tank, but I did manage to save three of them. One has just disappeared, another I found dead in the tank after two weeks. There is one lone survivor. Yesterday I received an order of a dozen Fire Red Cherry Shrimp. I tested my water before drip acclimating them and then added them to the tank last night. I lost 4 in a few hours and within 12 hours was down to 4 which is where I am right now. I have a Betta and a small and a larger mystery snail in the tank that were sold to me as Zebra Snails....a newbie mistake that I figured out when one of the snails began to grow incredibly fast. He is pretty big -- I would say bigger than a quarter but a bit smaller than a ping pong ball. I am wondering if this snail is producing too much ammonia for my 5 gallon Fluval Spec? My nitrites normally stay at zero, but I get high ammonia (.5 ppm) almost every day. (I've been testing daily since the first ammonia spike). This does not make much sense to me, but as I said I am a newbie at this. I did not know about fishless cycling until I already had bettas in my tanks. I do use Nutrafin Cycle with every water change and do at least weekly PWC's I also use Jungle or Seachem Prime as a dechlorinator. The tanks is fairly heavily planted IMO with a 4 nice stems anacharis, 3 stems bacopa caroliniana, 3 stems of jungle val, a med. java fern, 3x3 mat of java moss, 1 anubias nana, 2 anubias nana petite, a little peacock moss and a couple of cryptocoryne parva. Is the snail too big for this tank? I don't have a bigger tank for him. I have all very small tanks...5 gal., 4 gal. and 2, 2 gal. betta tanks. All Fluval. I honestly thought the snail was a nerite and that it would, at the most, end up the size it is now. I have only had it for about 5 weeks! I also have four more that are not growing as quickly as this one. He or she does seem to produce a lot of waste, sitting around and dropping poop almost every time I look at him. I only feed them extra when he seems really hungry and starts uprooting the plants to seemingly eat the roots! He really is like a bulldozer plowing through my tank but I have grown to adore the big fellow. Also is his ammonia producing poop the likely cause of my shrimp deaths? I am doing almost daily water changes right now despite the plantings. Any advice anyone has would be appreciated. I know someone will probably need even more details than I have provided. Please feel free to ask if I missed something crucial. Thanks for any help!!!! 
three different "colonies" of Cherry Shrimp and it's driving me crazy. I'm think my first little colony of 15 died because of an ammonia spike. The second colony of 10 had a die off after I added a new plant to my tank, but I did manage to save three of them. One has just disappeared, another I found dead in the tank after two weeks. There is one lone survivor. Yesterday I received an order of a dozen Fire Red Cherry Shrimp. I tested my water before drip acclimating them and then added them to the tank last night. I lost 4 in a few hours and within 12 hours was down to 4 which is where I am right now. I have a Betta and a small and a larger mystery snail in the tank that were sold to me as Zebra Snails....a newbie mistake that I figured out when one of the snails began to grow incredibly fast. He is pretty big -- I would say bigger than a quarter but a bit smaller than a ping pong ball. I am wondering if this snail is producing too much ammonia for my 5 gallon Fluval Spec? My nitrites normally stay at zero, but I get high ammonia (.5 ppm) almost every day. (I've been testing daily since the first ammonia spike). This does not make much sense to me, but as I said I am a newbie at this. I did not know about fishless cycling until I already had bettas in my tanks. I do use Nutrafin Cycle with every water change and do at least weekly PWC's I also use Jungle or Seachem Prime as a dechlorinator. The tanks is fairly heavily planted IMO with a 4 nice stems anacharis, 3 stems bacopa caroliniana, 3 stems of jungle val, a med. java fern, 3x3 mat of java moss, 1 anubias nana, 2 anubias nana petite, a little peacock moss and a couple of cryptocoryne parva. Is the snail too big for this tank? I don't have a bigger tank for him. I have all very small tanks...5 gal., 4 gal. and 2, 2 gal. betta tanks. All Fluval. I honestly thought the snail was a nerite and that it would, at the most, end up the size it is now. I have only had it for about 5 weeks! I also have four more that are not growing as quickly as this one. He or she does seem to produce a lot of waste, sitting around and dropping poop almost every time I look at him. I only feed them extra when he seems really hungry and starts uprooting the plants to seemingly eat the roots! He really is like a bulldozer plowing through my tank but I have grown to adore the big fellow. Also is his ammonia producing poop the likely cause of my shrimp deaths? I am doing almost daily water changes right now despite the plantings. Any advice anyone has would be appreciated. I know someone will probably need even more details than I have provided. Please feel free to ask if I missed something crucial. Thanks for any help!!!! 
I feel horrible about it. I know the betta may eat some of the shrimp and my first order had such tiny shrimp that he, in fact, may have had a big meal of those. I never did find all of the "bodies"...just a couple. The last two orders had much larger shrimp and Joey (my betta) seems to stay away from them.
There are days that I wish I had stuck with one betta and one little tank. The planted aquariums and beautiful bettas I kept seeing made me want more. So now I want shrimp - and plants - and bettas. I thought the snails would be a good cleaning crew, but now, I'm not so sure! 
