Can "rainbow" rock kill shrimps?

[Shadey]

I picked up a bunch of this from the local Big Al's Aquarium... they have a pretty big variety of stones you can buy by the lb. and they are all "aquarium safe". I even asked.

I put some in my tank and within a day my amano shrimp were all listless and hardly moving. They never recovered. One stuck around for 2 weeks, hiding under a rock. He might still be there, I guess. But he isnt cleaning my tank!

The only thing I can think of is that maybe the rocks had copper in them?

It looks more or less like this:

I have since taken the rocks out but now I am sans-shrimp. I've done a few partial water changes since then. Is it safe to buy more shrimps now?

 

[krap101]

I was thinking copper as well. I think there's some way to oxidize copper (strong acid maybe) and if it turns green, then it has copper (assumedly)

 

[mudraker]

I have a lot of that in one of my cichlid tanks and it does not contain copper.

Copper in rocks and other minerals turns green when exposed to water.

What were your water parameters before you added the rock?

Amanos are very, very sensative to ammonia and nitrite.

 

[Shadey]

Paramaters were pretty normal.... I have fairly hard water, and PH of about 7.5-8.0, but nitrites and nitrates at 0.

I have seen, briefly, two shrimps still alive in the tank! But they pretty much hide all of the time, which is the exact opposite of how amanos have always behaved for me.

 

[krap101]

Might've been a bad batch if you didn't have them for that long

 

[Shadey]

Had em for almost a year, heh.

Maybe some sort of bacteria that came in on the rocks? I washed em in hot water, but yeah.