Tomatoes and RCS?

[GorgieB]

Well just had my second major fail as an aquarium owner! Thought i'd try something a little different for my shrimp and give them a blanched veggie, however with the lack of lettuce, spinach, zucchini or carrots I thought I'd give a tomatoes a go as its all I had and hey it's red! Had a little read up to see if there was any literature out there that said not too an after finding nothing I went ahead and gave them one that was well blanched and cooled. I have never seen so many deaths do quickly I lost 8 RCS within two minutes, they started moving around the tank irraticaly and eventually fell to the substrate and died there are another 32 RCS in the tank and they all appear fine although they are all the juvenile shrimp barring the 3 adults left and one of those was affected but appears ok now. Has anyone else experienced anything like this or have I just made a school boy error in thinking a tomato would be ok to feed my shrimp with?

Thanks in advance people.

 

[Sssea]

I've never heard of tomato used as a food, mostly just green veggies. Maybe it's too acidic for them? I'm sorry for your loss

 

[GorgieB]

The odd thing is that the tomato was only in the water for approx 10 to 20 seconds so I didn't even see any of them eat it they just immediately went funny then died. Not sure if the tomato adversely affected the water but like I said all the other shrimp appear fine! I'm contemplating doing a large water change but don't want to stress the shrimp out further as I did a 20% water change yesterday. Bizarre think I'll just keep an eye on them today and see how it goes.

 

[KMH]

I think the leaves of the tomato plant are supposed to contain a toxin, maybe it's present in small amounts in the fruit? And blanching it released it into the water?