I want to $%@#@# scream!!

mony97

Member
Thought I'd chime in and send my condolences, sorry to hear of the losses.. Hope everything works out for ya.. And I know what you mean about thinking its not worth it to keep going forward, although I havent lost anything yet it seems I am always worrying that I will.. Its not easy but I do choose everyday to keep going and feel lucky that I am able to be a part of this hobby and community.
P.S what type of skimmer did you go with? I am planning on building a sump for my tank here in a few weeks and have a similar tank set up as you, so wondering what you got and if you like it so far (outside of things dying, althought I dubt the p.s had anything to do with the loss).
 

d-man

Member
I would not try to catch the one you still have you will stress him out. I don't know if anyone mentioned that a hydrometer measures water density not salinity so water temp will affect the reading, most of the time this is only a problem during water-changes but it's something to think about. how long did you watch the shrimp in the store before you got them? do you know when they where shipped in?
 

handbanana

Member
Hey Hey Mony! How goes it? Thanks for the kind words. Its nice to have someone say something nice once in a while. Im pretty bummed about my losses BUT I see it as part of the SW learning experence. somehow Ill learn from this. Somehow.
Any who I got a CORALVUE skimmer of somesort.( threw away the box). its good for up to 100 gallons it says. seems pretty small to me tho.

I havnt pulled much from my tank with it yet so I cant decide if I like it or not. Got a bunch of dirty water out. It comes with a weird cup for elimanating micro bubbles on the return end. Doesnt work. Right now the flow on the pump is at halfway and the water level on the skimmer is all the way down and it still makes a @#$!ton of bubbles and wants to fill the collection cup up with water. I figure it needs to break in. I think it will work out.
I just made my 20 gal sump when I got the skimmer cuz it wont fit under my stand in the ten gal sump I had. All and all Im still messing around with it all. Ill keep ya posted tho! it SEEMS like a good purchase but Im still a noob here.
 

handbanana

Member
Originally Posted by d-man
http:///forum/post/3221514
I would not try to catch the one you still have you will stress him out. I don't know if anyone mentioned that a hydrometer measures water density not salinity so water temp will affect the reading, most of the time this is only a problem during water-changes but it's something to think about. how long did you watch the shrimp in the store before you got them? do you know when they where shipped in?
Dang... forgot about the temp affecting the reading. Extreamly good point. I want a refract but the LFS sells them at $100
I watched the shrimp at the store, the guy fed them and they were on his hand like white on rice. skittering all over the place after the food.
In the acclimation bucket it just sat there looking sad tho
 

shyshko08

Member
Originally Posted by Handbanana
http:///forum/post/3221384
I ran home at lunch to have another looksie, My peppermint that was not doing so good is DEAD. not molted. It was in the sump ant there is no place for it to hide if it did shed. and when I picked it up and smelled it it did not smell. It was not an empty shell tho. I gave it a little squeez.
Same with the cleaner cadaver. The whole thing is intact. antenna and all.
My one peppermint is fine. scurrying around on my LR. looking pretty good. Of corse I have no Idea what a happy peppermint shrimp looks like. I know it was alive and activaly avoided my attempts to catch it. I just scooped up the others.
SOOOOOO...... Any insight? I have a pic of my sump and macroalgae if that helps anything. getting a little long winded with my responses

Thanks
HB
I have the same skimmer, and I use to run it as a hang-on skimmer, but when I upgraded to a sump, i found that it skimmers much better INSIDE the sump. Also, I got rid of that bubble diffuser thing, the sponge in there is a nitrate trapper, and was a pain in the ass the clean all the time.
Also, look on ---- for a refractometer, they are like 40$ including shipping
ps. I also believe that .027 is a bit on the high side, I run my tank at about 0.25-0.24. The shrimp could have died due to stress of moving, but also maybe bc of the great salinity/pH change.
I know that one of the LFS runs there reef tanks at 74 degrees, which isnt necessarily lethal, but defiantly will stress out the fish/inverts once they get put into 80 degrees.
So that being said, your LFS water conditions might be greatly different from yours which causes alot of stress. But hats just one possibility
 

mony97

Member
Originally Posted by Handbanana
http:///forum/post/3221516
Hey Hey Mony! How goes it? Thanks for the kind words. Its nice to have someone say something nice once in a while. Im pretty bummed about my losses BUT I see it as part of the SW learning experence. somehow Ill learn from this. Somehow.
Any who I got a CORALVUE skimmer of somesort.( threw away the box). its good for up to 100 gallons it says. seems pretty small to me tho.

I havnt pulled much from my tank with it yet so I cant decide if I like it or not. Got a bunch of dirty water out. It comes with a weird cup for elimanating micro bubbles on the return end. Doesnt work. Right now the flow on the pump is at halfway and the water level on the skimmer is all the way down and it still makes a @#$!ton of bubbles and wants to fill the collection cup up with water. I figure it needs to break in. I think it will work out.
I just made my 20 gal sump when I got the skimmer cuz it wont fit under my stand in the ten gal sump I had. All and all Im still messing around with it all. Ill keep ya posted tho! it SEEMS like a good purchase but Im still a noob here.

Your welcome, and I'm sure I'll be posting my sump progress soon enough, I have a pretty sweet idea stewing so we'll see how that goes?
 

king_neptune

Active Member
Originally Posted by Handbanana
http:///forum/post/3221516
Any who I got a CORALVUE skimmer of somesort.( threw away the box). its good for up to 100 gallons it says. seems pretty small to me tho.

I havnt pulled much from my tank with it yet so I cant decide if I like it or not. Got a bunch of dirty water out.
I figure it needs to break in. I think it will work out.
1. You should be ok for now. honestly just means your gonna be taking longer to pull the impurities out, and your cup is going to need cleaning more often. But it will still handle your system as a temp means.
2. Dirty water is good. There should be a film/residue around the neck of the collection cup on its way to the top. Take a paper towel and wipe, if you get black/dark green your looking good. That was basically stuff hanging around the tank polluting, and now its not. A beer color is acceptable, obviously black/dark green is best. But don't get discouraged about "Just dirty" water, anything darker than clear is good. If you got an air valve(mine does) you should be able to tune your skimmer down, so it makes less bubbles. This will slow it down so that only the most concentrated amount collects.
3. As for break in... Mine was garbage when I first got it. But I let it spend the night in a 5 gal bucket filled with pure vinegar(like $2 a gallon so not too bad), this cleaned it super duper ^_^
Next day I rinsed, and placed it in my sump. Within hours I had significant skim.
In closing, your tank is kinda young, and not stocked too heavy. You probably wont really see much skim getting made until shortly after feeding. And it will stay that way till you start getting a heavier bio-load.
 

king_neptune

Active Member
Originally Posted by Shyshko08
http:///forum/post/3221651
I know that one of the LFS runs there reef tanks at 74 degrees, which isnt necessarily lethal, but defiantly will stress out the fish/inverts once they get put into 80 degrees.
So that being said, your LFS water conditions might be greatly different from yours which causes alot of stress. But hats just one possibility
Interesting point. VERY interesting.
Say you take him out of the LFS at 74 degrees(purely hypothetically). Then the drive home, then the time spent in the drip bucket. That water temp kept falling and falling. Especially since you said you only had a few drips per minute. I think a likely culprit was it was shocked from probably mid 60's temp water(or even lower...it wasn't much water volume)...to 78-80degree water. Ouch!
 

xcali1985

Active Member
Don't blame this site or the people on it for failures within your aquarium. All anyone can do is offer advice and personal experiences. its your responsibilty to go beyond this forum and read multiple sources and analyze your tank and basically make an educated guess. The most people here can do is point you is the general direction. Each tank is always different, I would even bet if you traveled a few hundred yards in the ocean you would get different readings albeit slight ones.
With that being said. It seems with the speed of the deaths it is the acclimation process. Not saying that you did anything wrong, but if a LFS is running at 1.022 and you are jumping a shrimp to 1.027 in a few hours that can be deadly.
I use 3 LFS and what I did was personally use a digital thermometer and my personal refract. Of course with permission and they run theirs between 1.022 and 1.023 between the 3. I run mine at 1.023-4 depending on top of and such. Making the acclimation a lot softer on the livestock.
My honest suggestion is for you to attempt to match the store you are buying from in temp & salinity. This will shorten you acclimation and improve your chance at keeping livestock.
If you personally like your tank parameters i would use a heater very small wattage one to raise heat to your tank, along with increasing the time I acclimate even if its 5-6 hours.
Currently at 76 degrees and 1.024 I drip everything for 2 hours removing 1/2 the water after 1 hour. You stated earlier that you have 2 drips per minute. That is to slow and will cause the water to cool in the container with the livestock. What you want is a steady line of drops not to fast to create a stream but slow enough where you can see each individual drops.
Last and final comment from me. There are several kits that people have devised to use for acclimation from a medical style drip to what I do is use airline tubing cut it right below the rim of the bucket and apply an airflow regulator its a little plastic piece with a screw knob on it and will allow you to easily set the flow instead of tightening and loosening a knot.
if you need a pic or even a video let me know ill see what I can do.
 

garick

Member
I want to point out that I have a tank with a salinity reading of 1.028. It has 2 peppermints, a cleaner, an emerald crab, snails, hermits and others. They have all been in that tank around 4 months with no issues at all. So in this hobby, anything is possible and if its possible someone has probably done it.
I also want to say that I do not spend 3 hours acclimating my inverts and so far the only losses I have are hermits and they are TINY I mean seriously tiny like only slightly the size of these smilies on here. I normally spend about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours with a drip a second. So far I have lost tiny hermits and 1 sally lightfoot but everything else seems to be doing just fine.
I doubt its your salinity, it is most likely not your macro (Though if your lighting and nutrients are less than the LFS. It could easily be putting stuff off into your tank if your macro does not have enough food to support the sheer size of the macro you placed into the tank) which like any other plant will have DIE OFF which could throw ammonia, if your tank cannot support it. Though it will find a happy balance and eventually stop dieing. (speaking here from fresh water plant experience).
Also you don't say what fish or other critters are in your tank. There are many that will eat and maim your inverts. Even other inverts like the coral banded shrimp will not accept other shrimp into its area. (from what I read)
I support the drip method like suggested above, the little valve allows you to adjust your drip speed.
Try to test for and add iodine. This is an important thing for inverts and their molting.
You should also make sure your not looking at a molt since it looks alot like the animal only more transparent and hollow. I have gotten shrimp from an order that appeared to have TWO in the bag for me to discover that it had molted right in the bag, and while a shrimp is in molt, it is very sensitive and very vulnerable to fish and other things in your tank.
As for the LFS. You should know that most, not all but most. Charge triple or more for fresh water fish. Hence why they will cover you for a week. While salt water is not normally given such a nice big boost to cover the loss. Normally only double or less based on the price of what your buying. Which is why they probably offer no coverage to match the fresh water stuff.
 

btldreef

Moderator
Garick, you having luck with running your salinity that high is because you have more experience in the hobby. A beginner really shouldn't be running their tank that high.

[hr]
HandBanana,
I think the drip that you used was far to slow and not a true drip acclimation. My honest belief is the drip method used stressed out the invert more than it could handle.
I'm fairly certain that something is going on with the water quality in the tank. I would test twice a day and do some water changes and record your readings. Keep track of what's changing. Get a copper test just to be safe. There's nothing else in this tank right now, correct?
Lower the salinity. From personal experience I can tell you that when I ran a higher salinity (without actually knowing it because my hydrometer was off) I had far more issues, no deaths, but lots of issues with water chemistry. My dKH and Calcium were never even close to one another and dKH can cause your pH to swing. Higher salinity means higher mag, iodine, calcium, etc. It can throw off parameters, not by much, but if you're new to the hobby it can be a real PITA.
 

garick

Member
I always refer to BTL on salt stuff. My higher salinity is high because I raised it over a period of 5 months. However I do add things into it that are maintained at 1.022 from the LFS without much if any issue.
I agree 3 hours is excessive on the acclimation if your gravity is similar to the source.
----
Side note. I also plan to start reducing that tank back to 1.024-22. It was simply an experiment to see if there were any benefits to a higher salt content and so far. I see none of any consequence.
 

lmecher

Member
Your nitrate level is 20?? Your SG is definately not what killed your shrimp, it was your nitrates. Ornamental shrimp are very dleicate and do not do well with elevated nitrates. You need to get that tank stabilized before adding anything else. I would get your fuge up and running, cheto is so much more reliable than caulerpa, (I would flush it all) it very often dies unexpectedly and can release enough nitrate to nuke your tank. Once you get your cheato growing, it will be regularly pulling nitrates from your system. I remove appx. 1/2 weekly when I do water changes. Get into a routine, let your system stabalize and you won't be loosing your investments. It may take a few weeks but patients is in order, only bad things happen quickly in this hobby. I would highly recomend getting a refractometer, your swing arm hydrometer is unreliable, more money I know but an investment well worth every penny.
(not profile of peppermint shrimp but their tank requirements are the same)
http://fishprofiles.com/profiles/cru...mata_debelius/
 

beaslbob

Well-Known Member
Sorry for your fustrations and they are very similiar to mine years ago.
My thoughts are the single most important thing you have done is adding the chaeto. As your cheato expands and grows you should notice an almost immediate just before lights out pH increase as the chaeto consumes the carbon dioxide in the system. So that the tank becomes a net consumer of carbon dioxide and producer of oxygen in a 24 hour period.
Then you should notice a drop in nitrates. That may take a few weeks but it can drop suddenly. Like to unmeaureable levels in a couple of days or so.
Then (if you measure) a similiar slower drop in phosphates.
As the chaeto grows it will also filter out (bio accumulate) toxins like copper which is further provide a better environment for inverts and fish.
Is it possible (and almost normal) that cyano (red slime) starts showing up after nitrates drop down. If that happens just kill the display lights so the cyano dies off and returns nutrients to the chaeto.
When chaeto fills the refugium harvest some to keep the growth rate up. That also exports the nasties (like copper) stored in the chaeto as well.
Just my .02
 

dutch06

Member
Originally Posted by Lmecher
http:///forum/post/3221830
Your nitrate level is 20?? Your SG is definately not what killed your shrimp, it was your nitrates. Ornamental shrimp are very dleicate and do not do well with elevated nitrates. You need to get that tank stabilized before adding anything else.
http://fishprofiles.com/profiles/cru...mata_debelius/
I agree with this. My SG is 1.026 and fluctuates as does everybody elses. All this acclimation methods are crazy. Maybe I'm just testing the odds, but I don't acclimate fish or coral, at all. Temp (float) for 5-10 minutes and in the tank. (Exact same method as 95% of LFS.) Inverts, I pour out half the water of the bag, match with equal part tank water from a cup, float bag, wait for 15-20 minutes and in the tank. Never lost a single crab, snail, etc. within 24-48 hours.
IMO, ornamental shrimp are very cool but very delicate. Their not suited for any tank less than completely stabilized. (20 nitrates is not stabilized.) Even then, they can be eating, molting and dead within 24 hours for no explainable reason. Unless very lucky, be prepared to buy one every 6-12 months if you like them that much.
 

king_neptune

Active Member
Originally Posted by Lmecher
http:///forum/post/3221830
Your nitrate level is 20?? Your SG is definately not what killed your shrimp, it was your nitrates. Ornamental shrimp are very dleicate and do not do well with elevated nitrates.
My question is would it do it in under 24 hours?
I wasn't ever aware that elevated nitrates would kill that fast.
 

garick

Member
Also peppermints (Certain ones) don't do well with normal warm tropical waters and seem to last only a few weeks before death. Due to the heat.
 
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