Can anyone help please?

Shrimp&Snails · Post by **Shrimp&Snails** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:42 am

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum so please be gentle with me.....i've been a bit irresponsible

but want to correct things.....any advice will be appreciated.

I bought a tiger shrimp yesterday. My lfs never gets any shrimp in (except ghost and amanos) and he/she was the last one. I love shrimp (I have 3 amanos) and have been wanting to get cherry shrimp for ages so I ignorantly assumed tigers would be able to tolerate similar conditions.
I bought it and put it in my 21g tank.....my 21g is my snail tank and the PH sits around 7.5.....then I read a high PH is a no-no for tigers. I have two other tanks, one shares the same reading as my snail tank and the other is between 6.2 and 6.5.

The shrimp is still in the snail tank but I want to transfer it to the lower PH tank but i don't want to kill it through PH shock. I'm thinking i'll catch it, pop it in a fish bag quarter full with high PH water then add tiny amounts of low PH water over half an hour? Would this be ok?

I really am attached to this little fella already and don't want to put him through any more stress than i've already caused.....and I don't want him to die either.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Shrimp&Snails · Post by **Shrimp&Snails** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:29 am

Ok i'm just going to go ahead and catch him whenever I next see him and add him as carefully as I can to my lower PH tank. I'll keep an eye on this thread while i'm looking out for him.

Cheers

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:50 am

Make sure the water is fairly soft, or you'll have a hard time maintaining an acid pH. Seachem Acid Buffer works for me.

I think is is better to lower the pH rapidly rather than slowly. I also don't think it will hurt to just transfer him directly to the proper pH as long as the temperature is close.

Watch the pH closely if it is not naturally acidic as it tends to rebound for quite a while.

My experience with tigers, zebras and bumblebees is that they will live in basic water, just not breed.

Shrimp&Snails · Post by **Shrimp&Snails** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 12:03 pm

badflash wrote:Make sure the water is fairly soft, or you'll have a hard time maintaining an acid pH. Seachem Acid Buffer works for me.

I think is is better to lower the pH rapidly rather than slowly. I also don't think it will hurt to just transfer him directly to the proper pH as long as the temperature is close.

Watch the pH closely if it is not naturally acidic as it tends to rebound for quite a while.

My experience with tigers, zebras and bumblebees is that they will live in basic water, just not breed.

Thanks you've really eased my mind....he seems quite happy under a big moss ball and he's eating and acting ok. I'll move him when I next see him and introduce him carefully to my other tank. The lower PH tank has a sand substrate....the others have a coral sand subrate.....this, I think attributes to the higher PH. I really hope I haven't had a mad PH crash in my sand tank....i can't think why I would have.
Temps are very similar.....so I think he'll be fine.

Wish me luck.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 12:57 pm

You should never use a pure coral subtrate as it will raise your pH out of sight high. I had an experience using marble chips as a subtrate which made it almost impossible to keep the pH below around 8.4. I'll bet yours is up there too if you are using pure coral.

What sort of pH tester do you have? If it is a paper type or an electronic probe that isn't regularly calibrated it probably isn't trustworthy.

Nice quartz sand works well as it doesn't add any hardness to the water, so you can control the hardness. Coral just disolves when the hardness drops below a certain point and you won't be able to keep up with that.

One advantage of coral is that your pH won't crash, but you can't keep it down.

Shrimp&Snails · Post by **Shrimp&Snails** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 1:33 pm

The PH in my snail tanks has been 7.5 for around a year and a half now so my snail tanks i'm not so worried about. If I see a rise towards 8 i'll change to the quartz because a PH higher than 8 can erode snail's shells similar to a low PH.
Snail keepers I know keep crushed coral sand in their filters or as a substrate (or part substrate) with no problems but i'll keep an eye out, thanks for the heads up.

I'm gonna hunt his little guy down if it kills me lol....he's got a habit of hanging out under my moss balls.

Lotus · Post by **Lotus** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:12 am

When I need to catch shrimp in my shrimp-only (and a few snails) tank, I put in a piece of food, and wait until the shrimp come to it, then net them out. Something like a piece of algae wafer works well.