Alright, I'm going off of memory here...
I have a 65-gallon heavily planted tank. After it cycled, I was happily keeping shrimp for a few months (bamboo, ghost, and cherry reds) and Olive Nerite snails. In addition, after a while, I was starting to add some MTS snails in hopes they would get a good little colony going. (the only other fish I have are otos and SAEs).
Around the same time (coincidence, I'm certain), some of my shrimp started doing the death roll and the Nerites started dying one by one. The MTS never bred and also slowly died off.
I know I won't be able to get answers out of here without a detailed list of my stuff, so I'll do my best here...
4x55 watt CF. injected CO2 controlled by a milwaukee PH monitor/solenoid. I dose all seachem ferts (flourish comprehensive, trace, K, Fe, N, and P) and have flourite substrate. Dosing is done every morning, before the lights go on. Photo period is about 8 hours.
Armageddon happened about 2 or 3 months ago. During the time, I was fiddling with lots of stuff... overdosing certain ferts, underdosing others (trying to fight algae, trying to get good plant growth). Trace was one of the things I KNOW I overdosed (I had a micronutrient shortage, but trace wasn't cutting it... I had to add Flourish which solved my problem). So then I cut back Trace considerably.
Over the next few weeks, I finally got the ferts down pretty good. no ammonia or nitrites, nitrates were also usually 0 (plants sucked everything up, I have a lot of fast-growers). PH was 6.8, Kh was around 4.5 or 5.
After getting everything squared away, I picked up a few CRS and MTS. They all died almost instantly (most within 8 hours). I rechecked all the parameters I could think of and everything looked great. Finally, I decided that maybe I went overboard with the Trace and there was too much copper in the tank (great, right? terrible thing to have). To check, I ordered a copper test kit from seachem and also some cuprisorb. Ok, the test kits aren't that great... but if there's a ton of copper in the tank, SOMETHING would show up, right? I tested and it came back as 0! Mystery still not solved... Threw in a few CRS shimp, death roll, yadda yadda, very fast death.
This was about a month ago. Since then, I've just left the cuprisorb in the XP3 filter. I checked on it today... it's still white! And the copper test still says 0. the GH is a little high at about 13... no change in any other parameters!
The odd thing... no other snails have been affected! I have the garden-variety pest snails running around in the tank fine.
I picked up some ghost shrimp today (33 cents at petsmart... I'm going for the canary/coal mine test here!!). My gut feeling is these guys will be dead pretty quickly too... One is already dead, but he was already rolling before I left petsmart.
So what else could I be missing? What could possibly kill my shrimp and snails (ONLY MTS!) at such break-neck speeds? Could it be potassium?? I dose it at the same ratio as all the other ferts, which is just enough for good growth (I started low, saw deficiencies, and slowly tweaked until algae and signs of deficiencies were eliminated). Is there a possibility that the copper test just sucks SO bad that it's COMPLETELY useless? what about the cuprisorb? I figured, even if there was some copper leaching into the water, a month of constant use would show a LITTLE color change in the cuprisorb.
Anyway, just let me reiterate how quickly things would die... within a few hours, I would see a few dead. Within 8 hours, most were dead. by 24 hours, the few stragglers succumbed as well. So the problem is more than a water parameter that is slightly out of whack... my water is POISON!
since people are going to ask my dosing levels, here is what i have begun to stabilize around...
daily dosing:
nitrogen - about 5ml
phosphorous - about 7ml
potassium - about 12ml
iron - about 8ml
flourish - about 5ml
trace - less than 1ml
the things I can test for are always at 0 (even if they shouldn't be - plants grow too fast!)
nitrates
nitrites
Fe
phosphates
ammonia
copper
So get creative people! Maybe the copper is stuck mostly in the gravel? (Affecting mostly the shrimp and MTS and not the snails on the plants and glass?). Should I get a potassium test kit? I miss my little shrimp friends! they were cute!
I have a 65-gallon heavily planted tank. After it cycled, I was happily keeping shrimp for a few months (bamboo, ghost, and cherry reds) and Olive Nerite snails. In addition, after a while, I was starting to add some MTS snails in hopes they would get a good little colony going. (the only other fish I have are otos and SAEs).
Around the same time (coincidence, I'm certain), some of my shrimp started doing the death roll and the Nerites started dying one by one. The MTS never bred and also slowly died off.
I know I won't be able to get answers out of here without a detailed list of my stuff, so I'll do my best here...
4x55 watt CF. injected CO2 controlled by a milwaukee PH monitor/solenoid. I dose all seachem ferts (flourish comprehensive, trace, K, Fe, N, and P) and have flourite substrate. Dosing is done every morning, before the lights go on. Photo period is about 8 hours.
Armageddon happened about 2 or 3 months ago. During the time, I was fiddling with lots of stuff... overdosing certain ferts, underdosing others (trying to fight algae, trying to get good plant growth). Trace was one of the things I KNOW I overdosed (I had a micronutrient shortage, but trace wasn't cutting it... I had to add Flourish which solved my problem). So then I cut back Trace considerably.
Over the next few weeks, I finally got the ferts down pretty good. no ammonia or nitrites, nitrates were also usually 0 (plants sucked everything up, I have a lot of fast-growers). PH was 6.8, Kh was around 4.5 or 5.
After getting everything squared away, I picked up a few CRS and MTS. They all died almost instantly (most within 8 hours). I rechecked all the parameters I could think of and everything looked great. Finally, I decided that maybe I went overboard with the Trace and there was too much copper in the tank (great, right? terrible thing to have). To check, I ordered a copper test kit from seachem and also some cuprisorb. Ok, the test kits aren't that great... but if there's a ton of copper in the tank, SOMETHING would show up, right? I tested and it came back as 0! Mystery still not solved... Threw in a few CRS shimp, death roll, yadda yadda, very fast death.
This was about a month ago. Since then, I've just left the cuprisorb in the XP3 filter. I checked on it today... it's still white! And the copper test still says 0. the GH is a little high at about 13... no change in any other parameters!
The odd thing... no other snails have been affected! I have the garden-variety pest snails running around in the tank fine.
I picked up some ghost shrimp today (33 cents at petsmart... I'm going for the canary/coal mine test here!!). My gut feeling is these guys will be dead pretty quickly too... One is already dead, but he was already rolling before I left petsmart.
So what else could I be missing? What could possibly kill my shrimp and snails (ONLY MTS!) at such break-neck speeds? Could it be potassium?? I dose it at the same ratio as all the other ferts, which is just enough for good growth (I started low, saw deficiencies, and slowly tweaked until algae and signs of deficiencies were eliminated). Is there a possibility that the copper test just sucks SO bad that it's COMPLETELY useless? what about the cuprisorb? I figured, even if there was some copper leaching into the water, a month of constant use would show a LITTLE color change in the cuprisorb.
Anyway, just let me reiterate how quickly things would die... within a few hours, I would see a few dead. Within 8 hours, most were dead. by 24 hours, the few stragglers succumbed as well. So the problem is more than a water parameter that is slightly out of whack... my water is POISON!
since people are going to ask my dosing levels, here is what i have begun to stabilize around...
daily dosing:
nitrogen - about 5ml
phosphorous - about 7ml
potassium - about 12ml
iron - about 8ml
flourish - about 5ml
trace - less than 1ml
the things I can test for are always at 0 (even if they shouldn't be - plants grow too fast!)
nitrates
nitrites
Fe
phosphates
ammonia
copper
So get creative people! Maybe the copper is stuck mostly in the gravel? (Affecting mostly the shrimp and MTS and not the snails on the plants and glass?). Should I get a potassium test kit? I miss my little shrimp friends! they were cute!