help my poor shrimp, frogspawn?

[skinz78]

I have been having trouble with peppermint, and cleaner shrimp. also frogspawn, hammer, bubble, pulsing xenia, and beleve it or not kenya tree coral.
So here is what is happening, my shrimp do fine throughout acclimation. I use the air line drip method for a better part of an hour. When I add the shrimp to my tank they pretty much go comatose and die within 2 hours. This is very puzzeling to me because I have many blue leg hermits, 3 emrald crabs and a pistol shrimp. They have been in my tank for more than six months and are doing fine. Also when I put hammer, bubble, or frogspawn in my tank they close up instantly and die within 24 hours. I use the same acclimation on these too. The kenya tree and the xenia I added to my tank on last saturday. The kenya tree slumped over and is dieing and the xenia hasen't opened yet but still looks ok.
The wierd thing is that I have many many corals, many zoo's, mushrooms, 4 open brain's, 3 montiporas, plate coral, cloves, 5 acropora's, 3 crocea clams, 1 maxima clam, 1 giga's clam, + many others and they are all doing awesome. My tank has a pretty swift current in it. even though closed up the xenia is moving arround alot.

My water is:
alk 180
ph 7.0
nitrates 0.0
nitrites 0.0
copper 0.0
sg 1.025
temp 80deg
my copper was like 450 last time I checked

so there ya go, any suggestions??

Thanks,
Chris

[BONDQ]

Originally posted by skinz78

my copper was like 450 last time I checked

Copper + Reef Tank = Death to everything but Fish.

Remove your copper immediately.

Your pH needs to be higher at about 8.2. Also, verify your Alk.

Do water changes to get that copper out, as well as correcting the pH. Carbon would be helpful here.

[airtime23]

Not sure, but your pH seens quite low....I thought that 8.2-8.4 was ideal.

Also, copper is lethal to corals...how did you get that much copper in there to begin with?

I would suggest doing a massive water change.

[omni2226]

I beleive he meant calcium not copper.

You have a lot of diffrent corals mixed together. It could be chemical warfare causing the deaths.

[skinz78]

sorry I did mean calcium. not copper lol I would have to dump $100.00 in penny's in there to get that.

alk is 180
my ph test kit go's from 8.0 to 8.5 no in between
it looks to be in between 7.0 and 7.5

thanks again,
Chris

[skinz78]

any other advice??

thanks,
Chris

[lakwriter]

go get a new pH test kit for more accurate readings.

[HoopsGuru]

I agree, you need a better test kit. If your PH is that low, you can count this as a likely culprit as even a .2 change in PH is very stressful, and likely an hour of dripping is not matching the conditions. It is far too low regardless. I also am not sure what your alk represents, typically it is shown in dkh or meq/l so I can't really reference what you are at. Are you keeping the temp stable while you are acclimating?

You can rule out chemical warfare, while it does occur it would not cause an immediate death, and would have no impact on your shrimp.

[Zoom]

Last time i acclimate shrimp was for a good part of the day .
large scale of salinity differece will kill them instantly .
So you need to do alat more than one hour of acclimation .
Check the water the shrimp come in with and see how much different it is with a good set of test kits, and then you can adjust your time i know take me to acclimate my shrimp from water salinity of 1.022 SG to 1.025 SG about four hours for the shrimps and about two for corals and fish, to be on the safe side.

[skinz78]

thanks again everyone,
I do admit I need a better test kit, the one I have is one of those 5 way test strip kits. I didn't know ph was that hard on critters. The manager at my local Petco said to check the salinity in my tank and at that time it was about 1.028 so I have lowered it. He also said that Petco's tend to keep thier saltinity level very low like 1.018 to help ward off pests on the fish. But I now wonder if they do the same for inverts? But to take the blame off of them I have bought shrimp from a very reputible lfs and they instantly died too. The only reason I thought copper may be a factor was because in my old house it had copper plumbing and was a problem for my water then. My new house has all plastic pipes so no problems now.

thanks,
Chris

[HoopsGuru]

PH goes in powers of 10, so figure if the PH at the LFS is 8.2 and you may be at 7.0....your tank water has 10x the amount of hydrogen ions. One "expert" equates an immediate .2 difference as being like living in the tropics and being instantly transported to Antartica....naked. I figure, if your PH is that far off...other things we don't commonly test for may be out of balance as well...making a lethal soup.

[reverendmaynard]

Well, there's no way the PH is really 7.0 or everything would be dead and the rocks and sand would probably be dissolved too.

If you can afford it, I'd get a PH monitor rather than another test kit. The kits are time consumig and near impossible to read, while a monitor will give you constant, instantaneous, accurate readings. I recommend the pinpoint.

What are you testing your SG with? It could be way off. Existing livestock may be acclimated to it, but new additions are not getting enough of an acclimation period. IMO, this is the most likely reason for the problems your having.

Try testing the SG of the water from the bags the new additions come in. Even if your testing method in inaccurate, you'll still be able to tell the relative difference. If it's a difference of more than .002, a 1 hour acclimation is likely not enough for the shrimp, or corals for that matter.

Your best bet is probably to use a QT tank. With nothing already in it, you can change the QT tank's water to match the bag water, rather than the other way around, and then slowly change the QT tank to match your display over several days/weeks.