Plant Die-off

The main reason I use ebay is that I have an account already and I can pay by paypal. Too many other shops want a debit/credit card.

Hi Sue, Steve and Jesnon,
Steve – I did not mean to portray you as a “in-house police”. It was meant to be rather flattering, in fact – a sane person around with logic... And as for the heat – you are in London, aren’t you? It is probably the only place in the UK where it is colder than it used to be in summers of the last few years but it is actually much warmer elsewhere! My recollection of the last summer (hugely inaccurate and exaggerated) is of a one with rain non-stop 24/7 and the daytime temperatures being somewhat “not right” – about +12 to + 15...with an occasional “balmy day” with a “hot” +18 and just clouds... Last summer with a few days with +23 or so here was in 2006, if I remember correctly... You lucky Londoners!
Sue, - thanks for the kind words! I simply cannot just ignore things when I can help – and this will (hopefully) help aquarium fauna and flora (which is, in a way, also “aquatic pets” as they are living things)...
I think temperature wise your Salvinia will be fine in a tub but it has got rather used to the aquarium water which will be different to tap water, so I would pop it back in... With the flaps open – it is certainly a thing to try. There are a few unknown “parameters” like: how much air movement around your tanks (people passing, doors/windows open/closed, etc.). Anyway, it is certainly worth a try. I would separate the Salvinia into two portions and add it to each tank – and see what happens. It may be it will be doing better in one than in another...
As for the Beta G: it contains Beta Glucans (sorry, this is obvious, really). Beta Glucans are known to help shrimp keepers/breeders – the ones which deal with more challenging shrimp. The reports are that the mortality rates are significantly reduced when adding Beta Glucans. In any case – this is not a miracle cure but it helps and if even it does not (something else is causing shrimp’s mortality) it is absolutely harmless and I think that it is at least neutral or possibly even quite good for fish as well. I have a tank with rare wild caught in China Caridinas. I have had a few deaths which was frustrating and expensive – at £8 + per shrimp. I started adding Beta G and I have not had any fatalities for a while now. As I accidentally bought two packets and only a small amount is needed every time, I thought I would start adding Beta G to every tank during a water change (some of them have shrimps and some don’t). I have not noticed any significant improvement in my fish but they are all fundamentally healthy so I could not expect them to be “even better”, really... The fish are ranging from Burmese Rosy loaches to Melanotaenia Australis with anything in between...
Jesnon, -first of all: thanks! I do get frustrated by militant ignorance and lack of common sense – this is true... but my intensions at all times are to put things right (ONLY when I know the answer!). Steve is absolutely right about the little plantlets on your Windelov fern – they are little “babies”! What slightly – only slightly! – concerns me is the fact they are produced in numbers (if I understood this correctly). They do produce one or two over a long period but they start producing more either if they are very happy or very unhappy (survival instinct in plants, believe it or not!). “Unhappy” is most likely, to be honest... So, if your main plant is not spreading and growing new leaves but just producing plantlets in quantities – then there might be a slight problem. This is not anything to panic about – it all can be resolved...

... And as for the heat – you are in London, aren’t you? It is probably the only place in the UK where it is colder than it used to be in summers of the last few years but it is actually much warmer elsewhere!

Do I get the impression that the rest of the country has been swanning round in swimsuits and spf30 whilst I have been shivering in my long-johns and winter duvet! Swines! 

Is this just luck, or are different shrimp species more prone to bacterial infections?

To use some of my logic (See post above  ) it would seem plain that this may be so.  Your Cherries are Neocaridina heteropoda. So are a load of other types of shrimp; there's "red" "yellow" "bumble bee" "blue", "rili", and loads of others. These are colour varieties produced by selective breeding. This is probably not going to end well; much like guppies!

It reminds me of a similar thing I encountered in Germany when I worked there a while ago.  I ended up in this tiny place miles from anywhere. As I fought my way blearily through my mental fog the first morning in town (tiredness, definitely not a hangover as one of my so-called colleagues remarked!), I kept getting accosted by this ugly little sod, sorry german, with the look of quasimodo about him. It was only after he started yammering on about bells and calling me Esmerelda for the umpteenth time that I cottoned onto the fact that it was actually many ugly sods not just one.  They could all have been "cast from the same mould" as any campanologist might put it!  Inbreeding in action!

It's wet and miserable here - where d'you guys live who've got good weather?

Resa will now tell us exactly how hot and sunny it is in the South of France

Ahh Sue - so it was your husband we owe the good weather to! Make sure he has more holidays please 

My Beta-G arrived yesterday - I didn't finish work until 10 so haven't done anything with it yet (miraculously it actually fit in my postbox for a change and I didn't need to arrange for redelivery!). I'll be adding that today at some point and hopefully I'll be sticking to 4 shrimps (plus any babies...!) for a long time!

Steve is absolutely right about the little plantlets on your Windelov fern – they are little “babies”! What slightly – only slightly! – concerns me is the fact they are produced in numbers (if I understood this correctly). They do produce one or two over a long period but they start producing more either if they are very happy or very unhappy (survival instinct in plants, believe it or not!). “Unhappy” is most likely, to be honest... So, if your main plant is not spreading and growing new leaves but just producing plantlets in quantities – then there might be a slight problem. This is not anything to panic about – it all can be resolved...

Hmm I suspect you're right that it's not good news! I think to be honest I haven't had much luck with this plant since I got it... I had an absolute nightmare trying to attach it to my bogwood in the first place and not being the most patient person and struggling with fiddly things like that I kept getting angrier and angrier! I took off all the babies when I did my last water change but the whole thing is looking a little barren to be honest... I think the problem I had from square one was attaching it to the wood, and even now whenever I move the wood to gravel clean underneath / search for missing shrimp parts of the plant just float off! Since I got my typical java fern I think I realised I made a huge mistake separating out the roots of the plant so much when I should have left them in one big clump

In better news the other plants seem much happier... so I'm not really sure what to do about this java!

Ooh that's annoying and very strange! Hopefully it's just delayed in the post. If it helps I was utterly bewildered by how to properly dose it in my tank and added a very small blob (since apparently 1/5 of the spoon is for 100l! So that's... 1/25 for me!?... I'm waiting until you get yours and have worked it out!! However I did also finally find my shrimp's food that I lost for ages which they seemed happy with. I'm wondering whether I should try and get a couple more shrimps - maybe at least one other definite male? Since I'm hoping they have little shrimpy babies at some point!

I think I might have to do that I had no luck with string!

Well today I found a shrimp skin and my 4 shrimp still alive and well so hopefully this is a good sign!

I think I may have lost another of my shrimps... no sign of my fourth shrimp since I got back from work this morning. However I had this problem the other day and found her a while later so I'm hoping that's the case today...

Hi Natalia - I think I phrased my post clumsily. What I meant was that I had actually had a shrimp go through a moult successfully as evidenced by the shed skin, and done it all by itself. I meant to say that I wasn't attributing it to Beta G as a 'miracle cure' because I hadn't added any yet.

I wasn't sure if the bacterial infections affected all shrimp or whether only certain species became infected by any given bacterium, similar to neon tetra disease not affecting different species of fish. And I do realise that different species of shrimps will react differently in the same way that neons are more delicate than, say, harlequin rasboras.

Do I understand you to mean that my tank will have different bacteria in it than the shop tank, so the shrimps might have been affected by not having resistance to my tank bacteria? In the same way that students arriving at university for the first time come down with all sorts of infections as they are not 'used to' the the water etc in their new homes.


The cherry shrimps are in the same tank as male endlers and pygmy cories. The endlers spend most of their time (or at least when I'm watching them) chasing each other. But the cories spend their time in and out of the decor on the bottom of the tank. Would either of these stress the shrimps badly? I do have baby cories in the tank.....
I would love to keep these shrimps in their own tank. I could move the endlers into the 125 litre, but with Apistigramma cacatuoides and Ambastaia sidthimunki in there I won't risk the cories. And my husband would go mad if I set up another tank 

Hi Sue,
Ah, O.K. I was worried that you thought about Beta G as of something “one thing solves all you problems”...
I just re-read my post and I can see how my work affects my posts. I write about 200 emails a day most of which can be interpreted legally if the need would be (a dispute, claim, etc.), so I tend and need to use quite a specific language. I just realised that it affects me in my private life. Whenever I write something factual, I tend to “slip” into that official language... So, my post does sound "official" (sigh...)...
Yes, this is what I believe after reading about and from my own experience – your comparison to students is spot on. The more shrimps are moved around the more they are affected. You LFS tanks will be different to yours but it is even worse when the shrimps are moved to your LFS from even further afield and then to your home tank. This is a lot of stress and a lot of new bacteria to cope with. That’s where Beta G is supposed to help (I cannot fault it from my experience, really).
Pygmy corries are fine with the Cherries – I keep them together. I do not have experience of keeping them with Endlers though. Size wise, habits wise, etc. they should be O.K. in theory as far as I can judge, I think one of the indicators of a happy shrimp is that they do not hide all the time (some hiding is perfectly normal) but swim around freely when they feel like it – with all fish around. Happy shrimps just go about their business completely ignoring the fish or even (like mine often do) treating the fish in the same way as plants or decor – just “something on their way” (mine regularly land on the fish using them as a sort of “landing point” or an object convenient to be on at the moment for whatever reason – mainly getting closer to food).
Hi Jesnon, Hmm, maybe Endlers are not so angelic, indeed. Since I kept Guppies as I child, I sort of went “done this before” when I returned to fish keeping later on, so I never had Guppies or related Endlers... I don’t know but they may be prone to hunting down shrimps' babies as well (they are quick so they have a good chance). So, maybe some fluffy real or artificial plant will help... Another thought – when you go to get some more shrimps, it is good to try to get them from some local aquarium enthusiast selling them rather than a shop – they will be born in a water similar to yours and not shipped from far away (as many LFS’s ones are). Aquarist classified, Ebay – have a look if there is anything available.