Figured out why I keep having shrimp die. What do you use?

[JMLenke]

Checked my fish food last night and way down buried in the ingredients of ALL my flake is Copper Sulfate.

What flake are you shrimp keepers using?

[ingg]

I feed the shrimp hikari crab cuisine.

I still use tetra flake for the fish.

[DelawareJim]

Mine like Omega One shrimp pellets, veggie rounds, and Brine Shrimp Direct's golden pearls. What they really go crazy for though is worm poo. Drop about a half teaspoon of that in the tank and I have every shrimp in the tank swarming over it in about 5-10 minutes. I'll bring some tomorrow.

Cheers.
Jim

[RTRJR]

Checked my fish food last night and way down buried in the ingredients of ALL my flake is Copper Sulfate.

What flake are you shrimp keepers using?

Copper is a required micro-nutrient by just about all living critters. The trick is to not have too much. I use a wide assortment of standard foods, flakes and pellets (including crab cuisine), ground a bit, and generally mixed together. Copper may kill shrimp before it does fish, but if they have absolutely none (not an easy thing) they will die as well.

Lead is one of the few thingss you might find in tanks that has no metabolic use at all, other than as a poison.

[Aaron]

Tetra Tropicals Crisps is a good one for fish and shrimp tanks.

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Cant be the food. Was the tank ever treated with Copper sulphate?
It makes its way into the silicone and slowly leeches out over time. I had
a used 10G that had the same issue. Any inverts introduced into it would
die in a matter of a few days. Tossed the tank. Replaced with a new 10G
and the problem stopped. This was back when I was TRYING to breed shrimp.

[SCMurphy]

This was back when I was TRYING to breed shrimp.

Figured out that they liked trying on their own without your help, huh? (pictures dimmed lights and soft music in the fish room)

[RTRJR]

Copper plates out even on the glass, and very much on the substrate (gravel at least, I have never used it with planted substrates, so no info) as well as the silicone. I confess that I have used copper rarely - but any tank used for such, and all equipment involved, is either tossed or reserved in case I ever need to use it again. Excess copper is too lasting for me.

[JMLenke]

Well about a week after all this, I seem to have gotten it under control. This is after doing a couple of 30-50% water changes, changing to a different food and setting two houseplants that I am trying to get to come back to life off the back of the tank (one decided to sink to the bottom and sprout/root into the substrate). I have lost one shrimp and I think that was just due to the heat from driving from the Bog tour to scales and back home.