# Coral banded shrimp died while molting?



## xosux (Aug 22, 2008)

Hi,
This morning my coral banded shrimp was on it's back not moving but it's fin things by it's mouth was moving like normal. The back half of it's exoskeleton was gone and both pincers fell off. It did move a little before i left but not much. Some history, i've had it for one and a half years and the water perams are the same then and now. A week ago i bought a fluval fx5 for my 55 gallon tank ( and a 20 gallon refugium ) it works good but puts out a lot of little bubbles all the time. Can the bubbles have killed it and not the other inverts in my tank. Yesterday i went and bought fluval pre filter and some polyester fiber to put in the fx5. I cleaned and rinsed good with ro+di water before putting it in and that puts us up to this morning. Could it be the pre filter or polyester fiber? Any help will be appreciated.

Edit: Update on the little bubbles i have a skimmer that put's out on top of the fx5 return and it is putting the bubbles in and getting spread around.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

I doubt the bubbles had anything to do with it. Moulting is a risky time for shrimp, especially in aquaria. If the diet or water is lacking in, or too rich in, certain minerals it can cause the process to fail. Moulting shrimps can be used like coal-mine canaries in this way, being a good first indicator that something is wrong. It might be time for a big water change.


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## xosux (Aug 22, 2008)

I now think that could be the problem after you said water change. I usually do 5 gallon a week but i was on vacation for 2 weeks so they only got to eat while i was gone. I then did a 15 gallon change but that was 3 weeks ago. Since then i've my normal 5 gallon a week change. This should be good for a 55 gallon tank correct?


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Not exactly. 
If you always change 10% each week, then you are really changing less & less each week as you wind up changing new water from the previous week. 
A 10% change this week effectively becomes a 9% next week, and then less and less and less each subsequent week. It's not worth doing the math to figure it out exactly, ( _although it HAS been done here in this site_ ) but the the main thing to remember is to make bigger changes at least monthly to make up for this.

Anyway, without calcium, magnesium, and iodine tests and such, there's really no telling just exactly what happened. Just make sure to add a good Ca & Mg supplement regularly and feed your inverts well to help prevent this problem in the future, along with making better water changes.


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## xosux (Aug 22, 2008)

So do not do 5 gallon a week but do the 20% a month instead? My LFS said smaller weekly is better than large monthly for the fish. Thanks for your help.


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## xosux (Aug 22, 2008)

I just did some research and is it true their lifespan is 1-5 years? If so then mine lived a good life because it was full grown when i got it 2 1/2 years ago.


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## xosux (Aug 22, 2008)

I think i figured it out not. After getting back from vacation my RO+DI was 5ppm so i put new DI in and back to 0ppm. Only a few weeks later and I tested my RO+DI and it was 48ppm after DI and almost 200 before. This meens the DI was taking almost half since my water is almost 500ppm tap ( i know very hard water since it comes from an underground lime and calcium river ). I guess the membrane got messed up not being used for 2 weeks. I just flipped the switch and rinsed the membrane for 1 hour and boom back to 40ppm after membrane and 0ppm after DI. I 99.9% sure that did it since it was molting its body absorbed the contaminates way faster. Man that pisses me off i've put about 30 gallons of this in a 55 gallon tank in a few weeks. Now i will need to do major water changes over the next few days to correct it some. 
Thanks


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