Help! I'm a clueless shrimp owner!

[sploot]

Hi!
I started a small 20 ℓ planted tank about 3-4 months ago. The plants and moss have been doing really well and my tanks usual temp is 24°c. I ended up with some ramhsorn snails from the plants. I started out with 4 red Cherry shrimp as a trial run about two months ago. At first they did really well they molted often and were really active and grazed the whole time and I fed them small amounts every few days. One disappeared about 2 weeks in. Two have grown really big since I got them. From the fact that she had a saddle I decided she must be a female and the one drunkenly chasing her must be a male despite his body shape not fitting male descriptions. Anyway a week and a half ago they chased each other around and then vanished. Only appearing occasionally and never together. Occasionally as in I've seem each of them twice since then. I have one little shrimp puttering around between the moss all day. Anyway, she still had the saddle when I saw her last. Why are they behaving like this? We had a series of power outages that made the temperature drop to about 14 °c at least 3 times but its stopped. Have I possibly done something wrong? They weren't afraid of me before and despite the power outages not much has changed. Ive fed them a little less as the snail population went wild but only the little one comes to eat now. I do regular water changes, I have a filter and an air stone, an led light, plants and a heater. What have I done/ should I do? (Also am I being a noob?)

 

[StevenF]

Shrimp will hid occasionally when they need to molt. However if I reed this right you only have 2 out of the 4 orinals left + one juvenal? you might want to check your water hardness. If the water is too hare or too soft the shrimp may die when they try to molt.

 

[Sege]

Shrimp will hid occasionally when they need to molt. However if I reed this right you only have 2 out of the 4 originals left + one juvenal? you might want to check your water hardness. If the water is too hare or too soft the shrimp may die when they try to molt.

I agree with 'StevenF' if your hardness is too hard or too soft the shrimp could molt and a death could occur. How long ago did the power outages occur? They could have gone into shock from the sudden temperature change. I would be really careful if you move anything like decorations around in there. The juvenile that you are talking about seems to like to mosey around in the moss no? Red Cherry Shrimp aren't generally shy but get flustered easily from my experience. If the originals are still hiding in a few days they are molting and should leave them alone for a little while longer. The molting process can take up to 3 days in total. The preparation for molting takes much longer than when they are actually molting. So I think that the reason that they are hiding from you isn't because they are afraid of you, but rather they are in the stage of the molting process. Wait another day or so and they should start to reappear. If not then they have a different problem.
I hope this helps.

~Sege

 

[sploot]

Shrimp will hid occasionally when they need to molt. However if I reed this right you only have 2 out of the 4 orinals left + one juvenal? you might want to check your water hardness. If the water is too hare or too soft the shrimp may die when they try to molt.

Hey! Thank you for commenting. i left on holiday for a short period and had my brother take care of them and upon returning found the third one has reappeared. i discovered two molts when i did the water change and they seem back to their previous active selves. Im starting to think that the sudden changes in temperature had affected them much more than i originally thought. thank you for your advice, ive bought a testing kit to check my water just in case.

 

[NickAu]

Shrimp feel safe in numbers, add another 10 to the tank and they will come out of hiding more.

The more the merrier