Just How Sensitive Are Shrimp To Copper?

[AnotherFineMess]

I am planning on bringing in some RCS in 1-2 weeks to add to one of my livebearer tanks. Never tried to keep shrimp before, so I'm a tad bit excited to get some! But I hear they are sensitive to copper. The plant supplement I use contains .00001% copper, per dose or per bottle I'm not sure, though I'm not dosing at full strength anyway and only once a week at best (usually less), I tend to be a rather lazy plant keeper! But they grow well, so why change what works, right?

I do dose the tanks growing out snails lightly with this food, and haven't noticed any losses there, in fact they're breeding like mad! Would the miniscule amount of copper contained in this supplement harm the shrimp in any way?

 

[Baccus]

Red Cherry shrimp are amazingly hardy and forgiving, a small amount of cooper given mainly to plants infrequently shouldn't bother them as long as you keep up your other usual water change practices and frequency. One of the sinking shrimp pellest that I feed my various cat fish (although all the fish like to pick at them) contain cooper and I have watched my cherry shrimp chow down on the pellets with no ill effects.

Crystal Red, Crystal Black or any of the rarer (more line bred) types of shrimp I would be very careful about having cooper with.

 

[raptorrex]

I've always totally avoided copper.

All i know is amounts over 0.01mg/l are said to be deadly to inverts.
http/edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa165My link

 

[Baccus]

Yes I was always told that any amount of cooper is lethal to shrimp (hence my low tech no fert plantings of my tanks), but after reading the labels on all of the readily available fish foods in my local pet shops they all contain some cooper traces.

I think you would mostly run into problems with cooper if the tank was not fairly heavily planted, and other water change maintence wasn't carried out on a regular basis.

 

[raptorrex]

Yes I was always told that any amount of cooper is lethal to shrimp (hence my low tech no fert plantings of my tanks), but after reading the labels on all of the readily available fish foods in my local pet shops they all contain some cooper traces.

I think you would mostly run into problems with cooper if the tank was not fairly heavily planted, and other water change maintence wasn't carried out on a regular basis.

that sounds right, providing the copper does not go over the level stated, above. however much planting your tank has.