Red Cherry Shrimp Unfiltered?

[Noahsfish]

I'm down to 5 red cherry Shrimp, they've been dieing like crazy in my planted 10g. They're housed there with nothing else but crystal reds, which weirdly enough are doing great...the ph is sitting around 6.5, nitrites and ammonia 0. I'm out of reading for nitrates, but if my crystals are fine then that can't be it. Plus I do water changes every 3 days of 25%. This particular tank doesn't have carbon as it's well planted, also has dw.

Anyways I can't figure out why they're dieing, it can't be old age as these are fairly young (7-9 months) and about 2 a day have been dieing...I can't move them into other tanks as they'll most likely get eaten. And their original home (2.5 gallon) is currently being used by a friends dwarf puffer..so that brings me to my question, could RCS live in a non filtered tank? Not even a tank really, like the size of one of those "cricket" holders? Probably nothing bigger than a gallon and a half at most. The plants I would put in there would be tons of java moss, maybe a few anubias, some marimos, and I might even float a bit of BBTS(although I wouldn't be dosing anything in it)sooooo, do you think I could pull this off? Or should I just keep them in the 10g and see if this pattern continues until they're all gone. There's something wrong with the tank but I can't figure out what, and I might just end up trying to make a wall of java moss in one of my other tanks so they have at least a fighting chance. Also with the unfiltered tank, would temp. Be a problem? At coldest it gets maybe 60 in the room they'd be going in. Again, it'd be 5 RCS

 

[VickyChaiTea]

Hmmm... have you tested your hardness? The calcium may be too low, especially in such acidic water. Alternatively, they could be succumbing to some kind of infection or old age. (they may have been old when you got them)
 
To answer your question- I'm pretty sure you could pull it off. I've seen plenty of nano tanks with RCS. So long as it's heavily planted and you keep the water quality very high I don't see a problem. BUT keeping them in the 10 would be easier and preferable. I'd just keep them in there and see if you can do more extensive tests on your water.
 
Also, you could test your tap for copper. And check the ingredients list on their food for any potentially harmful things like ethoxyquin, copper sulfate, etc.

 

[Noahsfish]

I used to dose win flourish and flourish excel, but I stopped that when I found out they had copper sulfate in them, (3-4 months ago) they couldn't be from old age as I've had these their whole lives. My water is fairly hard at around 120 gh. As for keeping them in the 10 that's the obvious best answer, but I may try switching them to a different tank just to see if they die anyways. Also if anyone knows what this means I've noticed that on some of their heads/backs it's a little bit yellow, never noticed this before they were dieing.