Robertshrimpguy

Hi everyone. I recently rescaped my shrimp tank and added a Matten filter. The Matten filter is made from black reticulated foam with a PPI of 30, there is no flame retardant treatment applied to this foam, some clean PVC and an airstone. I drained out the tank while keeping my shrimp in a bucket with a heater and an air stone along with my old sponge filter. I re-scape the tank and installed a Matten filter. I refilled the tank back up with the old tank water plus 30% new RO water. I took the heater out of the bucket and put it back in the tank and started to re-add all of my shrimp to the tank. I put my sponge filter back into the tank so there would still be a lot of beneficial bacteria. The next morning I woke up and all 6 of my otocinculus catfish have died. Over the next few days I am slowly losing all of my shrimp friends and it's breaking my heart. They're stressed, moving slowly and sparingly, and not eating much at all. I have no idea what I've done wrong. I regret it so much. I thought it would be fun to update my tank and filter as ive learned so much since I've started. However all I've done is kill all of my friends. Does anyone have any advice? What did I do wrong? Why is the tank now killing them when there's nothing new in the tank besides a sponge Matten filter? Is there anything I can do to the save the rest? All water tests come back perfectly clean. Even with zero nitrate as I siphoned the substrate after they were placed in the bucket. PLEASE HELP

Hey all, hope everyone is doing well. About 2 weeks ago I started up my second shrimp tank. The tank is currently going through a fishless cycle. There is a massive population of detritius worms, and it gets worse every day. There is no fish or shrimp to create waste so I'm assuming they're thriving off of something in my ADA Aquasoil. The tank still has a long time to cycle as the ADA required the first week of tank set up to consist of huge daily water changes to reduce cloudyness. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to get rid of or at least reduce the numbers of these worms. I see a lot of people say to feed less and do water changes and they'll go away mostly on their own. However, they're growing in numbers every day and since it's fishless obviously I'm not putting any food in there. Any advice would help greatly. Thank you! Water parameters if it helps: Amon: 2 Trite: 0 Trate: 3 Gh: 1 Kh: 0 TDS: 40

Thank you so much for your reply to me. My tank is almost three months old now and I have just come to live with the little things all over my glass and rocks. Out of the 20 shrimp I've gotten of all different varieties of neo shrimp, only 2 have passed away so I have come to believe that whatever this is, is harmless. Nothing seems to be bothered by it, and I believe my Oto catfish are even eating it. My water levels are near perfect and I couldn't be happier with how everything turned out. This is my first time getting into this hobby and I'm absolutely loving it. Thanks again for the reply. Maybe one day I'll stumble across an answer. Although seemingly harmless, I'm always craving more knowledge on things. Cheers!

A few weeks ago I started my very first shrimp tank. I started noticing a bunch of small white dandelion looking growths all over the glass and filter of my tank. They're so small you can hardly see them with your eyes unless you're looking very closely. They're attached by a small filiment, and extend into a white parashoot/dandelion fluff that moves in the waters current. There is thousands of them. I redid my tanks substrate (due to having way too much) and decided to take that time to rub it all off. A few days after getting everything set back up, they're back. My amanos and red cherries don't eat it to what I've seen. I have been to 40+ different forum threads on websites all over the internet, and while some people have the same thing, not a single person has been able to identify what this is. Any help on this subject would be awesome! Below are my tanks parameters, and attached is a very good extremely zoomed in close up of a couple "blooms" of this stuff. The pic is clear but VERY blown up, I can't stress enough how small these things are. Fractions of milimeters. 10 gal tank Nat Geo LED lighting on for 10ish hours a day Sponge filter rated for 50gal tank 6.5-7.0 pH 0 ammonia 0 nitrites 10-15 nitrates 2-3 gH (yes I know this is low for shrimp I'm working to fix) Thank you very much in advance for all your help! I can't seem to find the answer anywhere!!