Help with Fire Shrimp

[ashtoreth]

Hi,

I just recently introduced a fire shrimp and a skunk cleaner shrimp into my 30gal with a firefish (there were two small clownfish in there before). It molted after two days in the tank but otherwise was active and scavenging for food but today I discovered it on it's side (this is 1-1.5 days after the molt) on the sand. It's legs still twitch a tiny bit from time to time but he's not moving and when I tried to net him there was no real response so I'm worried he's either dead or very very close to death (unless it's possible to molt multiple times in two days?). All my other fish and the cleaner seems to be doing fine but wanted to see if folks have any suggestions for what may have happened and if I need to test for anything else to make sure I don't lose anyone else?

I tested my tank after discovering this and everything was in line with how the water looked for the past few weeks:

Ammonia - 0 (I'm using API and when I used the standard amount of time for the test -- e.g. 5 minutes -- it's yellow, but when I left it for another 10-15 minutes, it started turning slightly green)
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 5-10
Temp - 76.7F
Salinity - 34.7ppt (the temp / salinity combo is pretty much always what my tank is at in the morning -- I've been checking every few days for the past 8 weeks)

Acclimation: My LFS said not to drip acclimate and given our salinity was pretty close (LFS was 33 and I'm in the mid 34 ppt), I took their advice and floated the bag to temp acclimate and then added a bit of tank water every 5 minutes until I doubled the volume and then poured out half the water (and did this 2 times).

The fire shrimp did have a single black spot on his shell when I got him but when he molted, the spot came off so we thought it was fine. He was out and scavenging for food before the molt but then the night after the molt he wasn't as active (but still moving around to different parts of the rock work -- just not onto the sand).

This morning I found him on his side in the sand and again some of his smaller legs on the underside would twitch / scurry a tiny bit from time to time but he's not moving or jerking when I net him so not sure if he's fully gone (he's turning a bit pale).

Any advice on what I should do? I don't want to remove him if there is a chance he will recover but also don't want to keep him in there if he's gone just for the sake of the other tank inhabitants.

My tank has been up for 2.5 months now -- ran a fishless 3-4 week cycle with Dr. TIm's and then had the clowns in there for 3 weeks before I added the firefish + 2 shrimps a few days ago.

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Inverts are very sensitive and should have a long acclimation period. Do you have any clean up crew or pods in the tank? They should tell you if something is dead.

Anyways when in doubt do a water change.

 

[ashtoreth]

The overall acclimation was probably 1.5 hrs? I don't have a CUC (assuming you don't count the cleaner shrimp) yet because I didn't think two small clowns would produce enough to keep them fed (haven't seen wild algae growth yet) so was waiting until I had more things in the tank to add. The cleaner shrimp just molted today so was worried about doing a water change right after it molted, especially given there has been nothing weird in my parameters. Should I be doing one anyway? Are there any things I should be looking out for with respect to the cleaner and how it acts after its molt that would give me some warning if he's also off? The fire shrimp was not as active after its molt but still moved from time to time so it didn't feel like anything was wrong until I discovered it lying unmoving in the sand.