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I have had cherry shrimp for about 4 or 5 months now. Several days ago they began to die one by one- it seems to be mostly the larger/older shrimp dying. I've lost about 3 or 4 at this point. The tank is 10 gallons, planted with Egeria, Java Fern, Java Moss, a little Moneywort and what might be Green Hendge. Here's the rundown:

10G
ph 7.1
GH + kH unknown, but I believe the water to be quite hard
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5-10
Stocking:
1 small Ram
4 Cardinal Tetras
3 Glo Lite Tetras
2 Otos
3 or 4 Amano shrimp
10-15 Cherry shrimp

The Ram does not harass the living shrimp at all, which I found suprising. He does, however, seem to snack on the dead ones.

I have several suspected causes, but can't narrow down which might be the problem:
1.) Several weeks ago I added vermiculite under the gravel to help the plants. I have read that this is a safe, inexpensive substrate for planted tanks, but have never heard of anyone using it with shrimp.
2.) There is one Flourish fertilizer tab in the substrate, and I've been dosing about .2 ml of Flourish once or twice a week. These contain trace amounts of copper. (.001% for the tablet, .0001% for the liquid)
3.) I have switced from using Flourish Excel for carbon to using one of the Hagen natural CO2 systems. For those not familiar, it is essentially a DIY-style CO2 unit with yeast in a bottle connected to a plastic diffuser. Since doing this, my pH has dropped from 7.6 down to about 7.0-7.2. Sorry I can't give more exact numbers, but the test kit is difficult to read. I do not have a kH test kit, so I am not able to measure ppm of CO2 in the tank. The deaths seem to have begun shortly after adding the CO2 system.

None of the other animals in the tank show any signs of distress, including the Amano shrimp. Is old age a possible explanation for the Red Cherry deaths? What is the life expectancy on these shrimp? They were quite young when I first recieved them in August.

I am considering removing some or all of the shrimp to an empty 5G tank without CO2 until I can sort out the problem, but I'm a little concerned about moving them from the 7.1 pH water to the 7.6 that comes out of the tap, since they have already suffered through one pH change.

Has anyone here used Flourish and Flourish tabs without incident? How about vermiculite substrate? I didn't think the CO2 would be a problem since it is a rather low output, DIY type unit in a tank with what I think is rather hard water, but I could be wrong. Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer about this situation.

I don't know about the plant products, but it's probably the copper or lack of iodine.


Kim

Im think it may be the copper.. i think i remember reading that copper is something iverts cannot handle.. someone correct me if im wrong.. but i would cut out any ferts that have copper in them asap to see if that takes care of the problem.

-CJ