Loaches Online Forum

Hi All,

I wanted to share this experience. I notice a lot of you feed salad shrimp to your clowns. Well I went ahead and tried it and they love it. I keep mostly clown and bosemani rainbows. I also have a school of rummy nose tetras. After feeding the shrimp every 3 days fro 2 weeks my rainbows developed tail rot. Nothng in my routine changed except for the addition of the shrimp. I have sinced stopped feeding the shrimp. I also did major water changes for a week. I did not medicate. The rainbows are healing. None of the other fish showed any signs of tail damage. Coincidence or are the shrimp not good for the rainbows?

I doubt very much that it was the shrimp itself that caused the tail-rot. Would you say you started adding more food than usual when using the shrimp, or did you cut down other foodstuffs accordingly? Were all water conditions ok?

Emma

i fed my 19 red bellied piranhas like 10 shrimp a day for prolly 6 months to gettem to grown from 2.5inches to about 5inches and never had a problem

i have had tail rot start two times over the last few years when the waste products in the tank buildup too much. this was caused by overfeeding and not cleaning the tank consistently. sometimes due to work and other factors. clean your tank. do a water change and vaccum out all the gravel. if you see a large amount of debris coming from your gravel then you may have excess waste in the tank. before i came to this site i only fed the loach two times a day. i now feed them 3-5. i do notice that yes i need to clean the tank quite often due to my gravel size. extra debris gets in the bottom of the gravel. the tank appears to be fine visually but deep down in the dark depths of the gravel is where all the gunk is!

i used melafix to treat the tail rot and everything was fine after a week.

Thanks for the replies. When feeding the shrimp, I did cut back on the other foods. My water change schedule remained the same--40 gallons every 4 days. My tank is over filtered with a wet/dry pushing 980 gph, and a HOB bio-wheel pushing 350 gph for a 125gallon tank and a lot of live plants. The only change in any routines was the shrimp. No other fish showed any signs of disease. I am at a loss for what caused it.....but they are continuing to heal.

Where the shrimp fresh or frozen? No additives where in place i presume?

This is a strange one.

They were pre-cooked. Packaged almost like a steak in the USA. Not frozen.Styrofoam package sealed with clear plastic with a label. No preservatives on the label.....just pre-cooked salad shrimp-they are small compared to cocktail shrimp, or prawns.