When a berried female Cherry Shrimp molt, they may end up shedding their eggs along with their shell. As a result, the eggs may eventually get eaten or mold. To prevent this behavior from happening, you can take a look at this guide from Aquarium Blueprints.
In order to stop your pregnant shrimps from shedding the eggs there are carrying, we suggest keeping the water parameters in your fish tank as stable as possible.
How to avoid doing water changes in a shrimp tank to prevent them from shedding eggs
To prevent your berried female Cherry Shrimps from molting, you should avoid doing water changes if possible.
Before doing a water change, you should test out the ammonia, nitrites and nitrate levels in your aquarium. To keep your pet inverts healthy, you should aim for the following:
- 0 ppm of ammonia
- 0 ppm of nitrites
- Less than 20 ppm of nitrates
If your test kit shows the aforementioned levels, then you don’t need to do a water change at all.
If your test kit shows more than 0 ppm of ammonia and/or nitrites, then we recommend using Seachem Prime to detoxify these nitrogen waste compounds. You should dose this product once every 48 hours to keep your shrimp safe ammonia and/or nitrite poisoning.
If you test kit shows more than 20 ppm of nitrates, then you can try reducing it by adding a specialized filter media such as Seachem De Nitrate or Seachem Matrix.
How to avoid Cherry Shrimps from shedding their eggs after a water change
If you absolutely need to do a water change, then we recommend that you take the following steps in order to prevent your berried shrimps from shedding the eggs they are carrying:
1. To begin, remove water from the tank.
When taking water out, you should avoid accidentally taking out any shrimps, especially the pregnant ones as you may cause them to drop their eggs.
2. Next, you need to slowly add new water back into the tank through the drip-feed method.
In order to do so, use an airline tubing and place once end of the tubing in the container that has the new water and the other end on top of the aquarium. You then need to use your mouth to suck the water from the container to start the siphon to your aquarium. Finally, you can tie airline tubing to restrict the water flow so that you can getting one drop of new water per second.
Keep drip-feeding new water in your fish tank until to refill it to the previous level.
With this method, you will give your shrimps plenty of time to adjust to the changing water parameters, which should make the berried female shrimps less likely to molt and shed their eggs.
Creating the ideal environment for pregnant female Cherry Shrimps
Last but not least, we also suggest that you create a healthy and stress-free environment for your pregnant female Cherry Shrimps to prevent them from abandoning their eggs.
