When looking into your tank, you may notice that a few of your Red Cherry Shrimps may have long stringy feces latching on from their behinds. So, should you be concern for your pet inverts? You can find out in this article from Aquarium Blueprints.
Based on our experience, you should have nothing to worry about when it comes to your Neocaridina Shrimps having long stringy stools that are stuck to their backside. As long as you see them swimming, eating and/or doing other normal activities, then they should be healthy.
It should be noted that whatever your shrimp was eating before going to the bathroom will be reflected in the color of the feces. When we feed the Glass Garten Mineral Junkie Bites to our Red Cherry Shrimps, for example, their stools will end up being white as it is the same color as the sticks.
Since it is perfectly safe to see long feces coming out of the rear ends of your Chery Shrimps, then you don’t have to do anything as it should eventually fall off on its own.
If you want to remove it, then you can try scaring your shrimp, which will cause it to dash away. The force is usually strong enough to force the stool to fall off. With that said, this method will also cause the same shrimp to stressed out; so, we recommend that you just let nature takes it course.
It is important to note that Red Cherry Shrimps have a very low bioload. Therefore, the loose stool can be left alone in the tank without causing any major issues when it comes to ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.
For the uninformed, ammonia and nitrites are both very toxic to the Neocaridina species. If you have a fully cycled tank, then its biological filtration should be able to take care of these two compounds unless there is a sudden huge spike.
While nitrates aren’t as toxic, these can build up overtime. In this case, you should make sure that you perform regular water changes in order to prevent the nitrate levels from reaching over 20 ppm.
Having live plants should also help reduce the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate concentration.
