my banded coral shrimp died :(

[trapstar]

i know i shouldnt have made this purchase. but, i went in to my local petco to buy a sponge filter and some seachem product. turns out i had reward points and they had a sale on a coral banded shrimp. with the sale and my points i paid $7 for him. i know everyone says dont buy fish and inverts from petco but i couldnt pass up deal. i asked what their parameters were and almost spot on to my tank except for temp was 2 degrees higher than mine. acclimated shrimp with slow drip for 30 mins and introduced to my tank. i have a 30g reef. 2 months old been cycled for about 3 weeks. damsel and a goby been in since cycle and thriving. introduced shrimp. went to bed woke up light feed to shrimp via flake and looked fine. im emt so off to work i went for 24hr shift. came back the next morning and found my cbs dead on my sandbed. i was soo sad i lost him i was looking forward to him in my tank. check my parameters and everything was still stable and in range. he didnt molt. idk why he passed and wondering if it was cause it was a "petco" purchase or some other reason. any ideas? pls give me help and feedback. btw im new to tanking and dont want this to affect anything else i put in tank. and my fish are still doing great

[seabass]

Could be a fluke, could be stress, could be how it was collected... it's hard to say. Most likely, it was of no fault of your own; however, I probably wouldn't have drip acclimated it (and would have just floated the bag for 20 minutes, to temperature acclimate).

[Mkus]

They are pretty tough cbs the only time I lost one was from a large salinity swing I added to much top off water most inverts are.

Was your salinity close to petco's?

[ajmckay]

Oh, it "died" did it?

 

So if I were to guess - they just told you what they thought their water parameters were at... But in reality it could have been much lower. Also maybe they had copper or some medication in the water? I think everyone has their own reasons for buying/not buying livestock at petco... I personally haven't had many good experiences. Seems like a lot of the stuff there is infected, the tank of bleached long tentacle anemones doesn't look very good, and for some reason while the fish/inverts are cheap the rock is super $$ and gross looking covered in hair algae. The fish I got at petco is still alive and doing well but their salinity was 1.018 so it took some work to gradually work it up to 1.025 which was a pain just to save $5 over what it cost at the lfs I normally buy from.

[Gooburz]

I don't normally buy from them either but I got a clownfish labeled as "Fancy Goldfish" for $3 and he is still alive 2 years later, Skunk shrimp that is 2 years old and was marked at $8. I had them in a QT tank for 2 months before they went into the DT and their salanity was very low too so that took time to acclimate them.

[seabass]

A refractometer comes in handy when testing the water in a bag. However, there is usually enough water to use a floating swing arm hydrometer. And in this case (unless there is a bubble on the arm) a hydrometer should be consistent enough to check specific gravity.

[Gooburz]

A refractometer comes in handy when testing the water in a bag. However, there is usually enough water to use a floating swing arm hydrometer. And in this case (unless there is a bubble on the arm) a hydrometer should be consistent enough to check specific gravity.

I've only ever used swing arm hydrometer for 3 years now and had no issues, just a couple light taps and bubbles gone and works great for me. It's been spot on with the LFS refractometer and I know they calibrate theirs

[seabass]

I've only ever used swing arm hydrometer for 3 years now and had no issues, just a couple light taps and bubbles gone and works great for me. It's been spot on with the LFS refractometer and I know they calibrate theirs

I agree. I have both a hydrometer and a refractometer, and I use the hydrometer almost all of the time. However, like you did, it's good to get it checked with a calibrated refractometer.