RCS troubles

[neilanh]

I keep RCS in my nano, as well as in my 20 gallon tank. I don't know what happens, but they all do well for several weeks, then I have mass deaths. I feed them a small amount daily, a choice of crab cuisine, algae wafers, veggie wafers, or shrimp pellets, etc. The 20, where most of them reside, is pretty heavily planted with all my overflow plants. I dose EI loosely (read I'm not doing a great job of daily dosing with working night shift). I also dose a drop or two of Kents Calcium every other week or so.

What am I doing wrong? I've heard that ferts can have this affect, and suspect this to be the case, but I also know of numerous people with similiar setups to mine that have no issues.

The water here in ashburn is pretty soft, typically around 4 dKh if that matters, and water parameters are spot on, 0 ammo, 0 NO2, and low NO3.

CO2 is injected to about 35-40ppm.

Ideas?

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Your CO2 is fairly high. Goals should be 25-30 ppm.

[Jeff120]

Also check you food for copper

[neilanh]

Thanks guys, I'll lower the CO2 a bit and see if that helps. I have another group of them inbound next week, as it seems all but about 5 or so have gone missing.

It may be that they're just hiding, I have only found about 5 bodies of the 40 or so I know were in there. They were all juvies, so I may just not be able to find them, hard as I look.

I'll double check my foods as well, but I did check that before I thought and wasn't finding anything.

Thanks!

[ingg]

Try not feeding for 2 days, drop a food pellet or two along the front glass, and only there - they'll come to it if they are there.