difference in "quality" in cleaner shrimp between LFS and CPS

[Thomasflynn15]

I recently bought a cleaner shrimp from Petco that died a couple of days after I drip-acclimated it for about an hour. Nothing wrong with the parameters. This is the second chain pet store cleaner shrimp I bought that died suddenly, which on the contrary I have never had happen to shrimp that I've bought from my local reef aquarium store. I know for fish at least, I always only bought fish from LFS vs CPS due to the LFS' stock coming into the store healthier and in better condition than CPS fish, but I always thought a shrimp was a shrimp and that there was no difference in quality/health condition the two retailers. Unless it's a difference in shipping/acclimation practices. Any thoughts?

 

[Stephen Glover]

It all comes down to the quality of the store in question. What I always do is test the parameters of the bag water to see how far they are from my QT tank. If they are close then I just temperature acclimate. If they are far apart I adjust the QT tank parameter. If you are adding directly to your tank then it may take many hours to match the parameters.

 

[jda]

Shrimp are incredibly sensitive to elevated nitrate and phosphate, in addition to salinity. If your tank, or PetCo had higher no3 or po4 levels, then this is one more layer of stress that kill them after a move. If your PetCo ever had copper in their tanks to treat a disease, this could be bad, although every PetCo that I have seen uses aragonite substrate which should bind all of the copper out of the water.