Why is my shrimp molting?
Shrimp Molt for a few reasons! Your Shrimp live in a shell basically. As they grow, the shell does not. So out with the old and in with the new! Along with growing, they grow a new exoskeleton, or shell in this case, which hardens over several hours and becomes a brand new protective casing for your shrimp. Shrimp generally molt every three to eight weeks and it takes a correct amount of Iodine to promote proper shrimp molting. One thing to keep in mind is that your shrimp could die while molting if your water conditions are improper! So, molting is a good thing for your shrimp! If you see the little shell floating around or sitting there motionless, don’t worry; your shrimp probably isn’t dead, it just molted!
What to do with shrimp exoskeletons
No one likes a messy aquarium and I know shrimp exoskeletons can look pretty ugly. Although typically your shrimp will molt secretly, the shell will sometimes float around. I suggest not to remove these exoskeletons from your aquarium because they actually hold a lot of valuable minerals that will replenish within the water column. Typically, shells will break-down within a few days or shrimp might actually forage off them.
Promote Molting
You can promote molting by doing water changes. Typically, a 20% water change to an aquarium will give a surge to your shrimp to molt their shell. This could be a bad thing if you accidently do a water change when adding new shrimp to your aquarium. (this is why accumulating slowly is very important)
Shrimp Molting problems and how to solve it
So you probably found one of your dwarf shrimp that failed to molt (RIP). It’s happened to the best of us and for beginners getting into the hobby, it can really put a damper on being a shrimp keeper. But I can solve this, I’ve been there! typically shrimp fail to molt for one of two reasons. First, the GH/KH is too high and you’re seeing your shrimp drop but not from molting failure. Secondly, the GH/KH is too low which dwarf freshwater shrimp lack enough calcium in the water column to properly molt. Solving this is by adding some calcium mineral rock to bump up the calcium inside the shrimp tank. We recommend using mineral rocks you can buy down below:
