A shrimp handover is a water handover
Most aquatic vets see cherry shrimp rarely, and the animals themselves tell them little in a clinic — a stressed shrimp in a bag shows almost nothing. The records are the consultation. Bring your full water parameter log, the tank and its stocking list, the feeding routine, your water change method in detail, and a written account of whatever has gone wrong: shrimp found dead, white rings at the moult line, failed moults, a colony that has stopped breeding. For an invertebrate, that paperwork is not supporting evidence; it is nearly all the evidence there is.
Hardness readings are the numbers this species lives by
Alongside ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and temperature, hand over your GH and KH readings — the general and carbonate hardness — and how they have trended. Cherry shrimp build their shells from minerals in the water, and most colony crises trace back to water that is too soft, too hard, or swinging between changes. Record how you prepare replacement water: whether it is tap or remineralised, how it is treated, how closely its temperature and parameters are matched, and what share of the tank you change at a time. A vet reading a stable hardness log alongside a detailed change method can separate a mineral problem from an infectious one far faster than one handed a single test strip result.
List everything that has ever gone into the tank
Write down every product, treatment and fertiliser the tank has received, and anything used in the room that could plausibly reach the water. Shrimp are acutely sensitive to copper, which appears in some fish treatments and plant products, and they react to residues at levels fish shrug off — so a treatment history that would be a footnote for a fish is a headline for a shrimp colony. Include plant and tank mate additions with rough timing, and any pest treatments used on houseplants nearby. Do not edit the list down to what sounds relevant; with invertebrates, the innocent-looking entry is often the whole story.
Bring colony notes and close-up photos
Record the colony's approximate size, whether berried females are present and producing shrimplets, and how the population has moved — booming, steady or quietly shrinking. Note feeding specifics: what foods go in, how often, and whether food is removed uneaten, since overfeeding a shrimp tank fouls the water in ways the parameters only show later. Bring close-up photos of healthy shrimp and of any that look wrong — white or rusty patches, a milky body, the pale ring behind the head that signals a moult in trouble — because colour and shell detail that are obvious in your tank under your lighting rarely survive the trip to a clinic.
Say plainly what changed and when you noticed
Close the handover with a short timeline in plain language: what you observed, in what order, and what else changed in the same period — a new filter, a rescape, a heatwave, a different food. Shrimp colonies usually decline or recover as a population, and the sequence of events is what lets a vet judge whether you are looking at water, disease, or simple old age moving through an ageing colony.
Assembling the parameter log, product history, colony notes and photos ahead of the visit is what KinsLe's Pet Passport handles for a cherry shrimp colony, holding its records in a single packet the new vet can read in minutes.