I invested in a water testing kit today, what can I do to fix this?? I have a freshwater tank.
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Do you have any anything in the tank yet?
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There are several things you can add to the water to get the ph back in balance. Where did you buy the test kit?
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My shrimp have been living in it for less than a month, and I have Amazon swords and some other aquatic plant from a fish store there. I got my testing kit from Pet Supplies Plus, it’s the API testing kit
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So if you already have fish, shrimp etc., in the tank and nothing is dying I would say not to worry, Why did you decide to test the water?
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Because I’ve lost about 6 of my shrimp, I wanted to see if it was something I’ve been doing wrong or if the online site I bought them from is just sketch and sent me diseased or old shrimp. I bought them from Shrimp Up Aquatics
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Hmmmmm. Well it’s a toss up imho, if the shrimp were sub par or if it’s the water. The best thing to do is make sure the ph, etc, is in balance before adding the fish or whatever. But since you already have added tank dwellers including the plant, imho you may as well keep the tank as it is. Time will tell.
However I have not too much experience with keeping fish as it is obvious by now so maybe someone else will see this and chime in……
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Thank you for your help Ms. Caron! I really appreciate it 
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So what you’ll need to do is a water change to get some of the nitrates and ammonia out. You don’t want to change all of the water, only part of it. And you’ll need a syphon or gravel vacuum to do it.
The top of the tank will have the cleanest water… You need to take out the water in the bottom for the best results. The more debris in the bottom from excess food, or dead plants the more bad bacteria will build up. So that’s what you want to focus on removing.
If you are using a nitrate or ammonia binder like Prime, that makes it so that the good bacteria can’t break them down properly. That can make the readings artificially high…but shrimp dying does mean there’s an issue.
If you have an aquarium specialty shop nearby they can probably break things down better and recommend the amounts to change and what schedule to focus on to lower things.
Adding plants will also help because they’ll suck out nitrates as well. Pothos works well, but are toxic to cats, so I would focus on sturdy water plants like swords, anubias and cryptocorryne
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@cmsreptiles @akmorphs anything maybe you can think of?
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Hey it looks like you have some answers now!!! Way way back when I had a huge tank with a couple of huge Oscars in it that would gladly take a finger tip and I’m tellin ya. those guys were awesome! I also had (not in the same tank) a ghost knife, a red tailed shark and an eel. The eel kept jumping out of the tank though so I had to put a cover on top of it.
Gold fish were a lot easier to keep! 
Thank you for reminding me!
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Definitely try to research ways you can bring down the Nitrites and Ammonia, those are the likely culprit of your shrimp deaths as they are quite high on your test strip readings. I don’t really struggle with my parameters but a good 20-30% water change 1-2x a week might help. Though I’ve found that, contradicting to most sources, too frequent of water changes disturbs the cycle too much and may actually make things worse in my personal experience.
It never hurts to occasionally dose your aquarium with some beneficial bacteria, my go-to is Tetra Safestart… I’ve found it works the best in getting immediate results of removing any Nitrite or Ammonia spikes and I’ve never seen my shrimp have any issues with it. I’ve tried other brands as well but they really don’t live up the same way.
Research Epiphyte freshwater plants, Anubias are good, they’ll take the excess nutrients straight out of the water. Floaters also readily suck up that bad stuff too, Duckweed grows the most rapidly if you want something fast growing or Sylvania minima if you want something a little slower growing and more manageable. You just need the water surface to be somewhat calm for the floaters to thrive.
Your GH and KH also read pretty high… its possible that the shrimp can adapt to that though. If you feel you want to maybe try lowering it to see if it helps, do it slowly. Shrimp rely on water hardness by absorbing minerals like Calcium Carbonate and others into their developing exoskeleton, if the water hardness changes too suddenly it can disrupt their ability to molt.
Indian Almond leaves are good at lowering GH, KH, and PH naturally, you can pre-boil them in water and cool them before adding them to your aquarium. They will seep beneficial tannins into the water, however they will also darken the water.
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Thank you all very much, I’ll give an update on how things are going in a few days
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Update:
All my shrimp are dead. I’m going to do a water change, change the filter, dump a bottle of SafeStart in it, get it cycling good, and then purchase more shrimp and a betta. I have no clue what happened, but I’m going to do everything in my power to prevent it from happening again 
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Awwww. I’m so sorry! Are they normally easy to keep in general?
From what I’ve heard, shrimp are one of the most beginner aquarium buddies out there 
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This may sound contradicting but I actually don’t reccomend changing out any filter or biological media. You can easily wash off filters/bio media with leftover aquarium water from water changes if they become too dirty, otherwise they are a huge part of helping develop beneficial bacteria.
The only time I actually reccomend changing filters is if they are actively degrading and falling apart.
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