I'm new to keeping Cherry Shrimp and have been getting the white ring of death. I checked and my GH was 11 so I did slow water changes and now all of my water parameters match what I find on the net for Cherry Shrimp except my GH is 8.
I'm still having the white ring of death so I thought about adding calcium but if I add eggshells or tums won't that raise my GH?
In my experience, Cherry Shrimp are very adaptable to different gH levels and that is unlikely to be the cause. The white ring of death is usually caused by not enough minerals in the water, rather than too much. That means that a gH that is lower would actually be more problematic for this condition.
I kept my Cherry Shrimp colony with a gH of 11 for many years successfully. For my calcium needs, I put in a piece of unflavored cuttlebone (sold at any pet store that carries bird supplies) about the size of my thumbnail and found the increase to my gH to be unmeasurable. The cuttlebone is pure calcium carbonate, and tends not to deteriorate in water. My invertebrates will literally rasp it up if they want calcium, they seem to know what it is. I currently have a little piece of cuttlebone in all of my tanks with various types of invertebrates, fish, and amphibians without any issues. I give my shrimp a varied diet with Fluval Shrimp Granules and Hikari Shrimp Cuisine to make sure they had all the vitamins and minerals necessary for things like molting, offered treats of organic blanched zucchini , and also made sure there was lots of moss and hiding places so they felt comfortable molting safely. I also left their old molts in the tank so they could eat them and get back some of the nutrients for hardening their new exoskeletons. By doing all this my shrimp all molted quite well.
Now if you had CRS, Crystal Red Shrimp, instead of RCS, Cherrie Shrimp, the pH and gH would need to be low, but Cherries are incredibly adaptable and pH and hardness are extremely unlikely to be causing problems.
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