We cover any shrimp that arrive dead through no fault of your own. Photograph the whole bag against a plain background as soon as you open the box, before you touch or acclimatise anything — this is the one thing that makes a claim easy to process.

Get in touch within 2 hours of the parcel being delivered, with your order number and the photo. We’ll replace the losses on your next order or refund them — your choice.

DOA cover doesn’t extend to losses a few days later from acclimatisation shock, so getting the drip method right (see below) genuinely matters, both for the shrimp and for what we’re able to cover.

Orders placed before midday, Monday to Wednesday, ship the same day on a tracked next-day service, so your shrimp spend the least possible time in the bag. We deliberately don’t ship on Thursdays or Fridays — nobody wants a box of shrimp sat in a depot over the weekend.

Every bag is heat-sealed with pure oxygen, insulated, and padded with heat or cold packs depending on the weather that week. In a cold snap or heatwave we’ll hold your order and message you rather than risk the journey.

Shrimp are far more sensitive to sudden changes in water chemistry than fish, so we always recommend a slow drip acclimatisation rather than the float-and-splash method.

Float the sealed bag for 10–15 minutes to match temperature, then pour bag and shrimp into a clean bucket. Run airline tubing from your tank, tie a loose knot in it to slow the flow to roughly one drip per second, and let it run for 60–90 minutes until the bucket has roughly tripled in volume.

Net the shrimp out gently and place them straight into the tank — don’t tip the bucket water in with them. This slow approach is the single biggest factor in a shrimp settling in well versus struggling in the first week.

Chlorine and chloramine are added by water companies specifically to kill living organisms — which unfortunately includes your shrimp and the beneficial bacteria in your filter. Even the small amount in a typical water change can be fatal within minutes, and chloramine in particular won’t gas off just by leaving water to stand.

Always treat any water going into the tank with a proper dechlorinator/water conditioner before it touches your shrimp, every single time, no exceptions — including top-offs, not just full water changes.

Yes, more than most people expect. Aerosol air fresheners, plug-ins, scented candles, deodorant, and hairspray all release fine droplets and volatile compounds that settle on the surface of open or lightly covered tanks, and shrimp are extremely sensitive to trace amounts.

A single spray near an open tank, or a plug-in air freshener close to the water’s surface, can cause a slow decline or sudden deaths that look completely unexplained — mature colonies can crash within a day or two with no obvious cause.

Keep a shrimp tank away from anything aerosolised, and if you use a lidded tank, that lid is doing more protective work than people give it credit for.

Once you start looking, quite a lot. Common culprits we hear about include:

Hand cream and soap residue — always rinse hands of any product before going in the tank, or wear gloves.
Insecticide and flea treatments — spot-on flea treatment on a cat or dog is highly toxic to shrimp even in tiny amounts; wash your hands thoroughly after handling a treated pet.
Candles and incense burned nearby — soot and fragrance compounds settle on the water surface over time.
New silicone, wood, or ornaments not properly cured or rinsed before going in.
Metal — copper especially, from old pipework or certain fertilisers, is deadly to shrimp at concentrations fish barely notice.

The common thread is that shrimp tolerate almost none of it — treat the tank as a closed, sealed environment and keep household chemicals well away from it.