All my shrimp are gone

[bigfishtoo]

Hello, I had cleaner shrimp and blood red shrimp and banded coral shrimp in my tank and now they are all gone. Can you tell from my list of fish in my tank that eats shrimp. I have watched for days to see if I could see one of them chasing or eating them with no luck.

Yellow tang 3in
Engineer Goby 6in
Exquisite wrasse 4in
Red stop light cardinal 1-1/2in
Three strip damselfish 1in
Yellow damselfish 1/2in
Blue damselfish 1in
Scooter blenny 1 1/2in
Salfin blenny 3in
Thanks

 

[Brenden]

Nothing in that list sticks out. What are water parameters, tank size? How long did you have the shrimp? How did you acclimate?

 

[ryguy]

Do you mean that they're definetely dead or that you just can't find them?

Any evidence left at the scene?

 

[Guest]

you probably cant find them...i had a blood shrimp that went hiding for about 2 weeks. i think they go hiding when they are molting, but i cant explain why all 3 are gone.

 

[bigfishtoo]

HI, my water is good, had shrimp for over a year and then added the wrasse. Then the shrimp came up missing with no body parts left around at all. The shrimp used to moult about once a month and the castings had to be removed from the tank. I bought a small crab and next day found the body shell on bottom of tank.

I moved all my rock around one day looking and found no shrimp hiding.

water tested
ph 8.2
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
ammonia 0
phosphate .05
alkalinity 2.5
iodine .06
calcium 480
temp 78.6

 

[melosu58]

I agree that none of those fish stick out as one that would have killed your shrimp. very puzzling.

 

[ianrich147]

my peppermint shrimp went missing 3 weeks ago i did a count of my crabs and im missing several hermits i was thinking maybe a hitch hiker some sort of nocturnal predator any one got any ideas

also if you have recently done a water change it might have trigerd a molt when i had 2 peppermint shrimp they always molted right ofter a water change

 

[austinsdad]

What kinda wrasse is it? I had a Scotts once and he would munch on shrimp if he found them floating in the water column.

 

[bigfishtoo]

Hi, my wrasse is the exquisite green in color.

 

[Melissamustang]

A hitchhiker could easily be it. You could set a trap to see if you would catch something.

 

[MT79]

HI, my water is good, had shrimp for over a year and then added the wrasse.

That very well could be the culprit. If it was not being fed regularly before you bought it, it may have been hungry enough to take out the shrimp. I noticed some websites recommend using feeder shrimp to entice this fish to eat.

 

[bigfishtoo]

Thanks for all in the help, this forum is outstanding!. Going to make a trap tonight and set it with some shrimp from the store and see what comes out to eat it. Will let you know if I find the shrimp eating thing.

 

[Nøjo]

A hitchhiker could easily be it. You could set a trap to see if you would catch something.

A friend of mine was losing shrimp and crabs like crazy until he found out what the culprit was - a foot long moray eel that came with his live rock. Apparently it was in his tank for months until he lucked out and happened to see it when he went for a snack late at night. Also, the owner of my favourite LFS explained to me that the offending party that made a late night buffet of his supply of shrimp and hermit crabs was another hitchhiker, this time an octopus.

Good luck with the trap, let's hope it's something you'd rather have than the items you lost.

 

[austinsdad]

Need to ID that wrasse. You could have an invert muncher and not know it. Nothing like the one here is it? http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?pCatId=346

If not, use this site maybe to ID it and let us know.

 

[bigfishtoo]

Hello Austindad,
The wrasse looks like the exquisite wrasse on that site. Set the trap last night and no luck yet. If I dont come up with anything I'm going to get ride of the wrasse, take it back to the fish store and then try some more shrimp again. Thanks...