Disappearing Shrimp

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tmcpeek

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
May 7, 2003
Messages
414
Location
California
I am losing my peppermint shrimps and both of my cleaner shrimps are gone. Is it my regal tang eating them. I can see it eating the peps but the cleaners were fairly large. I have 2 fire and a cbs that are fine, but I used to have at least 10 peps and now at feeding time I only see one or two.

The only other fish I have are
Tomato Clown
Maroon Clown
Watchman Goby
Cleaner Wrasse
Blue Green Chromis (x6)

The shrimp had been in the tank with all the fish but the tang until about 1 month ago.
 
I am pretty sure the tang is not eating them. Shrimp are very sesitive to water quality issues. Have you tested lately? Done any water changes? If you happened to do a decent size water change and the water was not the same as the tank water, then they may have become stressed and died from that. Same as big temperature swings or ph changes. Fish are much hardier than inverts when it comes to those things so it would seem as if things were ok unless you had tested your water.
 
I test my water and it is always
nitrites 0
nitrates <5
amm 0
ph 8.2


I do water changes every two weeks (15 -20%) and I always test my water change water to verify that it is the same ph and temp and salinity.

Water stays consistent since I have almost 300 gallons of volume. Just weird since it seem like they started disappearing after adding the tang
 
Maybe but the shrimp have all been in there since October and just started to disappear. Strange.
 
I just saw my sally lightfoot crab and it is getting very big. Could this be what is eating my shrimp? Only the larger shrimps have made it. Peps are gone, so are the cleaners. The cbs and fire shrimp are fine. Is it time to evict the crab and stick it in the sump?
 
Crabs are opportunists, they'll eat what they can catch. A friend of mine watched in horror as a sally grabbed his newly acclimated fish by the tail as the unsuspecting fish got too close.

Stuff happens.
 
I guess it is time to trap it and throw him in the sump or refugium. Or bring it back to the lfs. Will the crab eat snails? I have some snail eggs on my refugium glass right now and am hoping they hatch. If I put the crab ib the sump I think it may starve so I may have to do the refugium or lfs return.
 
I don't know about the snails, but I wouldn't guarantee that it wouldn't, if it could.

I'm going to get one anyway to eat up some algae, then trade him in at the LFS for credit toward something else.

I feed my refugium in my sump, because I exiled some crabs and a big bristeworm there.
 
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