Muffin is a swearbox...

[Firelily]

Muffin is my Atya gabonensis (vampire shrimp) as cute and peaceful as she is, She is boss but she swears like a little trooper. When I say she swears it's usually clicking and chasing off a smaller less dominant shrimp that has blunders into her tunnel or tries to impress her.

She doesn't care for the little cherries they will even stand on her and 'clean' her like tiny maids and she lets them. But Muffin is boss and like little an old lady shooing away too many kitties she will shoo away little cherries when she has had enough.

The less dominant shrimp she swore at is the same species as her 'Titch' who I think is a male. After being scalded he excavated a little tunnel and fed upside down from his little sulk den for the rest of the day.

I have to admit I had to go on the internet and found no info about Atya's clicking although particularly in marine inverts and fish this is not uncommon. So my question is has anyone else witnessed interesting behaviour in their inverts?

P.S Titch was unharmed he isn't bullied or harassed and goes about his shrimp business as usual....

 

[shellyx]

I kept these for 3yrs and absolutely loved them. My largest was 4 inches and a male called mozzie lol he was a bully towards the other's and wasn't shy even didn't mind getting handled.
I called them puppies lol and definitely will buy more ?

55 gallon elephant nose tank.
30 gallon shrimp and snail tank

 

[Meadowlark]

I am a newbie to this forum. I have a 29 gallon freshwater that is still cycling so it has nothing alive in it (although I put in two Anubia in just to make it look more than a dull box of water.)

I would like to put some shrimp in it eventually and I notice you have bamboo, or what appears to be bamboo, as refugia for your shrimp. Did you just buy some bamboo and put it in the tank? Is it anchored to something? Did it need to be soaked like mopani? (It took a month and six or seven boilings for me to get mopani to stop leaching).
If it's not bamboo, what is it? (I know, lots of questions, but as I said, I'm a newbie here).
Thank you for your time,
Meadowlark

 

[Kazin]

Welcome to AA Meadowlark! I don't know what Firelily used, but if you want some sort of tunnels for your shrimp, I strongly recommend looking into "cholla wood". It takes about a day or two to soak or you can boil it. It sinks and is easily stacked. The holes and high surface area give your shrimp some places to explore/hide and generates the biofilm that shrimp need to eat. The tannins leached by cholla wood also seem to beneficial to shrimp, so it's not terrible to leach a little bit. Hope this helps you on your way!