Who's got the oldest Cleaner Shrimp?

[phases99]

Just wondering how long these Cleaner Shrimp live in captivity. I've had mine for almost 6 months and has grown from 1" to almost 3". He molts every 3 weeks like clockwork. I am considering trading him back to the LFS as it is almost impossible to feed the other invertibrates in the tank without him stealing their food.

[quarryshark]

Had both of mine almost a year. I'm sure someone has beat that by a mile.
Happy and healthy both.

[AndySmithers]

Originally Posted by phases99

Just wondering how long these Cleaner Shrimp live in captivity. I've had mine for almost 6 months and has grown from 1" to almost 3". He molts every 3 weeks like clockwork. I am considering trading him back to the LFS as it is almost impossible to feed the other invertibrates in the tank without him stealing their food.

Going on two years for my two!
On the subject of feeding inverts. with these ravenous beasts present:
Every week I feed my open brain on mysis shrimp or some such critters.
I puzzled for ages on how to do this without the food floating off or being nabbed by the shrimp. In the end I got a plastic tube from an old under-gravel filter and glued this into the top of a cleaned cooking oil bottle so that the tube came half way down inside the bottle. Now I simply place the up-turned bottle over the brain and drop food down the shoot into his ravenous mouths! No current inside the bottle and no predators means one happy brain with plenty of time to feed.
To feed my brittle star I use a long wooden skewer with food speared on the end. twizzle the food by the starfish legs and he thinks he's being a predator again!

[angnak]

Going on two years for me also. About 1 yr 9mths. Please don't banish your shrimp for his natural behavior. I like Andy's comments. If you did trade him in the next one is going to do the same thing.

[klam]

I've had my cleaner shrimp for over a year and it is a pig. I would like to trade it in for a smaller shrimp because my fish are small and so is my tank.

I usually give my shrimp a nice sized piece of sea food to keep it busy while I feed(when it's a blue moon out) my ricordeas.

I like the fact that I know my shrimp is a very imprortant part of my clean-up crew and will eat any left overs.

[BillyZ]

Well I just picked up my first pair of cleaners this weekend! So mine are... 2 days old! (to me anyway!)

[phases99]

Thanks for the good info. The bottle approach does work well for isolated corals. Thats a cool idea for the stars, I have a bunch of small one's and hope they are getting enough food. The last straw for me was the weekly algae wafer I put in for the snails and hermits. The darn shrimp is big enough now to carry it up to his perch and slowly pick it apart. Last week he dropped it in between the rocks and I saw the other inverts fighting to get at it. Arghhhh

[dralarms]

I have a 150, with 2 cleaners, and about 8 pep's. At feeding time it gets nuts. , I guess I'm going to try something so my anemone's can eat too.

[grimlock3000]

Ooh, this is making me want a Cleaner Shrimp like you would not believe

[angnak]

I usually feed my shrimp then feed my inverts. It keeps them busy for a few minutes while the inverts have time to eat at least some of whatever it is I am feeding at the time.

[msuburg]

I think I need to get one, all this talk of them is making me jealous!!

[revhtree]

Hands down my cleaner shrimp are the life of the tank. When company comes over, in goes my arm to watch the cleaners go to town! I love to hand feed my cleaners.

[quarryshark]

Originally Posted by revhtree

Hands down my cleaner shrimp are the life of the tank. When company comes over, in goes my arm to watch the cleaners go to town! I love to hand feed my cleaners.

Haha, thats the first thing I do as well. They are a lot of fun.