I have 5 sexies and a flatworm problem. I did FWE tonight but I still have a few crawling on the sides of my tank! I read some place that some peppermint shrimp will eat flatworms.

Will sexies and peppermint shrimp do okay together? My tank is only 6 gals so I don't think I can have any of the FW eating fish. And I don't think I have enough flatworms to sustain a FW eating nudi. I thought a peppermint shrimp would be nice if they can all get along!

Okay I just reread some of the other posts on this thread about sexies being with other shrimp. It sounds like the sexies are oaky as long as the other shrimp is peaceful. And as long as there are no personality conflicts of course! I haven't even started to read about peppermint shrimp yet. I guess that is my first step.

Unless anyone thinks I should go another way feel free to ignore this post!

Congrats on more sexies. The more the merrier!
As Jenni said, they should do just fine with pom-pom crabs.


They'll do just fine together.

Update:
One of my sexies released her larvae last night around 3:30am - I was too tired to mess with them then. I woke this morning at 5:30am and they were all gone

Good thing is that I still have one shrimp carrying so I suspect I should see another hatch tonight or tomorrow. I don't have to work my 2nd job on either night so I should be able to do what needs to be done if the eggs hatch.

I may let this next hatch go as well though. I need to get more brine shrimp eggs. I bought the off the shelf San Francisco Brine Shrimp eggs - They come mixed with salt. Just add water and air bubbles. I wasted one pkg experimenting. They don't seem to have a very good yield. I'm going to look for some decapsulated eggs of a more reputable brand.

I also ordered some 18w bulbs from DFS yesterday. They're on sale for $10 + I had a $5 off coupon code. I have the endcaps and ballast so my little pico will be getting a lighting upgrade soon. My shrooms and zoos are looking a bit pathetic under the single 18w 50/50 used right now.

I was going to ask for an update from you today!

Heh, can't blame you for not wanting to fool with it at 3:30am. They do disappear really quickly. There seem to be hundreds of little babies floating around, but in the morning the water is sparkling clear again.

Hope your corals do better under the 36w fixture. I have that same wattage over my pico and the corals aren't growing at all. They are in a state of limbo, it seems. I think they may have been growing better under the 20w Coralife bulb I had on it before... But they won't be in this tank for much longer. Once the pico upgrade tank is finished and cycled, everything will be transfered. Getting my rock from SeaLife today!

Anybody know the best way of catching sexy shrimp????

Wooo! looks like I need to get another sexy so one I have isn't so lonely. Too bad the LFS had only this one.

Welcome to the Sexy Club!

Maybe you can try putting pellets in a small net?

Hmmm, may have to try that! But my sexies are very shy, they usually don't chase down their food....... They could be spoiled since always hand the food to them.
I may have to remove all of the rocks and most of the water, and try to scoop them out with a cup.....

When I move my tank that is what I do. Becareful though occasionally they wont let go of the rock they are on when you lift it out of the water. Most the time this is ok because they just go in the container but I have had them jump off the rock mid transport. I just pin them up against the glass with a cup and then they pop back into the cup. They are pretty hardy so they should be ok.

the scratching sound is probably a mantis trying to dig thus explaining the sand piles.

just got my 2 sexy's today for my 0.35 gal tank (there was more water in the bag than in the tank) happy and eating.
1: can i put thim in a biocube14 with: 2 occ clowns,skunkcleaner shrimp,neon goby,randalls goby,emraled crab.
2: i dont have a second Q. but i will !

I think I have determined that the piles are a worm and the scratching sound is my imagination! lol
Everything else in the tank is doing awesome so I dont know! In all of the reading I have done I think maybe I acclimated them to fast as per my lfs suggestions......Last time I listen to them! But would improper acclimation cause there deaths 3 weeks later? Also where the hell did the other one go?

Welcome to the Sexy Club!
.35 is a tiny tank! You can definitely put them in the Biocube. They will be fine with those inhabitants.


I doubt the acclimation was the culprit. I only temp acclimated mine for 15 minutes, then dumped them in. No problems. And you say that everything else in the tank is fine?

Everything else is good! But I only have a clean up crew and corals so Idk! I know that the piles are caused by a spaghetti worm with very long tentacles that are black and yellow banded!

I've been having the sh1ttiest week at work and today was by far the sh1ttiest day (and the week is only halfway through). And then I come home to find that one of my sexies had committed suicide.



Just like that, next to the tank. I don't know what happened but finding it did very little to help make my day better.

If everything else is fine, it's not a water quality issue. Maybe they were sick or had an internal parasite when you got them.


Damn, Aaron, I'm so sorry.
I had one do the same thing. Found him dried up behind the betta tank, under the CO2 bottle...

What a bummer Fab! I am sorry! At lest the weekend is almost here now!

Matty I am also thinking maybe they were sick or something to begin with. Can you get a picture of the spaghetti worm? I have at least 3 in my tank but they all have clear/white tentacles. And they only leave little sand tube paths around my tank. They do go into my LR and leave very small piles of gunk on them though. I am pretty sure what I have are spaghetti worms. Have you seen pictures of other ones with the black and yellow coloring? I would love see them. Are they very big? Mine are pretty small. The tentacles look like spider webs. The body of the worm is orange though. Sort of a peachy color I guess. It is so strange how you never know what will pop up in your tank! Mine keeps getting weirder and weirder!

I think they are spahgetti worms. I have like three of the same ones, they extend there arms out from underneath the rocks and scavange. The reason I think the piles are caused by them is all the arms were coming out of a new pile the other night that was up against the glass. I will try to get a pic but I cant use my camera for shyte! The sight I linked is where I came up with the i.d. if you look under the Cirratulids section you will see the ones Im talking about!

http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/hitchworms.html

So it seems that I missed another larvae release

I guess it's okay though, cause I don't really have the time right now that trying to rear them would really take. I have too many half-completed projects to get done. My other 3 tanks seem to be suffering from my ADD as well.

I have to get a grip on the GHA that's slowing overtaking my 20H. I gotta get back on track before it's totally out of hand.

My plans in order of priority are now:
1) Change RO/DI filters and membrane - I think this is the source of my phosphate / gha problem
2) Finish building stand and putting a 20h sump / fuge under either my 20H reef (the one with GHA) or taking the 20H reef and putting into the 33g cube sitting in my closet.
3) My smithii mantis will then go into the sump portion of the above and reduce 1 tank
4) Taking down a 46BF that was a freshwater tank - I have a local that's gonna trade me a 175w MH for it. I figure that I can use the MH over the 20H or the 33g cube.

The 33g cube will take a lot of time - Drill for drain / return, plumb that and CLS, etc., etc. etc.

Maybe by the time the above is all outta the way, my sexies will be knocked up again and I can dedicate the necessary time to raising them.

Well from reading that link what I have looks like the picture found under the blue link that says Cirratulids. I have seen it out of it's sand tube and it looked like the drawn diagram of the worm and when it is in the tube with just the tentacles sticking out it looks like the first actual photo on that page. But... the actions of my worms is more like how they describe the Terebellidae. Very strange!

The ones you have with the striped tentacles looks really cool. I am glad you were able to figure out what you have lurking in there!

Thanks for the link! I have seen it a few times but usually don't look too closely at it. It sort of gives me the willies!

I'll be an official club member Tuesday if all goes well. LiveAquaria had the sexies on sale 45% off yesterday so I bought 6. I'll post pics as soon as they get here.

Steve

Your membership is pending!

Here is a pict of one of my 3 sexy's! Anyone have a pict of a sexy with eggs??? Would love to see it! These sexy's are in my BC 14 everything stock. It has been up for about 9 months....

Earlier in the thread (post #185) is a pic showing one of my females carrying eggs

One of my sexies is knocked up!!   That means I offically have 1 female and 1 male.

YEA BABY, I'M SEXY NOW!!! Well I ordered six of these little guys from liveaquaria they ended up costing about $10 a pop delivered. Two didn't make it on the way over so I ended up with a total of 4. These guys are really small, I'd say less than a quarter inch for sure. Three are in my tank at home and one in my tank at the office. I've been looking all over for that little bugger today and couldn't find him. Then finally I'm looking in my xenia and there he is sitting in there like it's a little tree for him. So here is my pic from my 3g picotope at the office. I'll get one posted of the three at home soon.

Steve

What's the stocking ratio for sexies? I have a 5g tank and currently have 3 sexies.

Cute! As yankee stated, there are pics of eggs carrying females earlier in the thread. I'll try to add that section to the original post soon.


Hehe, congrats!


Awesome, congrats and welcome to the Sexy Club!


There isn't a stocking ratio, really. In a 5gal. tank, I'd say you could get away with 7 - 10 of them.

So I put my 3 sexies in my tank today and I went back about 2 hours later to look for them and one of my very small nassarius snails was EATING one!!! Now I only have two sexies. The snails have been moved to the bigger tank. It was all I could do to not throw them to the birds.

i am soooo jealous.... i want some so bad!!! i havent seen any sexies in SF LFS for like more than half a year! where do you guys find them???!

Wow, that really sucks! Is it possible that the sexy shrimp died, and you just happened to find the snail eating its corpse?


Some people have ordered them online, but I asked one of my LFSs to order mine for me.

I have 3 of these in my 14G biocube and for the most part they're great but.... does anyone else find that they pester the heck out of zoos? I just put 3 new zoo frags in and at first everything was fine but now the sexies are always on the zoos and they won't open anymore

Possible, but really not likely. I think the snails may have just been starving (they were the only thing in the tank - there was an algae problem and I didn't feed anything to the tank for a couple weeks. I guess they ate all the algae and moved on to sexies). The shrimp was really in the tank about an hour. That would be a quick death, and the other two are perfectly fine. I don't know. The LFS just got 6 in today - I might go replace this one tomorrow. I got these three from Christina at Piece of the Reef on Ebay.

Yup! This is a common problem with them, but there is usually an easy fix: feed them. Sexies will eat the skirts off of zoas if they are hungry. Have you tried feeding them pellets of flake food? Mine love flake!


Ah, that's still a strange thing to happen. I feed my nass snails raw shrimp every couple of weeks and they never bother anybody. Hope you get a new sexy, because these guys are too neat!

I have 5 sexies and 2 nass. snails. I have never had a problem. In fact when it comes to feeding time and the snails get to the food before the sexies do the they( the shrimp) will just wrestle it way from the snail. And if a snail gets close to one of the sexies they (the shrimp again) just jump out of the way.

My thought is that the sexy was not doing well or had died. I think it could have easily gotten away from the snail if it was healthy.

I hope your other ones do okay. It is such a bummer to lose one so quickly!

I do feed them pellet and they also go for the Arctic Pods I feed my Firefish. They all come eagerly to a syringe so I'll try and target feed them

Ah, ok. If they are getting fed regularly, it may just be a matter of the zoas getting used to being stood on by the sexies. I have one group of zoas that the sexies love to stand on all the time and even sleep in it at night. The zoas still close up when the sexies first stand on them, but they open right back up again.

So with my 5g, I would like to have 8 or so sexies eventually, with some SPS and a clam. What other kinds of CUC members should I think about adding? I left one small nassarius snail in the tank - I figured that they didn't actually murder my shrimp since I found another one dead today. I don't know what the deal with them is - I have good parameters and acclimated by the book. They might have just had a rough delivery.

Also, what's the avg price you usually pay for sexies? My LFS wants $21 each - which makes me mad. But maybe I shouldn't be.

SPS and a clam in a 5gal tank? It can be done, but you're going to have a tough time keeping the water params stable and the tank clean. You may want to rethink your stocking plans, but to each his own.
Stomatella snails and astreas are good CUC members.
Sorry about losing another sexy!
I paid $20 for each of my sexies, but that's high too. $10 seems much more reasonable.

The SPS and Clams would be a good 6-8 months from now. At any rate, I'm seriously thinking of just buying a 10g and moving things to it - the 5g Eclipse Hex scratches if you blow on it. Everything in the tank looks cloudy just from the scratches.

Piece-of-the-Reef on ebay has sexies for $9, with $20 shipping (but you can get as many shrimp as she has to sell and not have any other shipping cost). Other than that, it's $21 each for me

I paid $14.99 each for mine at my LFS. They pretty much always have them so they must have a good easy source for them. It seems like some places have a harder time getting them so I am assuming they are the ones that charge more for them.

I have 4 sexies and 4 Nass's and they never bother each other. I will say I have 1 sexy that is the thrill seeker of the group, I catch him all the time riding on the back of my margarita snail lol.

About them eating corals, I can provide pics of a well chewed pocillopora frag until I was able to target feed them some mysis. I'm hoping the coral will bounce back, little sons a b*#ches.

I love my sexies but what a PITA they can be, their new thing is line dancing on my d@mn green star polyps.

But they're cuuuuuuuute!

I agree, but they need some serious descipline, problem is finding a paddle small enough for their tiny butts

When they bother my corals, I either fuss at them or poke 'em with the forceps.

Can I join the club?

Click to view attachment

Welcome to the Sexy Club!

It molted during the middle of the day while I watched two days ago. Pretty cool! I want two more but my LFS doesn't have any. They seem to go pretty quick in SLC. It must be those damn polygamysts!

so i gots a question
what kind of fish would more then likely eat sexy shrimp?
its it kinda like... everything?

Wish I could catch mine during molting, that would be neat to watch. You can ask your LFS to order some for you, and they would most likely hold them for you.


The only fish that will bother sexies are the type that eat inverts... and any rogue badass fish.

my sixline ate my peppermint shrimp. i bet he'd eat a sexy too!