coral banded shrimp, a murderer

[frogguy1]

Im pretty sure my shrimp didnt kill my purple dottyback, but Im not sure what happened. I left on Friday afternoon to go out of town and came back Sunday (1 and a half days later)and my shrimp was chowing down. My tomato clown is acting a little strange and my yellow-tail damsel isnt as bright but still swiming fine. Could one fish dying cause my ammonia level to spike that fast? Dont have an ammonia test kit, going to test tommorow.:*(

[Mnesarchus]

I highly doubt it was your CBS. I have one in my 50 and they are harmless. I have mine eating scallops out of my hand. Doesn't bug my clowns or angel, or clams or any of my other inverts.

[frogguy1]

good to know

[nanocat]

There are quite a few posts on RC about CBS being caught in the act of fish killing. Count yourself lucky that yours is a pacifist.

[Jim J]

I caught mine in the act of fish killing more than once! I would replace the victim with something larger but he would still try to capture it. He finally ended up loosing to a baby spotted grouper!

 

My new rule...NO CLAWED SHRIMP WITH FISH!

[rehren]

Originally posted by Mnesarchus

I highly doubt it was your CBS. I have one in my 50 and they are harmless. I have mine eating scallops out of my hand. Doesn't bug my clowns or angel, or clams or any of my other inverts.

 

yours is harmless *because* you feed it. i stopped feeding mine and then i woke up one morning, he had 6 legs sticking out of his mouth - he was eating a hermit for breakfast. he liked to hunt my bicolor blenny (his fault really, he hides in holes that the CBS can stand over) - so as of two days ago the LFS got it back.

 

fun while he lasted though:

[birdman204]

Coral bandeds in nature are cleaners, but territorial.. rehren is right tho. they are also opportunistic.... and if under fed, will eat what they can.

[Scoot]

Coral banded shrimps are very territorial. HE ate my clown gobie and also he attacked all of my fish all the time. I finally got rid of him when my damsel had chopped fins. Try getting a cleaner shrimp. They go up to fish and clean them of parasites.

[1fish2fish]

Yep,

 

1 Brazillian soccer team + one bad plane ride = one nasty snack bar

 

But seriously,

 

almost any animal will start to look at other modes of meeting their nutritional requirements in a situation where they are underfed and the CBS is no acception. I too have caught them in the act of fishy murder. I would tend to keep them in a larger tank so that they have more to snack on without resorting to this. In a small tank they just don't have the grazeing space and if you are keeping them in a nano the thought of keeping them well fed just conjurs up thoughts of nitrogen products.

 

IMO cleaner shrimp such as the skunk cleaner or even the smaller carribean species like petersons or the anemone shrimp are better candidates for the small tank.

 

Another shrimp I would avoid in a small setup is Lysmata debilius (scarlet cleaner). They are a little more fiesty.

 

Beware the carnivorous cow!

[frogguy1]

Great, thanks for all of the advice and info guys

[nanocat]

Don't count on your skunk cleaner shrimp to actually clean any fish of parasites. My fish swim away when he gets that look in his eye. I think it's mostly the larger fish (tangs, etc.) who let themselves get cleaned, and in larger tanks.

 

Of course the fact that my cleaner is bigger than the fish may be why they won't let him do his thing.

[TheEvilbbug]

My CBS tried to eat my Lion. It is really cool that the CBS has the long antenna so you can always see where it is hiding, even when it is in the mouth of a lion fish. RIP Scrimp

[birdman204]

Cleaner shrimps for the most part will clean in a bigger tank. I have never seen the one in my nano clean, but in the 80G, the chromis are the ones who like to get cleaned all the time.