Do cleaner shrimp eat fish?

beaupierce

beaupierce

Member
Ok,
so my cleaner shrimp are getting huge. I think they have molted like 8 times in 5 months. My question is I keep having disappearing fish??
I have 7 chromis, 1 clown, 2 anthias, blue tang, and a leopard wrasse.
I just "lost" my mandarin, anthia ( a couple of weeks ago), and my yellow watchman about a month ago.

I thought my yellow tang was killing them, so i took him out, yet fish still keep coming up missing.

No, they are not in my overflow or down in my sump. I checked about 100X and no they don't jump!



So I am stumped!! Any ideas would be great!

Thanks
 
If its a banded coral shrimp they have been known to go after fish. Possibly you have a hitch hiker that is getting them? A mantis/pistol/worm?
 
Cleaner shrimp generally won't attack a fish. Ever.

Maybe the tang could have bullied them. Maybe they could have died of something else. I still have yet to ever find a dead fish. I've lost an anthia, a medium (4") sized foxface, 2 b/g chromis in one tank (over 2.5 years) and in a 24g I've lost a yellow corris wrasse. Just disappeared. No cats or other animals to eat remains of jumped fish, no sump findings, nothing in the overflows...

Sorry to hear that you've lost them though :(
 
I know that they eat them once they are dead nad I am ok with that. Just don't want to keep putting fish in that will die quickly.
 
I do not believe you lost those fish as a result of agressive harassment. Possible culprits to look for are gorilla crabs. The two fish you listed as missing are typically rock/bottom/crevice dwellers, and are at a higher rate at vulnerability from agressive crusteacans.

If you have never ever heard a clicking noise coming from some unknown location within your tank, I would not worry about pistol or mantis. So take a flashlight, put a red filter over it and inspect your tank after about 2 hours from lights out. Especially inspect the typical dwelling spots of your MIA fish.
 
Did you find a carcass with the dead ones? Get a flashlight and look for a possible crab about an hour or two after the lights are out.
 
Hi I found my two cleaner shrimp eating my six line wrasse while still alive. My shrimp are quite big. The wrasse was around 6cm. The wrasse was a healthy new edition that I bought on the weekend. I never knew that they eat fish. Do any of you know why they attacked him.
 
Kyri said:
Hi I found my two cleaner shrimp eating my six line wrasse while still alive. My shrimp are quite big. The wrasse was around 6cm. The wrasse was a healthy new edition that I bought on the weekend. I never knew that they eat fish. Do any of you know why they attacked him.
Click to expand...

Your wrasse was sick. The cleaner shrimp did not attack the wrasse. Any healthy fish can easily escape a cleaner shrimp. I can promise you, your wrasses was sick and that is why the cleaner shrimp had it. As has been said, cleaner shrimp do not eat healthy fish and are not predatory.
 
Hi Slief. Thanks for your response. Im am relativly new to reef keeping having stated with my son 3 months back and learning as we go along. The Wras looked very happy and healthy. We saw him being chased and eaten while still alive. I know it does not make sence but thats what we saw. Is that normal. How do you tell if the wrass was not well ? Thanks
 
Kyri said:
Hi Slief. Thanks for your response. Im am relativly new to reef keeping having stated with my son 3 months back and learning as we go along. The Wras looked very happy and healthy. We saw him being chased and eaten while still alive. I know it does not make sence but thats what we saw. Is that normal. How do you tell if the wrass was not well ? Thanks
Click to expand...

Wrasses are fairly quick swimmers and are terrific escape artists. You mention this cleaner shrimp chasing the wrasse but cleaner shrimps are not fast and will not chase a healthy fish. They mighty slowly follow it as they seek the opportunity to pick parasites off the fish but a cleaner shrimp chasing a wrasse is akin to a tortoise chasing the hare. There is no way the tortoise (shrimp in this case) can ever catch the hare (wrasse). At least not if the wrasse is healthy and even if the cleaner shrimp got a hold of the wrasses, a healthy fish could easily escape the shrimp. We are talking about fish and inverts that have symbiotic relationships. This is not a predatory invertebrate we are talking about. Now if this was a lobster of some sort or a Mantis shrimp, or even a coral banded shrimp, that would be a different story. Any of those have the ability to grasp a fish and can be predatory although coral bandit shrimps have a distinct disadvantage when it comes to preying on healthy fish.

As for signs of health.. That is tough. There can be obvious signs such as white spots, fast breathing, frantic swimming and or the fish can just up and die without anything being outwardly obvious. Given that you have a new tank and this fish just came into your system, I can assure you that you are looking at the wrong culprit. I have to ask the question. Was the fish in question properly quarantined after you purchased it? If not, I strongly suggest you rethink your practices because that is probably one of the most important rules of thumb. Quarantine is pretty much a must for protecting your tanks inhabitants.
 
beaupierce said:
Ok,
so my cleaner shrimp are getting huge. I think they have molted like 8 times in 5 months. My question is I keep having disappearing fish??
I have 7 chromis, 1 clown, 2 anthias, blue tang, and a leopard wrasse.
I just "lost" my mandarin, anthia ( a couple of weeks ago), and my yellow watchman about a month ago.

I thought my yellow tang was killing them, so i took him out, yet fish still keep coming up missing.

No, they are not in my overflow or down in my sump. I checked about 100X and no they don't jump!



So I am stumped!! Any ideas would be great!

Thanks
Click to expand...

Is this your shrimp?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/...o5dItAjxe8AyUN_GcQ-hcnnZtU4_4FhrDIg_U37XAOyks

Or this?

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...m0BBJQlzHTtennAXyeA0jKygt7ptkGfG46NWuolciUklJ

Or something else?
 
We did acclimate the fish prior to puting him into the tanks 4 days ago.I do not have a quarantine tank. It was alovely specimine and looked very happy. Im worred now. Not sre what to do next
 
I just saw the same thing happen again. My shrimp just ripped up my small clownfish. I know that the clown had fungus on his mouth. I saw him five minutes befor and went to feed my dog but when i came back he was being eaten and was already dead. So I think im going to trade them in for a smaller pair on the weekend.
 
I am not sure that you have Cleaner Shrimp. As I asked in my previous post (#16) is one of those a picture of the shrimp you have? One is a Cleaner and one is a Coral Banded.
 
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