How to catch a coral banded shrimp?

[JimEG]

How can I catch my Coral Banded Shrimp? It is getting too big (3 to 4 inches between the shoulders) (looks like a transformer from the movie) and I think it has cleaned, dressed, and eaten a couple of my fish. Two fish have completely disappeared without any trace.

I bought a trap at Premier that is a clear 3 inch round tube about 10 inches long with a sliding plastic door. This just won’t work. First off the door floats and only works if the whole thing is sitting rather flat on the bottom (the shrimp howsoever lives behind a wall of rock). Then you have to be there when the shrimp is in the tube to let loose of the string to let the door sort of slowly slide down. I tried it with one of my cleaner shrimp. By the time I thought about letting the string loose and the door even started to wiggle the shrimp shot out like an arrow.

Any suggestion short of tearing down a 150 tall that has a lot of rock with corals everywhere?

Jim

 

[G.SMITHII]

fishing line lasso

 

[Canarygirl]

I had the same problem....one fish disappeared, another (a mandarin) got a big bite taken out of it and eventually died. I saw the coral banded shrimp going after it so I know this is what happened to it. I tried and tried to catch the shrimp but in the end I had to pull most of my live rock out of the tank until he didn't have enough places to hide....then I was able to get him with a net. If I could have figured out any short cut I would have taken it, but the fish/invert trap didn't work at all.

 

[G.SMITHII]

yall ever fish for crawdads?

make a lil lasso out of fishing line, turn off your flow, and try and snag his claw(s)

or, take an old nylon, let some mysis, krill or somethin sit out im water for like an hour or two, put it in the nylon, tie it to fishing line and let it sink next to him.

his lil claws should get snagged enough in the nylon to give you enough time to lasso or net the lil guy

 

[Fenton2]

Back when I was little, we used to catch crayfish down on the highline canal by hooking a chunk of bacon to a fishing line via a safety pin. The crayfish would clamp down on the bacon and you'd just pull the line out. I'm not sure if a coral banded shrimp would respond the same way but you could give it a go. Of course, I can't speak to the ecological impact of temporarily introducing bacon into a saltwater aquarium but if the tank is large enough I doubt anything would come to harm.

By the way, I'm not as big of a hillbilly as this post makes me sound.

 

[Canarygirl]

I tried to hook my CB shrimp's claws in a chunk of fish so I could pull him out but the lil' bugger just ripped the fish out from my grasp. It's worth a try, though

 

[zerillit]

I have to wonder why your shrimp would attack and kill a live fish if it was being well fed. I've had Coral Bandits for years & never had any problem. Take long tongs & feed krill directly to him. For that matter, make sure everyone is well fed. Too many people are starving their animals, IMO.
Terri

 

[hawkfish21]

A little interceptor would do the trick, just joking. I have found the best way to catch anything is to wait until the lights go off. Find it's resting spot and catch them while their sleeping. Of course this would require a little rock moving.

In response to the comment on "Too many people are starving their animals", why would you say this? My fish get fed once a day and they are fat and happy. Too much feeding usually results in poor water quality (nitrates, phospahtes, etc.).

 

[miwoodar]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10857923#post10857923 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by zerillit
I have to wonder why your shrimp would attack and kill a live fish if it was being well fed. I've had Coral Bandits for years & never had any problem. Take long tongs & feed krill directly to him. For that matter, make sure everyone is well fed. Too many people are starving their animals, IMO.
Terri

I'm skeptical too. I had a one that I was sure was eating my hermit crabs and an occasional fish - It turned out to be an emerald crab. Once I trapped the emerald crab all my problems went away.

 

[JimEG]

I make my own food and feed a lot.

See http://www.melevsreef.com/food.html.
I sort of follow his receipt. If you scroll to the bottom of his page you can see how much he feeds. My tank looks about the same when I feed.

So I am not starving my critters.

 

[Canarygirl]

I have to wonder why your shrimp would attack and kill a live fish if it was being well fed. I've had Coral Bandits for years & never had any problem. Take long tongs & feed krill directly to him. For that matter, make sure everyone is well fed. Too many people are starving their animals, IMO.

I did quite a bit of research on this when I was having the problem with my CB shrimp. I found people that swore up and down that the shrimp couldn't possibly be doing this, and I found plenty of others that lost multiple fish to their CB shrimp. Others were okay for a while until the shrimp got big and then it became a predator. This was fairly common. It is an animal-specific phenomenon, in my opinion. In my case, I did feed the shrimp but it didn't stop him from doing what he did.

 

[miwoodar]

Canarygirl - you are right - it could be the coral banded shrimp. Examples of killer shrimp do in fact exist. I'm still skeptical though until I find out what else is in the tank.

JimEG, what else do you have? Have you actually seen the CB shrimp while it was in the process of killing your fish?

 

[zerillit]

Feeding

Feeding

I'm glad your inhabitants are getting well fed. Sounds like you may just have a naughty shrimp or ?????

I too feed once daily, on a rare occasion I'm lazy and may skip a day. I often meet people who only feed their tank weekly. Their corals are beautiful, their water quality is great, but I wonder how happy their fish are. I've seen some Tangs that are extremely thin, maybe mine are way too fat.

:rollface:

In the wild, fish etc. are able to feed constantly on thousands (maybe millions) of different foods. Even with combining home made foods & store bought foods, I can still only offer a variety of about 8 different meats, and occasionally some "pellets" for greens, although the tangs have areas they can nibble on.

I'm not trying to criticize. This is what I do, for some corals it works, for others, they have lost some of their vibrant colors. The trade off works for me.

 

[oscarclinton]

I had to get rid of my c b shrimp today cus I saw it twice attacking my seahorse and Is not even big, this guys r dangerous

 

[John_Nunes]

My CB has gotten to a mated pair of mandarins, 2 gobies and one red dragnet. I have also seen him take a couple of swings at my Picasso clowns