Sexy shrimp and coral safety?

[mndfreeze]

I picked up a tiny sexy shrimp a little while back and I keep catching it picking at my one baby dendro coral. It LOOKS like its eating it, but its hard to tell since the dendro is retracted during light hours and when it comes out it is still so small that its hard to tell if it lost tentacles or not.

Are sexy shrimp known for picking/eating corals? I know all shrimp are opportunistic like crabs, but there is more then enough food for the shrimp that's for sure. Just want to know if they are known for just cleaning around corals or actually eating them.


Thanks!

 

[mndfreeze]

Confirmed it did indeed eat the tentacles off my dendro polyp. Argh. I thought sexy shrimp were similar to anemone shrimp and 'hosted' nem like stuff and preened it, not ate it. Any ideas how to get it to stop? The tank gets tons of food. I've treied to target feed the shrimp but it hops at lightspeed away if I get something near it.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I don't want o have to ditch my sexy OR my dendro. :/

 

[PSU21Reef]

I feed mine mysis shrimp from a pipette. he usually runs right over and grabs it. if he does run away I just sit a piece beside his coral and he'll grab it within a minute. I obviously keep all pumps off until he grabs it also. I feed him every other day and he's never touched my corals.

 

[ROB2005]

^What he said, I have a bunch that I keep well fed.

 

[spw4949]

I have a group of 4 sexy shrimp in my 46 reef, they are model citizens, they do hang out on my corals, especially my frogspawn, that's their favorite but I have never seen them eat or destroy any piece of coral in my tank. I also don't target feed them or anything like that, they grab excess food & detritus & have all been thriving in my tank for almost a year........I guess anything is possible but i would tell you if you were feeding your dendro or there was some food in it the sexy was probably just looking for a meal, when I feed my brains the sexy shrimp will sometimes go over & snack on the pieces of fish or squid or whatever I'm feeding but never the coral itself.........