Shrimps have me worked out, lol

[Saltliquid]

The smaller of the two harls did its sad look with droopy claws as they do and so I put in a fresh sea star for it.
This is the fifth sea star they have consumed the soft tissue that is, so they turn to life less beads after that.
They will come out to the glass and just stare till you put a sea star in, all the ones i have had before and the last was in the late 80s always do the same after the first two or three sea stars, they seem to realise that you put them in.
The little guy did the paralysis drug injection straight away of which they both can do and invited the missus over for dinner, I can just see the look as it injects, ha ha, you are so easy to con food out of, lol.
Some sea star species react quite badly to the injection and may die and pollute your tank!
Please!!!!

I'll just stop it from taking off.

So what do you reckon hun, tasty hey, not to bright that human.

 

[Calappidae]

IIRC chuck provided photographs and found out that harlequin shrimp do not inject a venom. It's an old myth that went around a long time ago. The stars just seem paralyzed due to stress of the shrimp attacking it. The death is mostly due to infectious tissue damage or starvation. The former which can pollute an aquarium.

I lack evidence myself, but from a realistic purspective, I can't at the top of my head think of one single venomous crustecean, which is another thing that leans me more towards the idea that the harlequins aren't venomous.

But yeah they can make adorable faces that sucker me into feeding them. One will come out, give me a droopy face, cause me to throw a star in, and I find out later they still had a leg of the previous star haha.

 

[Saltliquid]

Back in the late 70s and early 80s when they were very common and not valuable when I started collecting commercially and as a hobbyist as well, sort of, I tried out many things on them as with many marine life forms and took two apart and the sea stars involved and we new a pharmacist quite well, he was a reefer as well, which was handy, not just for the testing of reefing products to copy for our selves and improve on, but for many other things as well, he had access to some cool gear! So its cool what ever you believe in! Oh and supposedly they only eat the underbody legs, to believe that is cool as well.Its a shame i didn't have a camera till nearly 5 years back, oh well, many memories!