I am new to Reef Central and need a little help finding out which fish is killing my cleaner shrimp when they molt. I have a 65 gal FOWLR tank, several varieties of hermit crabs and snails. Fish include one medium size purple tang, one lemon peel angel, one flame angel, 3 fire-fish gobies, and up until last night (can't find it) a diamond gobie. Each time my cleaner shrimp molts (two blood red fire shrimp and one skunk cleaner shrimp) they've been killed and I find the group feeding on them. Local fish sellers (pet shop) tell me none of these would kill a shrimp so I keep on buying new ones. Tonight, the newly molted one was being eaten on. I don't know which killed it. Can anyone help?
Whos Killing My Shrimp?
- Thread starter bluedawg
- Start date
Saw the shell earlier. Went out for awhile. Returned to see the tang and both angels nibbling on the carcass itself. It definitely was not the shell. I have 2 Sally Lightfoots, 10 or 15 Nassarius snails, 10 or 15 Cerith snails, a stray (Emerald or Porcelain) crab that hitchhiked on some rocks, a Serpent Star, about 15 red hermit crabs in addition to the lemon peel, the 3 fire-fish gobies, the purple tang, a flame angel.
No water has been added recently and all water added to the tank is pre-mixed and I test the salinity and PH. With both of the shrimp that I added in the last 10 days, when they molted they were dead the same day. I did see them directly after the molting and they were okay.
wiley0717
New member
Correct, salt doesn't evaporate. Your salinity will increase do to freshwater evaporating, adding freshwater to compensate lowers your salinity to what it was before evaporation. I have lost my share of snails when I started out do to salinity shock from topping off.
Salinity shock is infact hard on inverts, do by all means investigate for a predator as well as pay attention to your topoffs.
Last edited:
