cleaner shrimp problem?
 

Hi there. I bought 2 cleaner shrimp 2 days ago and one died today and i can't figure out why. The other one is still alive but is upside down on my live rock and just keeps moving on the one piece of live rock. I acclimated them for 1.5 hours slowly was that enough or no? is there anything i should do with the one that i still have to help him or just wait and see. also, the salinty was the same in my tank as it was in the store. my water is as follow

ammonia - 0
nitrites - 0.1
nitrates - < 5
ph - 8.3
calcium - 420
78 temp
alkalinty - 11.5

Thanks
Chris

Upside down isn't a problem; they often hang around like that. No way to know what happened to the other one... shrimp can be a bit tricky.

When did you set up this tank?
How did you acclimate the shrimp? They should not die if the measured salinity, and temperature is the same and you acclimate them slowly for 6 hours (drip drip drip)
How did you do it?
What is the salinity in the tank? If it is less than 1.025 slowly increase it to 1.026. Many LFS use lower salinity.

what does LFS stand for? I accimulated them but not 6 hours that might be some of the issue but the other one is fine. salinity is 1.024 but the other one is ok i will slowly bring it up a bit and hopefully this one will be ok

Local Fish Store =LFS
When did you start up your tank?
Has it cycled?

LFS - Local Fish Store :biggrin:

LFS=Local Fish Store. You don't need to acclimate shrimp for 6 hours, I mean seriously, who has pateince for that!! :)
I just added 2 peppermints yesterday, acclimated for 20 minutes, dumped them in, they're happy. This LFS keeps their water pretty close to mine, so temp is pretty much all I worry about.
A good indicator is when adding tank water to the holding bag/container, if I see any "swirling" (indicating a big difference in salinity and/or temp) I take a bit more time. But not 6 hours!

Wow. I thought I was crazy. Maybe I still am..... I got a cleaner shrimp last Thursday that's doing fine, and I only acclimatized it for about 1.5 hours. Figured it was enough, and signs of stress were very minimal.

But six hours? Is there anything that /really/ needs to acclimatize that long?

I have two cleaners, added consecutively about a year apart. Both are fine and I acclimated each for about an hour, maybe hour and a half. Are you certain that the one you say died is actually dead? Don't know the size of tank but if it's a large system the other one may be hiding after moulting. They will often moult not long after being introduced and the moult will look very much like a complete, dead shrimp.

Well it seems like 6 hours. I float the bag in the tank water for 30 minutes.
Set up the drip line
Place the bag with the inverts in a bucket.
Drip the tank water in the bucket
Seems like 6 but it is probably 4.

I do this for shrimp, snails, starfish, sea hares and all other inverts.

Seastars get an extra long time (hour?), snails I just toss right in out of the bag, shrimp get 15 - 20 minutes, depending on how bored I get, corals acclimated to temp only, so maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I've never had a seahare, but I would take longer with them, just to be safe.

i just had the same thing happen to me... put two cleaner shrimp in and saw one or what was left of one two days after....do they molt there feelers to or just the shell and i haven't seen the other one now i a couple of days ..will coralbanded shrimp attack cleaners were about the same size or maybe there are to many shrimp in my tank 1 banded 4 peppermint was 2 cleaners in a 140 with 190lbs of LR...thanks and don't mean to hijack thread.......thanks

When my shrimp molt sometimes I see just the tentacles and sometimes the whole body. In my 144g I have 3 cleaner, 3 peppermint, and 2 blood shrimp. I have'nt seen any fights at all. When I had a coral banded shrimp years ago he chased every other shrimp around and tried to kill them and eventually did. The same thing happened with camel shrimp. I must be the worst reefer around as my acclimation consists of floating the bag of whatever in my water for about 15mins, and no drip. That is with everything I put in my tank. Call it luck but I've done it that way for 9 years with no losses. Not recommended to do it my way though, I'm just lazy when it comes to that. Plus too much traffic in LFS water so their water IMO can't be the greatest.

I used to float the bags in my sump and set up a drip from my main tank into the bag and leave them for an hour, never had a death yet (all i have is shrimp) and my LFS salinity is way below mine.

Coral banded will try to kill every other shrimp you have. At he least the last 2 I've had did. My carpet eventually got them. So I don't bother with the coral banded shrimp anymore.