Expensive Freakin' Lunch!
 

Everything was going SO well today....

Bought a nice piece of rock with a beautiful black feather duster on it for my 7 gal bowfront. Got the tank arranged quite nicely, too :smile:

Found two more emerald crabs for my 42 gal to take care of the problem algae. Saw one of them chowing down like crazy :smile:

But when I put the five peppermint shrimp into the 42, I knew something bad was going to happen.... The yellow coris wrasse and the getting-bigger-every-minute spotted hawkfish had a whiff of them as I gently introduced them a couple at a time. The shrimp scattered, but I don't think they had a chance. Several minutes later, I caught sight of the hawkfish with a peppermint antenna sticking out of its mouth. Later in the afternoon, I found a dead one on the sandbed. Don't know if there are any left, but I doubt they'll see the light of tomorrow. That d*mned hawkfish :evil:

Husband is building a trap to see if he can catch it. Will probably have the same luck catching the hawkfish as we've had catching the unwanted crabs in that reef :evil: :evil:

D*mn!

Yup, hawkfish are notorious for eating shrimp!!

Oh, so NOW you tell me :redface:

Shoulda known myself that that dang fish woulda eaten them. It's probably eaten all our bristleworms :eek:

Hmmm... from what I've heard the Yellow Coris Wrasse will eat the small Shrimps as well.

Think its only triggers that like bristleworms.................

My trigger tried one once......he'll never do that again!

I remember one day, many moons ago, I added several small cleaners to a tank. A day later they were gone. :confused: So, the next time I purchased more, I watched them closer that day.

Out from behind a rock comes one of the cleaners, running for its life, with my clarki clown hot on its tail and a cleaner already hanging from its mouth.

Agreed Bev, expensive lunch. :biggrin:

Did a water change on the 42 gal hes just before breakfast this morning. Found one PPS hiding behind the pump I use for removing water from the tank. Easily caught it, but was in the middle of stuff, so my first reaction was to put it into the seahorse tank. I hope it survived the temp shock :eek:

After all the water was back in the 42, found another one behind the powerhead. Tried to catch it, but it fled down into the tank. Hopefully this little guy will survive long enough for me to catch it another time and transfer it to another tank :smile:

Hawkfish + Shrimp = no shrimp + happy hawkfish. :eek:

Damn I should have read this earlier. I just added a flame hawk to a tank with 5 shrimps (2 cleaners and 3 peppermints), and 50 hermits.

Am I doomed?. They were alive this morning, I am getting nervous now.

Venki

The natural diet of all hawkfishes include crustaceans. I would bet that once your hawkfish realizes that it's in a tank full of juicy shrimp, they will be gone. I guess you'll find out if the hermits are smart enough/well protected enough to avoid the hawkfish.

:rolleyes: We all screw up sometimes but it really is essential to research your livestock before you buy.

I took advice from the LFS before buying..., no excuse I should have researched.

I have read a post by someone who had one with shrimps for years with no problem, I sincerely hope I get lucky.

Venki

I know I've read some reports regarding longnose hawkfish being unable to consume large shrimps, but not about flame hawkfish (which have a larger mouth). You may be lucky, but perhaps not. It will partly depend on the size of your shrimps.

LFS recommendations are often misleading. I recently found this out firsthand, with unfortunate results. :rolleyes: Caveat emptor.

It is a 1.5 - 2" flame hawk and the shrimps are approximately his size or bigger.

Venki

Might want to see how big Bev's hawkfish was, versus her shrimps.

Hi guys,

If you look at my past posts you will see a few on this very same subject! Bev, if it's any consolation my first couple of Peppermint's lasted only 30 seconds before being gobbled, this compares to the three hours spent acclimating them! It was so sad to see them try and fend for themselves, but they were very small!

Venki, if it helps at all, I had some peppermints in my main display to take care of my aptaisia problem while my Flame Hawk, and Bi-colour Clennie were chilling in the qt tank. I thought the shrimp were dead from something else and put the two notorious gobblers back in the main display. Well my shrimp were able to find themselves a nice home and are now large enough to be ok. I still catch a glimpse of them at night every now and again. You might be alright, but I would ultimately they will be goners, if you do see them you might want to get them out of there.

Good luck,

Rob

I've seen my red coris Wrasse pull bristleworms out of my LR as a snack before......seems to really enjoy them! :lol: I'm ok with it, there is sooo many in there.

I used to have a ton of the little white brittle stars too......no more. :rolleyes:

Sorry to hear about your losses!! Another hint... watch out for six line wrasses also. They can develop an taste for many kinds of shrimp. It took mine a while (long enough for me to add several different types of shrimp) but he now loves them. I took him a few months before he started.
I hope the ones you saved do well!!

The size of the hawkfish does not seem to be important. Hawkfish are shrimp predators period. I once as an experiment put a decent sized peppermint shrimp in with my Flame Hawk. I left the room for a few minutes, and upon my return found the shrimp dead. :sad:

Just to add another caution.

I believe neon dottybacks will eat shrimp too. I had one and within a week, I had no shrimp. Even my coral banded shrimp died.

Been there done that. I bought a half dozen cleaner shrimp once and my lunare wrasse picked them off one by one in five minutes. An expensive newbie lesson. Ok.. never mind... luke away...

This topic has received conflicting reports, i'll add at this time all my shrimps are safe. My shrimps molded and I was scared that the hawk at something to do with it, but I did a count and spotted all five in the tank.

There are three other reefers on the eastern Canada board, who have had the Flame Hawk with shrimps, with no problem for years.

I thnk it is another hit and miss situation with this combo.

Venki

I think good rule of thumb is that if the hawk can fit the shrimp in it's mouth, it will. I once saw the LFS dump a bag of peepermints in a tank with many hawks, and within minutes, all the hawks had shrimp sticking out of their mouths! Oops!

Now that would have been a sight! :biggrin:

venkiw, I've had a flame hawk in with shrimp before and there were no problems and my flame was about 2.5"-3". How big are your shrimp?

I guess my hawk is not that big.

Reef_raf,

I guess in that case the Hawk couldn't differentiate between food and inhabitant. In my case the shrimps went in before the hawk, may be that could have made the difference?

Venkiw, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

Is there a difference between food and inhabitant?? because in the wild, almost everything is food