Cleaner shrimp died???
 

My cleaner shrimp died, nitrates >5ppm sg 1.0225, Alk- 13dkh, calcium 320ppm, ammonia 0, Temp 81 Any ideas? Up until it was lying dead, it seemed healthy. Everthing else seems ok except for xenias, they aren't looking very good. They have been that way for afew days. Added a new yellow tang today, a orange poly and a leather a couple of day ago. Been having a hard time keeping calcium up, so I have been adding turbo calcium. Any help would be great before more things die, have I over looked something?
Thanks

Did you remove it? Is there any shrimp meat inside? If a shrimp molts, it looks just like te real thing. I've been fooled before a couple of times.

It did seem pretty soft, but I didn't look that close. I will go check the tank, I dont see it anywhere. When I took it out there wad a hermit crab attached to it.

I'll go along with Brad on this. It is likely a molt. :mrgreen:

After a molt they're fairly soft and vulnerable, so they tend to hide for a day or three.

I sure hope so, I'm going to miss hand feeding the little guy. I take loses like this personally. I do my best to keep their little world as close to perfect as I can for them. Some how I feel like I've let them down.

I had a shrimp die for absolutely no reason during the summer...

I find that molts generally break. You can tell it is a molt versus a carcass because a carcass will be whole, and a molt may be a few chunks, normally for me, the antennae, front and back parts of the carapace are split.

I have also had Cleaner Shrimp just die for no reason. I try to keep two but one always dies so now I just have one. No other tank mate has been stressed or died so I would have to assume it was just natural causes

J

I can keep cleaners, but seem to have a hard time keeping peppermint shrimp. (anyone else ?) I find a scarlet hermit molting can fool you also as the whole body stays intact, a cleaner molt seems to be somewhat transperent.

It's hard to tell when my Cleaner molts because he/she does not hide for any length of time. I'll see an antennae or part of a shell lying around and my Cleaner is in it's regular spot. If I look close there is less red on her/his new antennae. The molt always disappears within a day.

I have had one die, they do look more like corpses.