Who ate my shrimp???

F

FishyLindsay

AC Members
Feb 17, 2007
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we had a bunch of ghost shrimp in our freshwater tank for clean up crew and slowly we stared to notice there were some carcasses and werent as many in there.

we have with them:
serpae tetras
red eye tetras
black neon tetras
2 discus
2 blue rams
1 cory cat
1 pleco
SAE's
Otto cats
hill stream loach
snails
clams

who did it??

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
 
By carcasses, you mean that you saw dead pink bodies on the gravel, right? If you saw what looked like clear empty shrimp ripped in half then you're probably seeing the exoskeletons that they leave behind after molting.

However, I wouldn't put it past discus or rams (if the shrimp are small enough) to eat your shrimp. Even if the shrimp aren't small enough to be swallowed whole, they may be picked on to the point where they die.
 
i guess it was just the skeletal remains, like the insides were sucked out. They are about 1 inch, so they wouldnt be swallowed whole.
 
jm1212 said:
honestly, it couldve been any of your fish, with the bottom feeders being most likely.
Click to expand...

Nah, hillstream loaches won't bother. Neither will ottos, corries or SAE's. I have the last 3 in my tank and they don't pay attention to my ghosts at all. The ghosts have been in with the cories for so long now (over a year now) that they're not even affraid of them. They'll even try to shoo them away when a cory has a piece of food that they want.

The pleco, though, might be another story. Although, if a pleco were to eat a ghost shrimp, I doubt there'd be any remains to be found.

One thing that I did forget about is the vulnerability of newly molted shrimp. Unless they have a place to hide and harden up, they could become snacks. But, still, I would focus on the 2 species that I mentioned before. Tetras probably aren't too inclined to poke around the bottom and all of your bottom feeders, with possibly the exception of the pleco, won't even notice your shrimp.
 
I have the same problem. I think all of my now deceased killies were the culprits. I saw bright pink headless shrimp bodies, and now I only see about 2 ghost shrimp left.
 
what does it mean when the shrimp turns pink (like it's cooked) vs. when theres just an exoskeleton left?
 
The ghost shrimps turn pink when they are dead. When there's just an exoskeleton, that means that they are molting, and therefore, are growing a new, larger exoskeleton to suite their growing bodies.
 
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