Bully cleaner shrimp??

[clown-lover]

Ok, do I have a bully cleaner shrimp, or is this normal?
First off, he is a pig! I feed him with a turkey baster and he just sits at the tip of it and pulls out all the food. Which that's fine...but after he is fed, I will turn off my powerheads to feed the corals...and I'll blow a little food on them...well, I have to keep my hand in the tank to shove away the shrimp from getting on the corals and eating their food! (like I said...he's a pig!) But I don't mind that so much...
What I don't like is seeing him harrass my snails and hermits. He will get on the back of a snail and stick his 'tweezers' under the bottom of the shell...poking at my snails! They will shut themselves in real tight when he does that, but it bothers me that he seems to 'bully' them. He does the same thing with my hermits...but they don't seem as bothered by it as the snails are.
I also just got a green polyp leather coral (pics later when he opens up fully)...and my shrimp will not leave it alone! They haven't had a chance to open fully because he is over there poking at them every 2 mintues! They close up halfway or all the way and by the time they open, he has to go bother them again...
I don't get it...he was very peaceful when I first got him...and now he is running amok all over my tank.
Is this behavior normal for a cleaner shrimp? Is he not being fed enough? Is he trying to eat my snails?

also...I feed him twice a day.

 

[btldreef]

This is not normal behavior. I think you have a rogue Cleaner Shrimp, unfortunately it can happen with anything. I had a clownfish that ate LPS corals.
Anyways, stop feeding him! They're scavengers and he should be scavenging for food, not waiting for the next meal to come from the giant plastic thing that gets inserted in the tank twice a day. This is why he pics at the corals when you try to feed.
Picking at the snails, that I've never really seen before from a cleaner, I have seen a CBS do it though.
Can you catch him?

 

[clown-lover]

I don't think catching him will be a problem. I'll stop feeding him and see if his behavior settles down.
He acts up when I'm around the tank, in the tank, or feeing the tank. For the rest of the day (when I'm watching from afar) he sits in one spot of the tank and doesn't forage for food. (my bad...

)
Thanks for the tips. I'll keep a close eye on him for now and if I notice that he's killing the snails/corals...he's a goner!

 

[handbanana]

I practally had to starve my Peppermint gang to get them to do their job. The LFS would feed them flakes anytime any joe shmo wanted to see them, so naturally they wanted flakes from my hand. I would put my hand in my tank and get swarmed with shrimp. I Only have a blenny in the tank now and they have practally polished the inside picking for food. Aiptasia never had a chance. I want a cleaner shrimp but he would have nothing to clean.

 

[clown-lover]

I have one small aiptasia in the tank. (at least that I have found)
I don't care to keep a peppermint though...so I tried blasting it with lemon juice (from a bottle). It 'hurt' him...but it didn't kill it. So I'm going to try lemon juice from fresh lemons.
Your blenny eats the aiptasia? Or were you talking about the shrimp?

 

[handbanana]

The blenny eats whatever he can. altho Im sure not Aiptasiea
I have 5 peppermints and not one piece of aip. I even took a infested rock from my nano tank and they picked it clean over night. Litterally 10+ small aips gone over night.
But I think they have to be hungry to eat them. I had about 15 or so aips in my nano that were growing everywhere. I got two small pepps, one died and the other ate EVERY aiptasia it could find.