Cleaner Shrimp

[howieumd]

I bought a cleaning crew from this web site, and a few fish. The cleaning crew I bought came with 5 cleaner shrimp, 25 scarlet hermit crabs, 30 blueleg hermit crabs, 25 turbo snails, 10 nassarius snails, and 5 peppermint shrimp. It was also supposed to come with 1 emerald crab, but that wasn't in the package when I got it. Anyways, 1-2 hours after I added in everything, the 5 cleaner shrimp died! I have no idea why. I followed the acclimation to a T, my water checks out pretty much perfect. Are these difficult to care for? What made all 5 of them die pretty much instantly? The blueleg hermits, all the snails, and the peppermint shrimp are all doing fine. I also lost the scarlet hermits, all of them, but that was my fault. I didn't acclimate them correctly, and they pretty much kicked it as soon as they hit the water. That wasn't the case with the cleaner shrimp though, I made sure they were fully acclimated and they didn't make it. I did save them all and I am sending them back, hopefully SWF.com will replace them for me, but does anybody have an explanation on this, or recommendations for when I get more?

 

[spicyballs]

dead in 1-2 hours? they must've been close to dead by the time you got it then.. they're usually pretty hardy as long as you acclimate them right.

 

[howieumd]

Yeah, I don't think they were too healthy. I mean, they moved around a lot when they first went in, but for them to die that quick, I don't know. The scarlet hermits definitey weren't healthy. When they arrived, 4 of them were out of shell and already dead in the packaging. I'm not going to send those back, maybe let them know in a letter, but I did save the dead cleaner shrimp to send back. Those things are like $18 each, I think. Everything else I've ever got from SWF.com has been in great shape, maybe it was just a bad batch of shrimp and crabs. Like I said, the blueleg hermits and the snails are doing great, as is the Flame Angel I got and the 2 Percula Clowns.

 

[ivanfj]

Hmmm, cleaner shrimps are usually quite hardy. Maybe you really got some unhealthy stock from them, but I think they would replace them.
But I have a question or two here. Did you use the dripping method for the cleaners??? They are quite weak to sudden salinity and temp. change. And what is your nitrate level??? Inverts can't handle the high nitrate that fish can, although fish can't handle extreme nitrate level either.

 

[howieumd]

My nitrates are at 0. I floated the bag for 25 minutes to get them used to the temperature, than I used the drip method, just like it said to on this web site. I didn't set up a whole tubing system and everything, I put them in a bucket, and dropped in 1/4 cup of water from my tank every 2 minutes. I did that for each one, as they came in separate bags. I did it about 30 times, over a 1 hour period, which is another method that was recommeded by my LFS, that is pretty similar, just not with the drip from the whole tubing system they want us to set up. I might have to do that next time, but I don't see how not doing that killed all 5 cleaner shrimp. The other shrimp are doing fine.

 

[frozenice]

You probably just got a bad batch like you said.