dead cleaner

[po40cal]

I came in this afternoon from work to find one of my cleaner shrimp dead and half eaten. I have 1 six line wrass, 1 percula, 1 hippo tang ( all about 1 1/2 inches), 2 peppermints, 1 blue starfish and 1 sally lightfoot and about 8 or so crabs and about 15 or so snails. It appears, and looked like the last few days that the one in question, was going to molt. My question is what do you think might have eaten it? The sally if it got a hold on it or what? So far I have never been able to see if there are any night time critters in the tank. Got any clues? Thanks

 

[wamp]

Not too sure here but might be the wrase? I know some have a hardy appatite. Don't know for sure though.. May have died and then eaten by the crabs. Could be a number of things.
Sorry to hear about your loss.

 

[mr.bubble]

What are your water perimeters? the reason i asked is maby the shrimp died,then your cleanup crew started eating it. or if not, i think it would be the crabs or sally. i hear a lot of horror storys about there sallys doing bad things. Also, i used to have a fire shrimp(or blood shrimp), and i saw my crabs attaking it. dont know why. could save it cuase it was in the back of the tank. Im just guessing on this of coarse.

 

[azonic]

I've heard of wrasse biting other fish but nothing about them ever biting shrimp or other inverts although it may well have been. sadly, you will never know for sure

 

[uncle fester]

If I was a betting man I'd bet the house on the sally lightfoot.

 

[h2o]

The same happened to one of my largest cleaner shrimps. He had just molted and was very vulnerable, the next thing i saw was my newly introduced sally holding the shrimp body and started to eat from the center of shrimp. Sally was assumed to be the murderer, because no one act and walk as fast as he does.

 

[clownfish4life]

Soon aafter I purchased my first cleaner shrimp I discovered his molted exoskeleton on onside of the tank and his body on the other. At the time I only had a royal gramma and 3 damsels. I called my LFs where I purchased it from and explained what I had discovered. My supplier said that many times, after adding a new shrimp, or anything that molts for that matter, it may not survive the first time is molts in a new tank. He advised me to add the trace element iodine to the tank. He said to add half of what they recomend on the bottle becuase you can kill the tank by ODing it on the element. But he said the iodine is beneficial to inverts that molt. Ever since I've added the iodine to the tank I haven't lost another shrimp. I now have a pair of cleaners and a camel back. All doing fine.
Sorry my post is long, just wanted to give my input. ::Smiles::