Should I worry ?

[eden]

My Raccoon Butterfly keeps presenting himself to my coral banded shrimp. When he does he flares his gills. It is like he thinks the shrimp are cleaner shrimp. Should I worry that there is a parasite in his gill or something?
The Raccoon was at my LFS for awhile as he had become aggressive. I decided to bring him home again and he is now behaving, but I noticed some white things on him when I picked him up. I gave him a freshwater dip and they came off, but I am worried there might be more that I can not see.

 

[carrie1429]

Sounds like ich to me. Usually when a fish has parasites they will try to get the shrimp to clean them. Most of the time FW dips don't work and are very stressful on the fish. The best way to get rid of ich is hyposalinity. Since you already put the fish in the main tank, right? Then you will most likey have to hypo all your fish because they can get infected very quickly, but it can only be done in a hospital tank. If you do a search on hypo you'll find a lot of info on it.

 

[eden]

Hi Carrie - Thanks for the reply. I don;t think it is ich. I have seen that before. Does anyone have any other suggestions?? Should I get a cleaner shrimp since my Raccoon seems to want one??

 

[mightyoxjuice]

I think that the positives far outweigh the negatives in getting a cleaner shrimp. They are a nice addition for most tanks. Good member of a clean up crew plus they also work on the fish.

 

[killafins]

from all the things you can buy or do, the cleanershrimp is the only thing that will not have a negative impact. They are beautiful creatures and are very exciting to watch. The best part, they aid your tank and seem to only add a little waist (which they will later eat)

 

[cboyfan2020]

yeah and if you stick your hand in the tank they will clean you too!

 

[killafins]

true that! I have a twenty gallon tank that have all fish or inverts that like to crawl over my hand. Even my mandarin will come swim buy it and my seahorse will wrap its tail around my finger. My cleaner shrimp will swim to my hand and start taking off old skin. Even my feather duster doesn't react to my hand nemore, it doesn't hide unless my figer is centimeter's away. (i know its pathetic but i tried to see how close I could get). I also have a horseshoe crab in the tank that doesn't want to stay in the CC (i know its not the best substrate for him) but its soo funny cuz he swims and gets lost in my coral. I dunno, my point is to get cleaner shrimp. I was only going to get one but the guy threw one in for free and he told me they would do fine for food.
Simply stated: GET A CLEANER SHRIMP