Yet ANOTHER dead cleaner!!! Help me out here!

danieljames

danieljames

Member
so i posted about a week ago about my tragedies with dead cleaner shrimp and I am determined to get to the bottom of this....I checked my params 3 days ago....
Amm - 0
Nitrite - 0
Ph - 8.3
Trates - 5ppm
S.G. 1.026
Cal - 420
With everything looking acceptable...I decided to give it one last whirl. Bought another cleaner from LFS....theyve been healthy in their tank since i've been going there...decided to drip acclimate this one and really take some time on it....3 hours of acclimation...carefully scooped him out of acclimation box...and put it in the tank...
As with all the others, it dropped to the bottom of the tank...clung to a rock and didn't move too much...over the course of the last few days....I would see it in various spots in the tank....but not active (as cleaners usually are)
Came home today...dead on the sand....WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!!?? Honestly I have to laugh about this at this point...I have a Coral Banded that I didn't acclimate AT ALL doing fine...all other inverts crabs and snails fine...fish are fine...
Told the guy at LFS about it today...and he mentioned phosphates...which I ignorantly for some reason have overlooked....I don't test for phosphates mainly because I use boxed ocean water for all water changes....never tap...
The only other thing struggling in my tank is a zoo rock I purchased about 2 weeks ago...it's fading in color, turning white....not dead but not looking good.....I am under the impression with 4 attempts to keep a cleaner shrimp there is something severely wrong with my tank....does anyone have any advice or suggestions? Could phosphate wipe out that many cleaners and leave my CBS fine and dandy?
I would think after 4 tries....acclimation could not be the culprit for all of these losses....it's gotta be something else...I really want to get my tank stable as I'm not going to attempt another cleaner or any other shrimp for that matter until I'm absolutely certain my water is spot on....
Can anyone help me figure this out?
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
Did you compare the salinity and temp of your tank and the acclimation box to make sure they were the same before adding the shrimp?
What is the PH, temperature and salinity of the stores tank? I don't understand how Phosphates could harm a Shrimp but I can't say it couldn't.
 
danieljames

danieljames

Member
Could also be that the guy at LFS does not know what he's talking about....(i've found that to be true ALOT)
Temp and everything for acclimation was fine.....
Ph from store to my tank was nearly identical....S.G. at store was between 1.024-1.025 and my tank is about 1.026
My confusion is....why is it only cleaner shrimp? I mean these things aren't just finicky...their FRAGILE! It feels like there is absolutely NO margin for error yet I see people on here who have dumped them in, dripped water in the bag and they have lived....I am truely at a loss...
What other things besides acclimation shock will attribute to almost instantaneous death of a cleaner shrimp?
By the way...no copper in the tank...
 
candycane

candycane

Active Member
Coral Banded shrimp have at times been known to attack other shrimp (it is usually members of their own kind though). This is only after they have been in the tank for quite some time.
What types of corals do you have in your tank? I only ask because I have seen a couple of people where they would purchase shrimp, and without the shrimp knowing it's surroundings, it would get stung and killed almost immediately by a mushroom or anemone or something.
 
danieljames

danieljames

Member
no...it looked dead....ha ha....but not attacked...I want to say my coral banded is the culprit of the last Cleaner death...but i'm not positive....the last cleaner I tried to keep completely vanished...no remains whatsoever
 
paintballer768

paintballer768

Active Member
The last one probably got killed. How big is the tank? Ive seen only really big tanks can keep multiple species of shrimp without fights, because they cannot see each other. And Im sure that youve noticed, cleaners arent natural fighers haha
 
spiderwoman

spiderwoman

Active Member
Do you dose your tank with anything, especially iodine? One thing that can kill him is having too high iodine level in the water and if he is about to molt, he can't get out of his shell and dies. I had that happen with one Skunk Shrimp... his back shell split in 3 places in the morning and that afternoon he was dead. I had just started dosing with iodine which I do not do any more.
 
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