cleaners vs. disease

My tangs used to hang out with my cleaner shimp all the time. I was great to watch. However, I am not sure who, but somone in the tank, kept eating the neighbor.. and no more shrimp. I tried a few more times and no luck. I was basically buying an expensive snack for someone in the tank. Since then, I have gone with UV and water flows that are slow enough the kill most anything. I still have some cleaner "things" but I use UV over the shrimp now.

 

ME TOO!! I have a cleaner now and was looking to add another fish to my stock. Was thinking the royal gramma but.. hmmmm

 

Although in one of my books it answers the question " How compatible with inverts and corals?" ANSWER: Has the potential to harm ornamental shrimp, although this is unusual with the usual cleaner shrimp. Im in a dilemma hah

 

OK, let me follow up. My Royal Gramma has eaten, for sure, 2 peppermint shrimp. A third peppermint shrimp *may* have been eaten by the crabs after the shrimp died for some unknown reason....

My cleaner shrimp simply disappeared. I don't know for a fact what happened to it. But after realizing my RG was eating my peppermints I am assuming it ate the cleaner... but I don't actually know that it did. I do know it ate my peppermints though.

 

Ok cool, i guess i should put this is another thread but does anyone keep a royal gramma with a cleaner and have success? I really like my cleaner, although he only cleans one of my fish he does scavenge a lot of stuff off my sand bed and is always doing something.

 

I have a cleaner shrimp and most of my fish go for regular cleanings. I have a bellus angel that had ick on its fin that the fish came with. I could not get it to clear up....so I risked a cleaner shrimp (I have 2 blue jaw triggers) and immediately the angel cleared up.

Now all my fish line up for it. My blue jaw pair amazes me. They will go to his cleaning den and they both LOVE getting cleaned. My sailfin tang is the only fish that I can see that does not like to be cleaned. I am actually going to move him (sailfin) to my other tank I think as that sailfin does not like anything or anyone IMO.

There was a great article on the last issue of Coral (which is no longer in production..blah) that had info on the different types of cleaner fish and shrimp. There are certain fish I understand that can not tolerate cleaners of any sort in captivity...such as puffers. They apparently dont like the constant picking that a cleaner fish does....

My cleaner shrimp even cleans me when I have my hadn in the tank

 

I do not have any cleaner shrimp, but I do have a large cleanup crew (approximately 35 snails and about 10 blue / red hermits in a 30g), and 1 peppermint shrimp. I've been disease free so far, knock on wood, and when I eventually get a larger tank with tangs etc. I will definitely have several cleaner shrimp as well.

Sounds like an interesting experiment / video.

 

seems like a lot of mixed results. I think I have learned onething is that certin fish don't like to be cleaned by certin things.

 

I can keep coral ALLLLL DAAAAAYYY but i never have good luck with fish, actually my two clowns have hole in the head now so dang

 

I have a cleaner shrimp and six line. The shrimp scavenges all day and so does the sixline. I have not had any problems with disease. I believe that the sixline and shrimp eat pests which helps the entire tank.