Who killed my cleaner shrimp

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum and salt water aquarium keeping in general. Currently I'm running a 29 gal aquarium, live sand, artificial coral and rock, 2 false percula clowns, 4 stripe damsel, 12 blue leg hermits, 3 turbo snails and 1 missing or dead cleaner shrimp.

Here's my story. Two days ago I was feeding the fish early in the morning and saw that my cleaner shrimp was alive and moving around in the back of the artificial rock, he was also eating of the brine shrimp I had just fed the fish. Anyway, my job allows me to work from home and my fish tank is in full view as its only a few feet away from my workstation. At the end of my shift my cleaner shrimp was no where to be found. Not one single trace of him. I know they have a tendancy to molt every 2-3 weeks so I checked the back of the artificial rock to see if he was hiding. Usually when he hides in the back of the rock you can still see his antenna's sticking out so you know he's back there. This time I could not see him. I left no stone unturned, checked my decor inside out, checked inside my protein skimmer and my filters. Nothing, Nada, Zilch!

I know hermits have a bad reputation for eating everything in sight. But I have a hard time believing that 12 smallish hermits could have done away with his body in a matter of 3 - 4 hours and not leave a single trace of him for me to find. Specially hermits that are well fed as I lower enough pellet food to keep all of them happy. Also the clowns and damsel had plenty to eat that day as well.

I guess I'm kinda PO'd that my cleaner is gone and I have no logical explanation. Is it possible for a cleaner shrimp of fairly decent size be eaten so fast??!? Who attacked him? The clowns? He's been in tha tank with the damsel for several weeks and I've never seen the damsel make any aggressive moves towards him infact he usually swims away from the shrimp whenever the shrimp got too close.

I do have one particularly aggressive false percula, she's the biggest of all the fish in the tank. Her and her partner were recently introduced to the tank. Could she have killed him and the hermits left to clean up the mess? Kind of coincidential that the shrimp is gone now that we just introduced the clown fish into the tank. I know they are aggressive and teritorial but I didn't think they would attack the shrimp. But even if they did the idea of the crabs leaving no trace of the shrimp in a matter of hours baffles me.

Any ideas?

Thanks! ;D

 

Hmmmmmm. Do you have any bristleworms? The dude that I bought my tank from had a problem when he first started out. Turned out he had a good sized bristleworm that attacked and killed two of his fish. They just disappeared. It took him a few weeks to figure it out and another week to catch the little poopy thingamabobber.

 

My clowns and most of my other fish go up to the cleaner shrimp to get their scales cleaned.. never seen any aggression towards the shrimp from any of my fish. I've actually seen the shrimp ride around the tank while cleaning my fox face!

 

All shrimp are vulnerable to about any fish or other invert just after moulting...

If newly naked shrimp has nowhere to hide...expect some opportunistic feeder got him...

Sorry :-[

 

None that I'm aware of. I inspected the tank fairly thoroughly. If I did where would it hide? the live sand?

 

I really never saw the clowns getting aggressive with the shrimp at all. infact the smaller one would often get close to it but never really fully allowed the shrimp to start cleaning him. However I never witnessed any hostile behaviour toward the shrimp. The bigger clown chases the damsel away every now and then.

 

Carpet surfing? are cleaner shrips known to jump out of a tank???

 

Hmmm..I'm gonna have to rethink my tank set up. There are certainly enough crevices to hide in but all are accessible by the other fish.

Well you learn each day I guess..

Thanks!

My girlfriend is equally upset about the cleaner shrimp. She thought it was definately the friendliest inhabitant of our tank. Oh well...

 

I asked one of the guys at my LFS and he didn't think so. He just thought it was caught in the filter somewhere.

 

I'd just check around any tubing and such you have in your tank. I've had 1-2 peppermint shrimp for the last couple of years, and in addition to being pretty pretty stealthy if they want to be, they can be pretty stupid. I had to rescue one from my protein skimmer intake tube once (thank goodness it was clear so we could see him or he woulda been a goner). It's also not uncommon for one to go missing for a day or 2 (probably to molt).

That said, the ones I've lost have "mysteriously disappeared" as well, leaving no remains. I kinda assumed they crawled deep into their home rock and died in some unreachable crevice.

Good luck and keep looking!