coral banded shrimp--friend or foe?

[howman1]

i want to purchase some cleaner shrimp (maybe some peppermint shrimp) for my reef tank
i already have a coral banded, are they compatible, is cbs aggressive (do i have to return him to LFS)


howard

 

[Tremelle]

Yeah, the CB I had was very aggresive towards the blood shrimp and cleaner shrimp. It would ambush them as they would come over the top of a rock and clip their antenna. It would also chase them as well. And to top it all off, the CB was the cheapest of the shrimp so it had to go.

 

[Jerry Gonzales]

Hi there Howard,
I have a cbs,cleaner shrimp,peppermints. All together with no problems. The cbs like to have thier own little knook in your tank, so the will brush off any intruders. I think they are a very awsome looking shrimp.I have had cbs for many years with none of them doing any harm to any fish or inverts. Hopefully you find a nice looking one for your aquarium.
have fun
Jerry

 

[davelin315]

If the other shrimp are stupid enough to sit there and let the coral banded shrimp eat them, then they won't last long in your reef anyway. They are beautiful shrimp especially in a pair, and I have one (don't know if it's a male or female, so I'm not gonna get another one and risk getting the same sex) in my 125 reef with 2 fire shrimp and 2 cleaner shrimp. I've never had them do anything to anyone, and in fact, they probably do less damage than the other cleaners as I have never seen the coral banded shrimp picking at deceased tank mates.

 

[pathos]

hey howard,
i have had a CBS for a little over a year now. he has grown pretty large in my tank. i also have 2 peppermints that I have had for several months. they have gotten along very well together. i think the peps are munching on my xenias now so be careful! if i had it to do over i wouldn't have introduced the peps, in fact i plan on removing them to the sump. keep the CBS, let him grow large. they love a large and open cavern within the LR where they can hang upside down and catch food and debris floating in the water. the peps are boring IMO - FWIW - HTH - L8R

 

[Mouse]

CB'S have to be the old men of the shrimp world, i agree any shrimp lame enough to get caught by one of these blundering fools surely deserved to die. CB'S are defenately a shrimp with allot of charicter, its unfortunate they are aggresive but given a retreat to gaurd they will be satisfied at just warding off intruders and hardly make much of a chase. Mine has developed a taste for red legged hermet crabs though but i t hink that could be due to my stringent feeding in an effort to overcome algie, normal feeding has now resumed but he's still munching on the little guys. Not quite sure what to do with him yet, couldn't bear to se it go back to the LFS.

 

[Rob Klein]

I've had my coral banded shrimp for eight years now. I love that little (not so little) guy.

 

[MIKE NY1]

I had a problem with my CBS snacking on Chromis in the middle of the night. I started to target feed it a couple of times a week and now it behaves it selve. I think as long as it is well fed and the other shrimps have some retreats there shouldn't be a problem.

Mike

 

[NoFear29]

I have a mated pair odf CBS with 2 peppermints and 1 Cleaner Shrimp. No problems at all. The CBS are very slow movers. Like the above post says, the other shrimp should move out of the way, unless they have no brain.

 

[davelin315]

In hearing that some of the cbs out there are eating fish and hermit crabs, I think that is very unusual. Cbs act like cleaners shrimp when they are small, and are less aggressive at it than true cleaners shrimp. Also, look closely at a cbs, it has 2 legs which have evolved to the appearance of filter fans. They use these to scan the substrate or whatever they are walking on for tasty morsels (they really like bristle worms, and since they usually are not on the bottom of the tank walking on the substrate, they're only removing them from the rocks, where you really don't want them anyway, because the next logical step is to climb up to your corals). Go to the store, find a male and a female (look for 2 that hang out together, or look for one with eggs), and take them home. If one starts losing legs, then you got 2 of the same sex, and it's time to get the damaged one out of there.

However, I guess anything is possible when you take something out of its natural habitat and shove it into a very small space. Wonder if mine will go werewolf on me.....

[ August 11, 2001: Message edited by: davelin315 ]