Sexy shrimp disappearing?

[Kathryn Lawson]

Hey guys, like the title suggests, I started with 5 sexy shrimp at the beginning of the summer and am now down to 2. I tried to include as much info as I could that might be relevant, so it's a rather long post - please stay with me!

 

I got 4 sexy shrimp together from a LFS a few months ago (2 males, 2 females) and added a singleton female from a local reefer who was moving out - not sure how old that one was. They'd been doing very well for a while, all hanging out together, with at least one of the females carrying eggs pretty frequently.

 

The first loss was a female, I noticed her being oddly still in a weird position on the rocks, but no visible injuries. Checked in later in the day, she had move around some but wasn't really responsive. I netted her (easily, so I suspected the prognosis wouldn't be good) and had her in a hang-on box overnight, but she was dead in the morning. I didn't think too much of it, figured maybe it was age or something. Given that none of my tank residents even took notice that she wasn't doing well, I didn't think it was likely any other resident was the cause of death.

 

A little while later (week or two, I think?), I noticed that I was no longer seeing a male sexy shrimp. No signs of anything wrong that I noticed, just wasn't there one day, no body found. I quite frequently check in on them and count them all, and they're essentially always all visible - before this, I don't think I've ever not seen one for more than a day. The tank is a 30 gallon peninsula on my desk and I work from home, so I'm looking at them multiple times a day.

 

And now, a week or two-ish after the male disappeared, I was checking in on my tank extra frequently because I've been trying to capture larvae when they spawn, to try raising them. Frustratingly, my about-to-spawn female just disappeared - no unusual behavior, no body found.

 

At this point, I'm getting suspicious that something more serious is going on. I don't think it's any of my fish - the only one that's paid any sort of attention to the shrimp is my small male ocellaris clown, and even that was mostly when they were first added. He's absolutely too small to swallow them whole, and was completely ignoring the first female that was just lying around, so even I really don't think he's the culprit. Along with him, for fish I have a female ocellaris clown, a yellow clown goby, a green clown goby, a pair of firefish, a tailspot blenny, and a female molly (currently in a separate tank for treatment for what seems to be an eye injury, so is definitely not a candidate for the last loss). Other tankmates are a bunch of snails, two tiger conchs, two pompom crabs, a scarlet hermit crab, and a tuxedo urchin, none of which I suspect.

 

I do, however, have a bubble tip anemone that my female clown loves, and relatively recently (after having all the sexy shrimp but notably before the deaths/disappearances started), I added two fairly large rock flower anemones, since I thought the shrimp would like having a host. The shrimp tend to hang out on, under, and around a rock bridge in the center of the tank, so I added one to the sand bed on each side under the bridge. I've seen the shrimp standing on them occasionally, and the nems seem to react just like they or a coral would to any other touch, kinda shrinking up where touched.

 

Would a rock flower nem possibly eat sexy shrimp, even though sexy shrimp are supposedly hosted by them? I noticed what almost looks like a large air bubble inside the larger RFA the same day I couldn't find the latest missing sexy shrimp, so I'm a bit suspicious. That's literally all I can think of in terms of a hazard in this tank, other than the very low-flow HOB filter intake with a guard that I've seen a shrimp standing on with no sign of suction/stress. And that wouldn't explain the loss of the first female, seemingly without a mark on her.

 

Are there any corals that might sting/incapacitate a sexy shrimp? Alternatively, is there a sexy shrimp disease/virus that could be to blame? If the later two missing shrimp died overnight, maybe my CUC could have taken care of them before I noticed the bodies?

 

As you can probably tell by this long post, I'm at a loss. Anyone have any ideas of what might be going on?

Edited August 18, 2023 by Kathryn Lawson
Remembered scarlet hermit

[ReefdUp]

It's the clown gobies - 99% sure. As soon as I saw the title, I was already guessing that you had clown gobies (without seeing the post). It's a common occurrence, unfortunately.

 

Over a decade ago, there were a lot of threads and posts about this. I'm not sure why this info isn't as readily available anymore.

 

When we first got into the hobby, we had a similar situation. The sexy shrimp were disappearing in a 3g aquarium, and there was only a clown goby. One day my husband caught the goby in the act.

[Kathryn Lawson]

No way, really??! I guess I did add the yellow clown after having the sexy shrimp for a while (green clown goby was my first livestock), but before losing the first shrimp, but it's hardly even looked at them twice! I think these shrimp are bigger than its mouth, so I doubt it could just swallow them whole... and wouldn't I have seen it going after the "out-of-it" first shrimp that didn't seem to have any injuries but died after I isolated it?

I thought maybe my octospawn or hammer or a nem stung the first shrimp but it got away, and it just outright ate the other two (or CUC got to them before I saw them), but I never even thought twice about the clown gobies...

Edited August 18, 2023 by Kathryn Lawson