skunk cleaner tentacles turning purple

[reefkeeperrob]

I just bought this shrimp a week or two ago. It seemed perfectly healthy when I bought it and did well in my tank until all of a sudden I notice that instead of it's tentacles looking semi-rigid and white they now look fatter, limp, and purple. The purple seems to be fuzzy purple stuff growing on top of the tentacles. I don't have any experience with these shrimp. When I feed my tank Mysis Shrimp it doesn't seem to be able to get any food at all so I target feed it about a 4mm x 4mm chunk of frozen shrimp which I bought from the grocery store.

 

Ever since I put it in the tank it's basically been inactive except when I feed the tank and then it gets pretty excited swimming around the tank. Is this normal?

 

I just tested all my parameters: Ammonia - 0; Nitrite - 0; Nitrate - 0; KH - 8dkh; PH - 8.4; Calcium - 340.

 

Snails, crabs, and fish seem perfectly healthy.

 

Has any one heard of this? I called the LFS I bought it from and they had never heard of anything like this.

[Coral Hind]

Have no fear, it sounds like it is just some form of algae. It will shed that exoskeleton off in about a week or two. Then it will be good as new.

[reefkeeperrob]

Hopefully you're right and it will be ok. I'm also hoping when it sheds the algae will not grow back because it's rather unappealing. I don't know why the only place I see this algae is on the shrimp. Just going to have to wait and see what happens I guess.

 

Another note, I drip acclimated it for about an hour.

Edited November 25, 2009 by reefkeeperrob

[reefkeeperrob]

The shrimp has zero interest in feeding tonight. It just looks stressed out. I looked at it closer. It looks like the tentacles have turned purple and there is some kind of cloudy fuzz growing on them.

 

Doesn't look like this is going to turn out good. Wonder what happened to it?

[Larry Grenier]

Mine look a little dingy and inactive just before molting. Then he hides-out for fear of soft-shell on the menu and finally reappears looking great. Sometimes the molt looks like a dead shrimp until I realize what it is. Keep up hope.

[reefkeeperrob]

 

The weirdest thing happened. Not longer than 30 minutes after I took the pictures 2 nights ago the purple was gone, no where to be seen and the shrimp was acting normal again. I don't see an exoskeleton anywhere either and I looked all over and under the small amount of live rock that I have.

 

I've never seen such a change for the positive so fast when things look that bad.