Whisker Shrimp Rampage

[XythAdar]

Alright, so I have a couple of 'Whisker Shrimp' who seem to have it in for any fish that suck on the tank. On the first occasion, I got up one morning to find a Whisker Shrimp dining on my Otocinclus, I figured, ok, he's slow and small, that's fine. So I got a Small Pleco to work on keeping my tank spotless. After a couple weeks, I found one of the shrimps making an evening meal out of him. Has anyone kept these shrimp with similar tankmates with the same results? I may give these shrimp to a friend who doesn't have any slow moving fish.

Thanks,
Thomas

[badflash]

Post a picture please. I'm not familiar with that particular name. Many long arm shrimp will eat just about anything they can catch.

[XythAdar]

I read some of the other topics on Whisker Shrimp, but they were just covering breeding.

[Neonshrimp]

I read some of the other topics on Whisker Shrimp, but they were just covering breeding.

I am not able to see the photos you posted but I think it is just the aggressive nature of these shrimp.

[rayvendawn]

I was told that the "whisker shrimp" are asian glass/ ghost shrimp, I have about 6 in my tank and they are very calm and never eat anything unless it's dead.
I love this species because they are so calm and quite beautiful.
Here are some of mine, one is a berried female. Sorry photobucket resized the pictures so I lost a lot of detail

[Neonshrimp]

XythAdar, after reading rayvendawn's post about his experience with whisker shrimp and seeing the pictures posted I don't think that they could actually kill healthy living fish. Did you actually see the shrimp kill the fish or did you see them eating the fish after they were dead?

I can't see your pictures but from rayvendawn's pictures the shrimps does look like a glass/ghost shrimp with claws that are too small to catch live fish.

[XythAdar]

Their claws are pretty small, but I've seen them grab at my other, more active fish leaving cuts in their fins. The other fish were doing well for a few weeks before they were seen getting dined upon too. I can not be certain they didn't die first, but from what I've seen, and the fact that these fish are a little slower, and less aggressive, I could see how the shrimp did it.

[thief]

Well I think you can assume that maybe the shrimps were to stressful and the fish died and then the shrimp ate them?

Just a suggestion.

Also how big is your tank? With all those plants I do think that the Otos and pleco would have somewhere to hide?

[mduros]

I had a red claw shrimp that may have just been extremely predatorial, but he picked off half of my neon tetra population as they slept. Finally caught him "red-clawed" snipping the tail end off of one so he was promptly removed from the tank and taken back to the LFS. I agree with badflash. Long armed shrimp are definitely opportunistic predators.
Take care,
Mary.