badflash wrote:No offence intended, but after a certain point I stop beating a dead horse. You have your observations, I have mine. I'm sure both are based on what we've observed first hand. Healthy groups can agree to disagree.
Nobody will get offended just by differences of opinion....I hope, although I do smell some "offendedness" in your reply above.
I don't see any dead horse here by the way. I'm also not saying that any given observation is worth more than any other single observation. What I am saying is that 99.999999% of the people that actually ever kept american glass shrimp with dwarf shrimp haver never reported a glass shrimp actually killing an adult dwarf shrimp. This is something that can be repeatedly proven in any given experiment. I have kept glass shrimp with a colony of red cherries before and the glass shrimp did not even try to attack them. Right now I have a few red cherries and a few amanos in with the glass shrimp and there is absolutely no aggression towards any shrimp, except during feeding when the glass shrimp go crazy for food...but that's not hostile aggression but simply greed. Sure...they are able to hold on to and consume hatchlings and small juvenile dwarf shrimp. But adults?
Once you get over your recent disaster I dare you to buy some glass shrimp and put a few adult red cherries in with them. I can guarantee you that the red cherries will not be hunted down and eaten. How about this....if you actually see a glass shrimp hunt down and eat a healthy red cherry shrimp I will send you 10 snowball shrimp for free! I'll trust in your honesty when reporting such an event.
I'm not saying you did not see what you saw, but I am keeping the possibility open that you might have missed something that was crucial to the outcome of your observation. Plus, when you give advice to people on the behavior of a given shrimp, you don't go and tell them about the one, incredibly rare and exceptional observation (in this case unique), but you tell them how this shrimp usually behaves.
Finally, when you tell a story, even if true and observed, that sounds physically improbable, then you should not take offense when others doubt your story. No shrimp, even the largest macros, have the capability to just chomp down on anything alive with their mouths without holding on to it with their claws. If you ever find a macro that has lost all its claws (even the small "hands" that search for food) in a fight and hence cannot hold on to anything, I again dare you to put a few red cherries in there and report back to us if the red cherries get chomped down and eaten. Again, I'll guarantee you they won't. I'll give you another 10 shrimp of a species of your choice if that happens. I have observed macros in such a situation. They do survive by attempting to eat things directly with their mouths (they even graze on hair algae that way), but they have trouble even holding on to a moving (due to filter flow) piece of pellet, let alone a moving, zipping healthy shrimp. Their mouths are just not made for chomping down and killing animals. That's what their claws are for.
Anyway...that's all I am going to say about this at this point. After all, an observation should be repeatable for it to be considered "gospel." If you and others can repeatedly report back that a glass shrimp can just chomp on a an adult dwarf shrimp, even without holding on to it, then we can try to explain how these shrimp even physically do that. Until then your observation will remain a freak incident that can probably be explained by some unobservable factors. Wouldn't be the first time (and not the last time) that something not directly observable accounts for a certain outcome. At least in scientific circles (and I hope more and more in the hobby, too) someone with a completely new theory, especially one that seems to go against all conventional wisdom, has the burden of proof and the burden of presenting repeatable experimental setups, so others can repeat his/her observations and (hopefully) confirm his/her theory. Such a person should not get offended by people not believing him right away. After all no offense is intended...it's all just healthy scepticism and part of the scientific process.
This kind of reminds me of some people claiming that their amanos literally *jumped* on some unsuspecting red cherries, wrapped their legs around them so they can't escape and consumed them. These people will swear that that is what they observed. Do you necessarily believe them right away without any reservations? Hardly. There is just something amiss in this story.
I have 4 sand shrimp , and they shouldn't pose a threeat to anyone else, should they?
