Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Last night while observing my fish, I noticed for the first time one of my albino corys go up to one of my ghost shrimp and allowed the shrimp to thoroughly pick over its body. This lasted for a good 5 minutes and I was so absorbed with this that I forgot to take a few pics. Is this normal behavior for ghost shrimp? I have had the shrimp for about 6 weeks now and this is the first time that I had ever noticed this behavior. Thanks for any input and thanks to all the advice and excellent information that I have received from the various posts and replies. Excellent site Mustafa and for the great article in TFH mag for getting me interested in shrimp.

justrick
Hello and welcome to the Forum.

I do not keep fish anymore in my Invert. tanks. And when I did I never seen this behavior.
It must have been very interesting to watch.

John

Thanks for the welcome, John, and you are right, it was very interesting to watch.

I only have ghost shrimp in with my main tank as a first try at raising shrimp. I currently have two 15 gallon tanks cycling at this moment with half of the water coming from my main tank during water changes(5G every other day) and the other half from the tap(treated with dechlorinator). I am putting in java moss and chain swords in both as well as some riccia that I have to constantly prune from the main tank with some leaf litter(oak and birch) with a fine sand substrate. These two tanks are going to house Indian Tigers in one and Bumble Bees in the other.

Again, thanks for the welcome and all the help Mustafa, yourself and the others have given me in starting to raise shrimp.

Wow, keep your eyes open and let us know if you see this again or anything else that catches your attention. Thanks for sharing and welcome to the forum

HI justrick,

Welcome to the forum! What you have observed the ghost shrimp do does not surprise me at all. Those shrimp (along with many other species, including macros and dwarf shrimp) love to pick at anything and everything, even your hands (once they get used to you). So, picking and looking for food is their normal behavior. What surprises me is that the cory actually sat there and didn't try to get away! There are native Palaemonetes sp. (e.g. Palaemonetes ivonicus) in the cory habitats in South America, so maybe this kind of bahavior is not all that foreign to the cory...who knows.

As for interesting ghost shrimp behavior....I observed a ghost shrimp use grains of sand to clean it's head and eye area a few years back. The shrimp picked up a grain with each claw and started rubbing the grains against its body. It was pretty amazing to observe and I called over my wife as a "witness" just in case someone doubts my observation. This would be the first account of tool usage among invertebrates that I'm aware of. Very interesting indeed...

Hey - I have also seen Palaemonetes do the same thing. The grain wasn't very big - not much wider than the width of the claw. It rubbed in over its front carapace. I wondered what it was doing and I thought maybe it just didn't realize there was a grain stuck in between its claws as it cleaned as per usual. Kind of dumb assumption looking back - but I didn't actually see the shrimp pick up the grain. I have dark gravel/sand that made the grain easily visible. I should say I have had a blue-green algae problem in that tank for months so maybe it was growing on the shell - I dunno.

Now that someone else (Mustafa) has seen it I'm gonna be on the lookout and maybe grab a pic/vid. Great observation.