Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

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

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

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

XythAdar wrote: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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.