Ghost Shrimp

[Mza36]

i woke up this morning and turned on my lights and saw my four emperor tetras swimming around, everything looked fine. after about an hour i returned to my tank to find one of my tetras in the clutches of one of my larger ghost shrimp!!! i tapped the glass, scaring off the scavenger and watched the emperor tetra weakly swim away due to a missing pectoral fin.

Now, i have seen my ghost shrimp eating guppy fry in my same tank and that really doesnt bother me as that is the circle of life and i assumed the fry were possibly dying/dead anyway.

i dont think my tetra's sick, although i didnt ask him

im seriously thinking of removing my ghost shrimp now and am wondering if anyone can confirm that ghost shrimp will not only eat lame fish, but actually initiate an attack. they seem ravenous enogh.

 

[rdd1952]

I doubt that the shrimp attacked the tetra. Shrimp are scavengers and will eat dead fish. It's quite likely, the fish was already in a weakened state and the shrimp was just taking advantage of that.

 

[pippoodle]

Can you post a pic of the shrimp
a lot of stores in the US seem to be selling long claw Macrobrachium shrimp as ghost shrimp - a lot of these will kill things that they can get hold of easily - NORMAL ghost shrimp will not

 

[saltynay]

Ghost shrimp is the most common name going it covers everything from poor genetic stock male RCS and Amano dwarf shrimp to Palaemonetes and Macrobrachium when young then there are all the brackish and salt water shrimp that get pooled together as well being called FW

I doubt that the shrimp attacked the tetra. Shrimp are scavengers and will eat dead fish. It's quite likely, the fish was already in a weakened state and the shrimp was just taking advantage of that.

Macrobrachium are vicious hunters and will happily try and catch any small fish that happens to stray too close like the temperament of most crayfish or lobsters.