Black dots on cleaner shrimp

JDF24 · Mar 25, 2016

Last week I noticed these black dots on my cleaner shrimp and now today there are a whole bunch more inside him and on the outside. Is this some kind of disease or is this a normal thing?

From last week

ImageUploadedByREEF2REEF1458936120.893359.jpg

Today

ImageUploadedByREEF2REEF1458936196.094347.jpg

Lionfish Lair · Mar 25, 2016

That's probably "Black Spot Disease" (there's a few other common names, but I'll have to look them up). This is more commonly seen in captive bred/housed shrimp. One place they see it in the wild, is estuaries. As the water quality declined, the incidence of such diseases increased. This is not the disease itself you're seeing, but the manifestation of such. They have actually isolated different pathogens to cause "the same thing". I used to collect shrimp year round and I could tell what was going on with the water, by just looking at the shrimp.

JDF24 · Mar 25, 2016

Lionfish Lair said:
That's probably "Black Spot Disease" (there's a few other common names, but I'll have to look them up). This is more commonly seen in captive bred/housed shrimp. One place they see it in the wild, is estuaries. As the water quality declined, the incidence of such diseases increased. This is not the disease itself you're seeing, but the manifestation of such. They have actually isolated different pathogens to cause "the same thing". I used to collect shrimp year round and I could tell what was going on with the water, by just looking at the shrimp.

Thanks for the info![emoji3] So will this go away anytime soon or is this permanent?

Lionfish Lair · Mar 25, 2016

A lot of times it will disappear with a molt, return again, disappear...... It can do this for a long time and maybe it won't ever come back, but it's a sign it's not perfectly healthy and/or in a perfectly healthy environment, and that can open it up for more grave issues. Maybe check your husbandry schedule and see if you need to step it up a little and perhaps offer it some different fresh foods. It's not that your tank is dirtier than ours, you just happen to have a shrimp in there that could be "reacting" to the situation, however benign it may be.