Introduced Harlequin shrimp....

[GarrDen79]

Today I bought and added a Harlequin shrimp to my tank because I saw a couple Asterina starfish around the tank. An hour after putting it in there, I am seeing a mass Exodus of starfish up the glass of the tank. I've counted 11 so far, including a couple bigger ones, had no idea tank had so many. If I had know this would be the response I could have just borrowed a shrimp and plucked these guy's of the glass.

But I like the shrimp, looks really cool. It will have a lot to feast on, but is it too much? Should I remove some on the starfish? How could I "store" the ones I remove for later feeding? In the refugium?

 

[tdileo]

The harlie will be out of food within a month. You’ll have to either rehome it or start feeding something like chocolate chip starfish unless you got extremely lucky and have one out of a billion that will eat normal food as I have heard some will eat flakes and masstick. They can eat multiple asterinas a day depending on size of the shrimp and the stars so they will be gone very quickly and as stated above you’ll have to start supplementing it’s diet if you don’t want it to starve.

 

[GarrDen79]

The harlie will be out of food within a month. You’ll have to either rehome it or start feeding something like chocolate chip starfish unless you got extremely lucky and have one out of a billion that will eat normal food as I have heard some will eat flakes and masstick. They can eat multiple asterinas a day depending on size of the shrimp and the stars so they will be gone very quickly and as stated above you’ll have to start supplementing it’s diet if you don’t want it to starve.

Thanks for the info. I thought my infestation would supply it longer. I'll look into finding another good source.