Sexy shrimp coral killer?

[Mrfresh]

I have 6 or so sexy shrimp in my tank, and have never had any issues. A friend on another reefing form said that his sexy shrimp pair eat his chalices... And someone else chimed in saying the saw his eatting polyps off his sps....

Has anyone else ever hear of this or any experience with this? I am very worried now and ready to rip the tank apart to get them out... I have a lot of sps and chalices in my tank and don't want to lose anything...

Thanks for reading

 

[mcarroll]

It's reefing and anything is possible.

I've had half a dozen of these in my 50 gal for a couple years. I was actually hopeful they'd eat my mushrooms due to another Internet anecdote, but they've turned out to be 100% coral friendly.

-Matt


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[NanaReefer]

Its not that they are actually eating the polyps per say but what the polyps contain. They are especially fond of zoas, I've got 2 Sexy (Anemone) Shrimp and see them do this often. Keeping them well fed helps a lot but in no way stops them from this natural behavior.
Sexy Anemone Shrimp is Carnivorous in feeding habit and eats frozen meaty bits of brine shrimp, meaty shrimp and silverside, phytoplankton, worms, detritus and vegetable flakes. Sexy Shrimp - Sexy Anemone Shrimp also feeds upon the mucus secreted by its host anemones and corals.


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[duke4130]

I am the guy with the sexy shrimp that ate about $1k in chalice frags they were two small frags not colonies so don't think that they go berzerk on eating corals 100%. As an animal they need to feed on a daily basis. I do not have many fish in the tank so I do not feed heavily every day. I do however spot feed corals heavily every other day. I am pretty sure that these two that I had were not being fed well on a daily basis and smelled the food that the chalices had just eating and went for it. They are shrimp so they are not going delicately pick the food out of chalices mouth...LOL... They tore into them pretty bad. One of the frags was very small and was not able to recover from the carnage and completely died...Sucks but that is life and I learned a valuable lesson on having shrimp in a small system. In the larger system that I used to have, shrimp of all kinds thrived. There was a lot of food that floated around. The guy that said that he saw them eating SPS probably doesn't feed that much and am pretty sure that he had the same thing that happened to me happen to him.