Shrimp eating the medicated food!

musicsmaker · Feb 4, 2020

I'm feeding frozen mysis that has been treated with General Cure and Focus, to treat for internal parasites.

My cleaner shrimp go after it like crazy. I thought for certain it would kill them when I first saw them eating it, but they seem fine.

Does anyone have experience with this? Should I try to catch and remove the shrimp before I continue feeding the medicated food to the tank?

ndrwater · Feb 4, 2020

Let em be. The shrimp will be just fine

musicsmaker · Feb 4, 2020

ndrwater said:
Let em be. The shrimp will be just fine

Are you sure? One of the ingredients in General Cure is listed as unsafe for inverts. Thats why I made the food instead of just dosing the tank to start with.

CuzzA · Feb 5, 2020

Give the shrimp a chunk of clam, fish or shrimp (yeah shrimp

) to keep it occupied. Then feed the medicated food. I do this when feeding coral.

EmdeReef · Feb 5, 2020

Frozen mysis won’t “soak up” much if any of GC. Not sure what you’re trying to treat but it’s usually not a good method. Freeze dried might work but best to use a binder like focus.

That said I wouldn’t worry about the shrimp even if GC did somehow end up in mysis. Metro is mostly safe for inverts and prazi affects some but not all inverts (e.g.worms).

musicsmaker · Feb 5, 2020

EmdeReef said:
Frozen mysis won’t “soak up” much if any of GC. Not sure what you’re trying to treat but it’s usually not a good method. Freeze dried might work but best to use a binder like focus.

That said I wouldn’t worry about the shrimp even if GC did somehow end up in mysis. Metro is mostly safe for inverts and prazi affects some but not all inverts (e.g.worms).

I am using Focus. I treated some flake with it too, and the shrimp went after that as well.

musicsmaker · Feb 14, 2020

Day 10 Update: I no longer see any stringy white poop from my fish, and my cleaner shrimp are fine. One actually just molted.

After my initial post, I watched helplessly as a rock nem ate a big piece of flake food that was crusty white with GC, and I thought for sure it would be affected. So far so good. Still open, sticky, and vibrant.