Skunk Cleaner Shrimp

[Mrs. Herbert]

Anyone else find the Skunk Cleaner Shrimp fascinating? We have two in our 75 gallon tank and any time I am doing maintenance on our reef, they must come and find anything on my hands. When the night light comes on, they are all over the reef. I have missed their spawn by seconds but one day I will capture it on video!

 

[ndrwater]

They are really cool. Great photo too!!

 

[Mrs. Herbert]

They are really cool. Great photo too!!

Thank you! One day I found one, relaxing under the tree

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

Anyone else find the Skunk Cleaner Shrimp fascinating? We have two in our 75 gallon tank and any time I am doing maintenance on our reef, they must come and find anything on my hands. When the night light comes on, they are all over the reef. I have missed their spawn by seconds but one day I will capture it on video!

They are really cool. Does anyone have an idea of how long they live? I recently lost one of mine I've had for about 18 months...may have been a bad molt.

 

[ndrwater]

I've had them live for over 5 years.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I've had them live for over 5 years.

Mine might have died from obesity .lol

 

[mattzang]

i love the skunk's personality. i went with both a skunk and a fire shrimp this last time and while the fire shrimp is pretty, he's so cryptic. the skunk however.. he don't care about nothing!

 

[Steve Elb]

Anyone else find the Skunk Cleaner Shrimp fascinating? We have two in our 75 gallon tank and any time I am doing maintenance on our reef, they must come and find anything on my hands. When the night light comes on, they are all over the reef. I have missed their spawn by seconds but one day I will capture it on video!

I have 2...Rocco and Luigi....tank gangsters

 

[Mrs. Herbert]

i love the skunk's personality. i went with both a skunk and a fire shrimp this last time and while the fire shrimp is pretty, he's so cryptic. the skunk however.. he don't care about nothing!

Totally! Ours are awesome to watch, and post up their own cleaning stations. Our Yellow Tang does not like to have us watch when the Skunk cleaner is doing its job.

 

[Mrs. Herbert]

I have 2...Rocco and Luigi....tank gangsters

Nice!!!

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I found my other cleaner shrimp dead this afternoon . I've had them for about 18 months. I don't know if it was old age or a fish attack :/

 

[16Reefer170]

How do you acclimate them? I brought one home from the LFS a few weeks ago, but it did not make it to the 1 week mark.

 

[Billldg]

How do you acclimate them? I brought one home from the LFS a few weeks ago, but it did not make it to the 1 week mark.

Very slowly, I drip them at about 3 drips per second, takes a couple of hours, but worth it.

I had one and loved it, but one day is just vanished, so I ended up buying 2 more and they are very cool also. At night they actually go to the tangs that are sleeping and clean them while they sleep. Talk about being spoiled, LOL!!!

The funniest thing was, one day when I was feeding my frags I felt something jump onto my arm and I was like, WHAT THE HECK, then I realized it was the cleaner shrimp on my arm cleaning the dead skin, felt very weird, LOL!!!

 

[00Barracuda00]

Just added 3 shrimp a few days ago (2 skunks 1 blood). I'm incredibly new at this so take it with a grain of salt:

My LFS has nearly identical salinity to my DT, so I floated them for 10 minutes to temp acclimate then put all 3 of them in a 5gal bucket. I allowed the water to mix because they were all pulled from the same tank at the store.
Then I put a really slow drip for 45 minutes from the DT into the bucket.

So far so good, all 3 are eating like pigs.

I've read here on the forums though that any major changes in temp/salinity need to be acclimated way longer/slower for inverts.