Tori's First Marine Expedition!! nano style!

[leahski]

so i just had one of the coolest experiences with my tank yet! i thawed out a cube of mysid shrimp and took one in a tweezers to see if there would be any interest at all, and immediatly one of the shrimp swam over and grabbed it! so then i tried it with my hand and it took a second for one to feel me and make sure i wasn't going to eat him, but then he climbed onto my finger and started nibbling away at the mysid!! it was soooo cool!

so i fed until none of them swam over to my hand any more (everyone in the tank was really excited about it, the amphipods were all out, the crabs went crazy, all of my brittle stars and tubeworms had their arms way out, it was great!) and none of the sexies seem to be interested in eating anything after the feeding (not going around, picking at rocks, etc) so i think this will work to deter them from the zoas.

my question is, is there any way to promote healing in the polyps now that they've been brutalized? the yellow polyps got hit the hardest it looks like. they'll probably just come back on their own, but i was wondering if there was anything i could do to help the process?

when my peppermint took his first bite of mushroom, he was doomed. these guys got away with eating a couple of polyps just cause they're so sexy. the world isn't a fair place!

[djbacon]

Yeah, not sure why the tank comes alive like that when you add shrimp. I have 5 nassarius snails and they BOLT out of the sand the second the shrimp hits the water. My fire shrimp is also eating out of my hand now which is great at keeping down the unwanted extra proteins floating around.

I think most of that stuff will heal on its own. I had a couple damaged polyps that have been slowly getting better

[leahski]

one of my yellow polyps got brave and ventured to stick out his fingers a little today!!
they must be some potent shrimp! everyone literally climbs all over me when i stick one in there! it's so funny!

i am wondering though, is it okay for me to just drop a couple shrimp in there for them to find and eat on their own instead of target feeding a couple times a day?

[Craig Manoukian]

You'll have to see if the other tank inhabitants let the mysid hit the bottom for your sexies to find.

[leahski]

hmm...well, i tried just letting some fall to the bottom, but they got swept away by my current and after a couple of revolutions just kind of surfaced...so that won't work.

[Craig Manoukian]

You can target feed them with a straw or pipette. Be sure not to swallow ant Mysid, not very appetizing. Use your thumb over the end of the starwa to keep the mysid in a vacuum.

[leahski]

haha, well, they can't be that bad, everyone in my tank likes them! they look kind of like tiny cocktail shrimp if you squint...

[Craig Manoukian]

How's the taget feeding going Tori?

[leahski]

well, its really fun albeit time consuming. and they must have SUPER metabolisms, they need to eat like all the time, so it doesn't really work to deter them from zoas unless i feed them several times a day. and i'm leaving for a week for spring break, so i won't be able to do that obviously. i'm really afraid of what i'll find when i come back. i still want to have polyps after spring break!!!

this really is a problem though. they're definitly eating the polyps, no matter how reef safe they're supposed to be and i cannot keep target feeding several times a day forever! do you think there's any better way of doing this? some sort of food containment device? or a live food that i could introduce to my system?

i don't understand why all of my "reef safe" shrimp eat my corals!! WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?? maybe i was a shrimp killer in a past life or have really bad karma or something! :-/

[Craig Manoukian]

I've never had sexy shrimp. I had fabulous luck with skunk cleaner shrimp, no perdation of any kind, and a great fish cleaning station they were.

[tbittner]

Maybe consider adding a HOB refugium where copepods can breed and multiply. They would give the shrimp a constant supply of food. I even read where people make a small box out of eggcrate, put some chaeto in it, and populate it with pods, then put that in your tank. It provides a refuge for the pods.

[leahski]

so sexies eat copeopods? i've never seen them catch an amphipod...
i have some chaeto in one of my back chambers that has pods in it...and i can still see copeopods jumping around on my rocks and their all over my glass, so i don't think there's a real shortage of them...
should i try pouring in some pods to try to repopulate it and make sure there are enough in there for them?

[tbittner]

If you can see the pods on the rocks then you have a good population of them. I'd be surprised if the sexies wouldn't eat them. But liveaquaria says to feed them flaked, frozen, phyto, and meaty items. I wonder if you could drop in pieces of deli shrimp for them?

Saltwater Invertebrates for Marine Reef Aquariums: Sexy Anemone Shrimp

[leahski]

i've been target feeding frozen mysid. my biggest concern right now is that they are able to eat something other than polyps for the next week without me being here to feed them.
do you think that i'll have to continue feeding them until i have a fish or something that they can eat leftovers from?

i was told that they did not need to be fed at all, and that they were completly reef safe. is this wrong? it seems to be...

[tbittner]

Everything I've read says they are reef safe. Go to PetCo, or order from someplace online, and buy an automatic feeder. Mysids will sink to the bottom. The auto feeders are pretty inexpensive and will provide food for 7 days, more if you spend more on it.

LiveAquaria says they will "perch" on corals. Doesn't say anything about eating them. Are you sure you don't have a bristle worm?