Are ghost shrimp usually ruthless predators?

Ok so I have some (not too many, at least not yet) common pond snails in my tank. I noticed some empty shells in the tank but I have doradids of all kinds in there (like almost all of my other tanks) so I thought that maybe that was why. This morning I caught one of my ghost shrimp playing with a snail shell. I thought he was just picking at it. A couple minutes later I walked by and the shell was almost empty. In addition, his stomach is black (incidentally the color of the snail's body). Is this normal, or do I even have a ghost shrimp and not some other predatory glass shrimp?
 
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twentyleagues

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Ok so I have some (not too many, at least not yet) common pond snails in my tank. I noticed some empty shells in the tank but I have doradids of all kinds in there (like almost all of my other tanks) so I thought that maybe that was why. This morning I caught one of my ghost shrimp playing with a snail shell. I thought he was just picking at it. A couple minutes later I walked by and the shell was almost empty. In addition, his stomach is black (incidentally the color of the snail's body). Is this normal, or do I even have a ghost shrimp and not some other predatory glass shrimp?
They are scavengers. So snail probably died and shrimp ate it.
 

twentyleagues

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Heres the thing with stuff like shrimp and crabs....they are extremely opportunistic. So if it hasnt been eating enough it will resort to predation if possible and sometimes its easier then looking for scraps. I still firmly believe that the snail was dying or not at full capacity for the shrimp to be able to pull it off the glass and eat it. Unless like Hendre Hendre said it is a specific predatory shrimp. If its a standard ghost shrimp I think the snail was ill or fell off and couldn't get flipped back over. Ghost shrimp arent supposed to eat plants either but I've had them eat plants in a holding tank. I had a tank with some different stem plants awaiting a tank to put them into and it was seperate from my main system. I purchased 100 shrimp when I first got my puffer to make sure he got good food until he was acclimated. I put the shrimp in with the plants 2 weeks before i brought the puffer home to "qt" them and make sure they were gut loaded. I fed them all the good stuff and they ate it all up. And then they started one day on the plants and by the time I had them mostly fed to the puffer more then half the plants had been ruined. The plants have mostly recovered and are still awaiting a tank I still have a few shrimp in there I think some may have had some babies. Seems like a less damaging amount of shrimp atm and I just throw a few pleco bites in from time to time. When I catch a good sized one the puffer gets a treat. So most of what I read on stuff like crustations I take with a grain of salt. They are all opportunistic. Shrimp are a great clean up crew member in a reef tank because they will eat just about anything, just gotta be careful and keep them fed as they will eat just about anything. Ive had them steal food from lps corals and nems.
 

Lsey81

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I'll agree with the above...I believe they're opportunistic predators...I've found them in many cases over the years in my tanks to immediately dispatch any weak or dying fish in my community tanks...swordtails to cory's....once they slowed down...it was a wrap
 

Piscavores:)

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I'll agree with the above...I believe they're opportunistic predators...I've found them in many cases over the years in my tanks to immediately dispatch any weak or dying fish in my community tanks...swordtails to cory's....once they slowed down...it was a wrap
I have had the same experience, except they can’t dent my population. I have a bunch of misquito fish I got from the bayou, must be 50 of them and they picked off the shrimp I added to pick off the sick ones, so I added a crawfish:WHOA:. The fish crept up their colony and the crayfish handled any weak fish it was the circle of life and the population grew. Yes I fed them, all flakes and the crawfish got veggies since I figured he was already getting enough protein:naughty:. All I had to do was feed, watch, and keep up the matinence. Until a power outage cause a mini cycle and half the fish died and so did the crawfish:wall::rip
 
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Serpentine

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Your fish most likely was already deceased, unless you accidentally bought macrobrachium shrimp. Those guys are nasty. Look at the claws. If in doubt you can compare photos of macrobrachium to your shrimp. They have large claws but it's not as obvious on the females.
 

d033ie

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Ghost shrimp like many other shrimp out there. They will scavenge for food when needed too. I had a few back in the day and saw them attack small feeder fish. Some times different things happen to different folks, in different conditions. "Believe that Please"
 
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