Cannibal ghost shrimp

[Conor1148]

Hello, I've set up a 20 gallon shrimp tank recently and im having some troubles with a bully shrimp. I had around 20 ghost shrimp to start with. One jumped to his fate, and now 5 others have died. The others i presume to have been killed by one very large ghost shrimp, since ive caught it eating on the bodies. I thought ghost shrimp were friendly to others like any other dwarf shrimp?

Its about 1/3 to 1/2 bigger than a normal male ghosty and has pinchers. Hes pretty awesome really, but with RCS on their way hes gotta go.

I also have 3 von rio tetras, but i dont ever see them leave the middle/top of the tank so i have a hard time blaming them.

What gives? Ive had ghosts for a long while and ive never had this many deaths in tank like this.

In the picture you can see the large shrimp with normal ghosts. you can also see the dead body of one that was not there about 15 minutes ago. the shrimp has now been removed but I'd still like to know what was going on here.





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[Oddball]

You've offered no info on tank parameters. Was a water change done before introducing the shrimp? Ghost shrimp are naturally somewhat aggressive towards their own species. To reduce aggression, they must be provided numerous hiding places and visual breaks. Normally, they should be provided more hiding places (pvc sections, rockwork, plants, driftwood) than the number of shrimp kept. That'll reduce aggression over 'prime' real estate. They're omnivorous and opportunistic feeders so, feeding on carrion (dead shrimp) comes naturally to them. Especially to recover calcium and iodine from the dead shrimp (iodine is required to provide for unstressed moltings). They tolerate well the temps tetras are kept at. A varied diet of fresh and processed foods is recommended as is providing calcium and iodine (a drop of medicine cabinet iodine a month is all that's needed). Don't keep these shrimp in tanks with breeding fish since the shrimp are fairly adept at snagging slow moving fry and raiding nests for eggs.

 

[Conor1148]

It seems my lfs got some macrobrachium shrimp, as I've just found a second one that was hogging one of the hiding spots. I've heard about them, but didn't think it was that easy for them to turn up. they've both been moved to a different tank.