Ghost shrimp acting like cleaner shrimp

[Experiment397]

My garter snakes enclosure has a decent sized water section that was overrun with algae and so to combat that I threw in some ghost shrimp. They ate the algae growing on the glass but left all the stuff growing on the gravel. Which is kind of good seeing that it acts as a bit of a bio filter. Recently I've noticed my snake laying in the water with just his nose poking out to breathe a lot more than usual. I looked in and noticed the shrimp crawling all over him picking dirt out of his scales. Do ghost shrimp normally act as cleaner shrimp or is this unusual? I've tried getting a picture but the snake is very skittish and runs and hides whenever he notices I'm near the enclosure.


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[rwellbaum]

lol nice thats cool

 

[Gill Blue]

shrimp don't care what they eat off of. I would wonder what exactly they're picking off your snake, hopefully it isn't mites. I'd give it a good once over with a strong magnifying glass.

as far as the photo, I'd much rather see the snake running than the shrimp eating.

 

[Experiment397]

I'll try and get a current photo up of him.I check him for mites regularly since he's a wild caught on a bio active substrate mix. I think a lot of it is he brings in little bits of moss from him digging in the land section and the shrimp love eating that. Here's a pic of him eating his goldfish that I put in his pond. He's never tried eating his shrimp. Just the goldfish and guppies I put in for him. The pic is from before I redid his enclosure. He now has different branches, different substrate and a background. He is also a lot bigger.


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[tiirsys]

This is awesome! I love snakes and had always wanted to keep one as a kid. I'd love to see this updated with a more recent picture. :3

 

[ShadowBass]

It's normal for ghost shrimp to act as cleaners, even with fish.

They'll eat bits of skin and stuff, so it's not a warning that he has mites.

 

[freshienow]

That is an awesome story! I love hearing about stuff like this. I really hope you could get some pictures for us to see.