How long do your skunk cleaner shrimp live for?

[Paul B]

I have no idea but remember almost all my fish only die of old age too. I have a couple over 30 years old. I think people quarantine, (not you) and that severely shortens life spans as does medication.

This pair of hermit crabs lived over 10 years and my first coral banded shrimp pair in the early 70s lived 7 years.


I do have a problem when I get to many bristle worms and they get to big as they eat any invertebrate that molts.

This urchin just died after 12 years.



I also think not many tanks are set up correctly to replicate a real reef but I think that would more affect fish than shrimp.

 

[kamitera]

Got a fairly large one, about 2 inches, from LFS. It was about a few weeks into a newly cycled tank, and it molted every 3-4 weeks. During it's second month, the tank had a bit of an alkalinity spike (went up to 15 dkh) due to dosing too much "All for Reef" and I tried to gradually bring it back down with weekly water changes. As the alkalinity went back to normal (10 dkh-ish) after several weeks, one day our Jacques (that is what we named it) suddenly disappeared. We found his head a few days later, but everything else was eaten by the snails...and even the head disappeared after a day. So he lasted only 3 months. We now have Jacques 2.0, but much tinier than the first one, and I'm more careful with dosing anything, so hopefully J2.0 will live longer...