Sexy shrimp compatibility?

Humblefish · Oct 11, 2015

So a few months back I introduced a pair of sexy shrimp into my 29 gal frag tank. It is fishless, and I primarily use it to QT corals. I am now needing to use it as an "Ark" to hold corals/inverts I want to keep from a DT I am about to sell. In this DT is a pair of fire shrimp, cleaner shrimp and an emerald crab. Can I add these inverts to my 29 gal without compromising the safety of the sexy shrimp? My wife is in love with the sexy shrimp and how they shake their butts, so I don't want to risk losing them. ;)

jedimasterben · Oct 11, 2015

The sexies will be safe, but your corals may not be safe from them.

Humblefish · Oct 11, 2015

Which corals are sexies known to prey upon?

jedimasterben · Oct 11, 2015

They love to eat the skirts off of zoanthids, but I've had over a dozen of them each from the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean, and they ripped into acans, and had some that tore the polyps out of montipora.

I don't have a very good disposition towards them after all that lol

Humblefish · Oct 11, 2015

jedimasterben said:
They love to eat the skirts off of zoanthids, but I've had over a dozen of them each from the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean, and they ripped into acans, and had some that tore the polyps out of montipora.

I don't have a very good disposition towards them after all that lol

Interesting. I mostly have softies/LPS in this tank, nothing too fancy.

pastelball · Oct 11, 2015

I had three in with lps, sps and softies they bothered the sps more. So I put them in a separate tank with rock flowers and a mini maxi carpet and ricordia and mushrooms and they don't bother them.

4FordFamily · Oct 11, 2015

You should be fine I agree sexy shrimp can mess with zoa and sps but should do much damage to sps. Zoa are a different ballgame. I got some on accident that kept my zoa from going and eventually the zoa died out years ago

shred5 · Oct 11, 2015

You will need a anemone like a maxi mini or they wander into your corals. I always have several in my tank... Never a issue with them..

Your emerald crab might be a problem for your shrimp. My sexy shrimp were disappearing and then my cleaners and one day I saw my emerald crab eating my last cleaner shrimp.

Humblefish · Oct 11, 2015

shred5 said:
Your emerald crab might be a problem for your shrimp. My sexy shrimp were disappearing and then my cleaners and one day I saw my emerald crab eating my last cleaner shrimp.

Yeah, the crab may need to go. I keep him in my DT because I had a bubble algae problem in there.

evolved · Oct 12, 2015

They're also known to munch on stylos, birdsnest, pocillopora, and the like.

iretthepirate · Oct 12, 2015

No I wouldn't trust the emerald or fire. Plus the sexy shrimp will eat your coral they'll eat some lps I mainly keep mainly soft coral with mine. also if a piece of coral gets hurts or starts to die they will eat. Your wife is smart I love them too and have even bred them

Kungpaoshizi · Oct 14, 2015

+1 to problems with the fire/emerald
Though I've got 5 ss in a 20 gallon with around 20-30 corals, they don't bother any of them. Corals range from acanthophyllia to purple bonsai to favias to monti's..
They sure do a great job of keeping the corals clean. They'll wander across every single coral. They also clean up the coral I got from a buddy who had a tank crash. So some of the corals were introduced with missing tissue and had quite a bit of die-off. (they never seemed to bother em, just clean em) But of course the 1 utter chaos zoa with 3 heads, introduced at that time, disappeared. It was the only zoa that's ever been in the tank :)