Banded Coral Shrimp
 

Are these guys reef safe or not? I thought I've seen comments about them picking at corals...

Most wont harm your corals but they do kill other shrimp as well as small fish. They can be mean.

Dont do it, they are so mean. Not so reef safe. SK8r can give you more inputs.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11363181#post11363181 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DaveG99 [/i]
[B]Most wont harm your corals but they do kill other shrimp as well as small fish. They can be mean. [/B][/QUOTE]

What do you mean "MOST"?

If there is a chance of a fish or invert turning evil I don't want it because it will happen to me. I've never had good luck with dwarfs angels or rogue crabs. Not willing to try the shrimp if there is a chance it will be evil.

I had a beautiful one for 2 months that didn't cause any problems, but I decided not to take my chances and caught it and traded it back to my LFS.

I have one with 2 cleaners and they just stay away from each other, CBS only comes out when its feeding time though

I have had one for a year, and a blood red, and a lobster. no problem. Maybe I have just ben lucky, they have there own spacies!
Bob

I have had one for a year, and a blood red, and a lobster. no problem. Maybe I have just ben lucky, they have there own spacies!
Bob

i've had one for about a year too, he likes his space that's for sure, but otherwise does great with all the inhabitants. i couldn't imagine my tank without him.

I have one with mostly softies, toadstool, kenya tree, GSP, frogspawn, hammer and no problems.

I also have a blood shrimp and emerald crabs. They've been together about 20 months now.

I wouldn't trust one! Don't count on it behaving!

Thanks everyone for your replies!

Do coral banded shrimp rip food from the mouths of coral like skunk cleaners do?

I have one and he's a meanie. Likes to lunge at anything that gets too close and is a key suspect in the disappearance of some small gobies. I'll be trading him for a smaller one or something nicer very soon. Never heard of problems with corals but I wouldn't trust them with any small fish like a neon goby. Supposedly can't mix them with arrow crabs either.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11370730#post11370730 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bdare [/i]
[B]Thanks everyone for your replies!

Do coral banded shrimp rip food from the mouths of coral like skunk cleaners do? [/B][/QUOTE]

I've never seen mine actually take the food the way a skunk does. When I target feed something in the vicinity of my guy he'll usually move in that direction but he stops short of taking the food.

i had one in a dispaly tank at work for like a year, before the tank heater went balisitc and fried everything. he would lunge at the chromis and strawberry psuedochromis, never caught them though. he was really big though, like 2.5 inchs.

the only corals with him were a leather, some shrooms and a condy anemone. he never bother them.

mine minds his own pretty well

Mine is full grown and doesn't bother anything in the tank. The only time he is mean to anyone is if they swim too close to him, then he snaps at them. But no worries, the fish are faster.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11370730#post11370730 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bdare [/i]
[B]Thanks everyone for your replies!

Do coral banded shrimp rip food from the mouths of coral like skunk cleaners do? [/B][/QUOTE]

Not if you make sure to feed the shrimp first....

What the heck??? I never heard of a CBS being bad??? In all the years i've been in the hobby i've always kept a CBS in my tanks and have yet to see a bad one. I've even keept one in a 20 gallon nano with no trouble. I also have one in a 25 gallon with peppermint shrimp and a cleaner shrimp with no problems let alone ever try to harm a fish. My main display is a 150 gallons with all kinds of small fish, blood shrimp, peppermint shrimp, cleaner shrimp, pistol shrimp, and 2 procelin crabs with absolutly no problems. They are one of the shrimp that I would recommend getting besides a cleaner shrimp because of their bristle worm eating habbits. The CBS i've had in my 150 display has been with me now for almost 4 years and has been in 4 different tanks with yet to cause a problem.

I love Coral Banded Shrimp :)

how big can they get?

Not all that big. My guy is pretty much full grown and rarley sheds anymore. His size is about 5" long if you straighten out his tail and measure from tip of the tail to the tip of his claws. The body of a CBS is very small actually. The long claws make it look alot bigger.

I think they are beautiful, but I am trying sooo hard to catch mine to get rid of it!! I wouldn't add it if I were you. Mine has doubled in size in just about 2 months, and he was cute at first, but now he jumps on my fish!! My coral beauty has little pinch marks on his tail and I've even seen him try to pinch the yellow tang when he swims by. Other than the fish damage, I don't ever see any sign of him, he just comes out when the lights go off.

I've been keeping shrimps in aquaria for many years. There are several species of [I]Stenopus[/I] (Coral Banded Shrimps). Some species grow larger than others.
These shrimps are big on bark and short on bite- they love to make themselves look menacing. It's all part of their game.
If your fishes are large enough Stenopus will clean them. If your fishes are small and if the shrimp is hungry enough it might try to catch some nocturnal sushi, but it's much more common to see a Stenopus shrimp picking at a fish that died of other causes. (The unknowing aquarist often blames the shrimp.)
Larger Stenopus will kill smaller shrimps [I]if they can catch them.[/I]
It usually takes a pair of Stenopus to corner and catch a smaller (but much quicker) [I]Lysmata[/I] spp. shrimp.
I've kept pairs of Stenopus with small fishes (like Clown Gobies) and had no problems. If your aquarium is small (20 gallons or less) you might want to avoid larger species of shrimps.

I wish I could get my CBS out of my reef............he has eaten 7 out of my 8 green chromis and I am afraid he is going to eat my other shrimp. The CBS seems to be a preditor as opposed to a scavenger. I have 3 cleaner and 3 fire shrimp and they are all great. The CBS lurks around in the dark eating what it can get a hold of.

If you want a reef tank with small fish and inverts.........don't get a Coral Banded Shrimp!

Kyle- someday try this experiment:

place 7 or 8 Green Chromis in your reef aquarium after your CBS has been removed. See what happens.