• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Are coral banded shrimp dangerous to bimacs?

eirelav

Pygmy Octopus
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2003
Messages
12
I unfortunately lost my first bimac this past Tuesday. :frown: My LFS ran out of salt water shrimp and my baby refused everything else I gave her to eat(crab meat, snails, clams, goldfish, anything from the fish market). While I was pulling my hair out trying to get her to eat, I came home on Tuesday to find her in the mandibles of my coral banded shrimp!!! Although my CB shrimp is more than twice her size, I thought shrimp were food not predators!!! Do CB shrimp normally hunt octopus? Or was it just scavenging and my baby died from weakness and lack of food? I need to know because I have a new bimac (one that eats goldfish like clockwork, she's eaten 3 in as many days already) and I'm afraid the CB shrimp might go after her! Any advice please, I like the shrimp, but I'll take her back to the LFS if she will threaten my bimac.
 
Thats sad to hear :frown: . I think the bimac was probably dead by the time the shrimp got to it as it would be able to escape in time. But if you plan on getting a bimac of the same size, I would recommend that you take the shrimp out. It would only be considered prey if the octo was larger, being twice the length of the octo I THINK it might be a threat to it.
 
Joe's right to be better safe than sorry but i really dont think a boxer could do that to an octopus... I think that you need to look elsewhere...

Can you offer more details? Whats size of tank, how long set up? What's the water parameters, have you checked fo copper? etc etc

Also, with the new octo, goldfish are far from a good food source and they can also be a source of copper into your tank!!!! Copper kill cephs very easily.. have a read at back posts for info... goldfish are also the wrong food because they are a fatty freshwater fish and this diet can be bothersome to the octo's health.

this is one reason why its important to have the octopus's accepting all sorts of food from as early on as you can, so they dfont get hooked on a specific item.

I reckon that it would take at least two weeks for an octo to starve to death...
 
My tank is 46 gallons, with about 50 lbs of live rock. It has been up and running for 3 months. In the beginning, my octo ate amphipods, and the initial 20 shrimp I put in. She seemed healthy and happy, then my shrimp supply ended. It was about a week that I'm sure she ate next to nothing, she refused all frozen foods I offered. The water is pH 8.0, NH3, NO2, NO3 are all zero, SG is 1.024, PO4 is nil, the only bad thing is that the temp varies between 25 and 26 degrees celcius, I've been trying to cool with water flow and fans, I don't have the money to by a chiller at this time. Other tank mates are two brittle stars, a spiny sea urchin, coral banded shrimp, peppermint shrimp, and various snails/hermit crabs. I think she died of starvation because I think her front tentacles were getting skinnier as the week or so went on. Is that possible. I've decided to remove the CB shrimp, better safe than sorry. Thanks for all your responses. As for the copper question, it was a copper free tank when I got it, and I use RO water bought from a fish store.
 

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