Help......ich maybe????

[Jenn]

Great. Now I just have to find a lfs with healthy cleaner shrimp...I've run into bad luck lately w/ them. Thanks Misti.

[Ross]

Gary-i am very sorry to hear about your powder blue tang.

[Instar]

I never had neon gobies jump. They like to live inside small conch shells and they spawn in there.

Gary Sorry bout your tang. Powder blues generally hate cleaner shrimp. Generally they do not make good candidates for cleaning and may even try to kill the cleaner shrimp. Of course someone will have one that thinks he is some other kind of fish and has learned to be cleaned, but, generally that will be the exception. Also, powder blues do not acclimate well to captivity. The losses can be high. It helps to hve a very large tank and lots of macro to feed them. And yes, I believe there is a false cleaner shrimp. Fortunately we don't see them for sale. Cleaner shrimp are one of the most sensitive to changes in water chemistry during acclimation. They are easy to kill, difficult to get ones from suppliers that are not already messed up to the point that they will die no matter how good you are with the acclimation process. My experience with them lately has been about 1 in 6 will make it. I guess that is better than wild caught fish do. Should probably be getting them from Tim. Perhaps he can get healthy ones that are not all messed up from the get go. It may take a month to come to realize they are not ok.

[shellback]

How many of us use cleaner wrasse, I have one in my small tank that cleans its tank mates at least once every 30 min. He's a nice fish and doesn't bother anything eles, just really hyper. There is a pic of him with my domino in the gallery.

[GaryP]

A cleaner wrasse is very difficult to keep alive in captivity. The diet is almost entirely parasites and we can't keep enough fish in a tank to keep them fed. I have had some success in the past to feeding live brine then switching to frozen brine for cleaner wrasses. However I DO NOT recommend running out and buying a cleaner wrasses. There is a big difference between a reef with 100's of fish to be cleaned and the few fish we can put in a reef tank. Your better off with tank raised cleaner shrimp or neon gobies (see Instar's comments above).

That said, I do admit I would love to have a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse but can't bring myself to watch one starve. Here's a pic for those of you not familiar with this species. I guess I'll have to wait to get one for my 600 gal. tank.

http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/msu...khicleaner.htm

Gary

[shellback]

My cleaner eats flake food at both feed times and enjoys the cyclo-pleze that he gets once a week. He has accepted flake from the begining and likes frozen mysis. It's dependant on the fish on what he will and wont eat.

[GaryP]

Shellback,

I think you are very lucky to have a cleaner wrasse that accepts flake. IMO its definitely the exception to the rule. That's the problem with these guys, folks hear about the exceptions and think they are going to be lucky and get one of them too.

Gary

[shellback]

I have never had a fish starve on me so far. Most fish I start with frozen work in flake slowly then ween to frozen twice to three times a week. But it is true that some fish are just picky eaters and you run your luck.