Catch Up Post Number 1: The Tail of Two Fish and a Suicidal Shrimp

Fwah… Have I gotten behind!  So we will do this in a series of catch-up posts.

The weekend before Halloween, hubby and I were looking for something to do and had the idea to go up to Reef Culture just to look at stuff.  Luckily, or unfortunately, they were having a 20% off all black and orange livestock sale for Halloween.  And can you guess what black and orange fish is a great beginner fish?

Clownfish!

While also investigating, my husband being the deal hunter* he is, decided we should get a fire shrimp since he would be 18% off.  

After spending an amount I’d rather mention, we set off home with our precious cargo.  An hour later, we were in the process of drip acclimating our first interesting inhabitants that did not live in a shell.  We acclimated the fish for about forty-five minutes at a rate of one drip per second, the shrimp we acclimated for one hour also at one drip per second.

All of our animals were well behaved and doing well for the first two weeks.  Then we noticed something odd.  First, the shrimp’s whisker was shorter.  Then, his claw went missing.  Next, his other whisker was shorter.  

On closer observation, we realized he was getting well acquainted with our circulation pumps.  I posted my concerns on Nano-Reef and someone suggested putting panty hose around the pump.  We tried that and all was well for a few days until it looked the panty hose was disintegrating in the tank.  I assumed that was probably not healthy.  So we did some rearranging, took the pantyhose off, and closely monitored the shrimp for the following days.  All seemed well.  He molted and all of his missing appendages came back.  

Poor deceased Shrimp.

 On November 5^th, my mother in law went by the house to drop off some chairs while we were at work.  She said our shrimp looked nice.  She thought it was normal behavior for the shrimp to hug the pump… The shrimp got to friendly with it, and apparently the pump did not reciprocate the feeling.  So now we have no shrimp.  We are brainstorming anti-shrimp eating pump tactics for any future purchases.

*= I say deal hunter because I frequently feel we never would have bought what we buy if there was no sale.  Therefore, we would have saved money on an item we didn't need if it wasn't on sale. lol