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Close Call w/ Shrimp Hitch Hiker - Mantis?

wpeterson

wpeterson

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I bought a beautiful euphyllia glabrescens colony yesterday with 5-6 heads. After taking it home, dipping it, and acclimating it I put it into my tank.

I have no crabs or shrimp on our clean up crew to ensure they don't eat our corals, so I was puzzled to find an odd looking 3/4" shrimp molt caught on a coral this evening. I had a hitch hiker shrimp somewhere in the tank and I began worrying it could be a mantis shrimp.

Since this torch coral was the only recent addition big enough to host a hitch hiker, I pulled it immediately for observation. With all of the polyps retracted, I noticed a small opening in the flesh of the euphyllia in a space between two heads. I saw shrimp antennae poking out, then pulling back inside. I shined a flash light on it and saw the opening immediately closed up. With the opening closed, the euphyllia flesh covered it completely.

After trying to entice the shrimp out with chunks of food, I broke open it's lair to discover a 3/4" shrimp, what appears to be a very juvenile mantis living inside the skeleton of the coral. I was able to completely remove it, but the shrimp was killed during extraction.

Euphyllia w/ Burrow Broken Open
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Dead Shrimp
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Shrimp Molt found in tank
ShrimpHitchhiker.jpg


Video of Shrimp Inside the Euphyllia:
 
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I wish I could have extracted the shrimp without harming it, but I was afraid I would damage the Euphilia colony if I kept it in isolation long enough to do that. I opted to get the shrimp out ASAP.

Some folks seem to live with small mantis shrimp in their tank at the expense of their snails and other small inverts being predated, but I'm always afraid of what they can do when they get larger.
 
Must be missing something here, but I'm not seeing the shrimp in the pic. I see a filter feeding barnacle instead.
 
wpeterson said:
I wish I could have extracted the shrimp without harming it, but I was afraid I would damage the Euphilia colony if I kept it in isolation long enough to do that. I opted to get the shrimp out ASAP.

Some folks seem to live with small mantis shrimp in their tank at the expense of their snails and other small inverts being predated, but I'm always afraid of what they can do when they get larger.
Click to expand...

Not all mantis are invert killers. I've had some for a few years that didn't eat my snails or other intentional inverts. A fed predator is a sedated predator for the most part.
 
Interesting. I never knew that barnacles molt like shrimp do. The molt completely through me off.

It molted the first night it was in the tank which concerned me - since I had no shrimp in the tank at the time and it was a crazy looking molt unlike any shrimp I've seen.

So this was a large filter feeding barnacle that the Euphyllia happened to grow over/around? I feel bad :-/
 
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