Suddenly lethargic cleaner shrimp

[Eric55]

Hi,

I have a pair of cleaner shrimp that usually climb over all of my live rock and rarely pass up a chance to crawl on my hand.

Now, both of them spend most of their day out of view behind the rock, and they shy away from my hand when it is in the tank. On the rare occasion one of them has climbed on my hand and "picked" at it, the shrimp had less energy.

I made 2 changes to my tank 3 weeks ago. I renewed my bag of PhosBan, and I started using Seachem's Purigen filtration bag (both are in my refugium).

I tested my water yesterday and the readings were pretty good (except my nitrates were at 7). Today I did a 50% water change.

Any ideas if the Purigen filter might be doing anything to the shrimp?

Thanks, Eric

[jaydubh11]

Did they recently molt?

[Kannin]

my cleaners get lethargic right b4 they molt.

[acrohead500ppm]

well i am guessing they are (trying) to molt but you need to cut back on the chem filtration its pulling out lots of elements.
take out all chem filtration and add a dose of iodine/coral vite to the tank!!iodine is needed for proper molting and it is the fastest depleting element in most reefs

[goldmaniac]

yeah, the cleaners I've had always would stop activity before molding. How long have they been lethargic?

if it's possible your iodine is low, maybe they need to molt but don't have the supplements to do so, so they're in a lethargic 'holding pattern', if you will. just a guess. You said you recently did a few water changes, any decent salt has enough iodine in the mix for cleaner shrimp. Unless you have a kick a$$ tank that uses up iodine that quickly...

[acrohead500ppm]

he is using a bunch of chem filtration though<<<< AC pulls out iodine like mad

[BigBadBlenny]

whats your tank temp? did it spike

[darkcirca]

Almost 2 months ago my cleaners started doing this, actually one was laying on his side for some time. We thought they were both goners. The one went back to normal, while the other one (laying on his side) had funky antennas that were wavy. He had a very bad molt (not sure why), but within a few weeks he was fine and back to normal. Hasn't happened since and I have no idea what caused it, but he sure did hide and not care about much while he was looking weird.