Shrimp Throw another shrimp on the barbie! Wait NO! At how much these guys cost for their size the cost per pound would be huge! Seriously though these are some very nice additions to a tank. There are a multitude of shrimp out there most of which are good in tanks. Including the ones listed below some common shrimp are Coral Banded (I want one of these), Camel, Harlequin, Blood/Fire, Sexy Anemone & Mantis (this last one being the exception for being good in a tank, while quite pretty are quite destructive eatting any other invertibrates). Other than looking cool shrimp are quite benificial to a tank enviroment often scavenging about to remove unwanted wastes and some like the Scarlet Skunk(below) and Fire shrimp actually help clean the fish by picking off dead flesh by setting up cleaning stations where fish will line up like a gas shortage waiting their turn, (un)fortunately my fish don't do this whether it is them being healthy or not knowing any better is anyone's guess. Now while shrimp are mostly benificial there are definitely some exceptions, in smaller tanks when space is at a premium shrimp have been known to kill other shrimp, but with enough space and rock work most should be ok with their territory because if there is a squabble (two males, etc) there's plenty of room for one who might lose to retreat to. Being as shrimp are invertibrates and they have an exoskeleton in order to grow they do need to molt, I'm unsure what conditions exactly the shrimp require, but I believe that iodine is helpful.

Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp(Lysmata amboinensis)
These are probably my favorite shrimp, mostly because they have no problem just hanging around looking for something to eat, occasionally cleaning their feelers, in general just looking pretty. They will eat food directly from my hand too like a piece of fish, and if I hold onto the food they have absolutely no problem jumping on my hand and eatting it. They used to pick and clean my hands too and give me a nice little manicure picking off pieces of dead skin, I think they've associated my hand with fish though and as such dont care for my fingernails much more. I have two of these fish and they both more or less hang out together on the left side of the tank underneath a flat rock, but at night they do tend to wander around the tank.

The underbody is a orangish tan color, with a red on the top portion and a white stripe down the center giving to the name Scarlet Skunk also having white feelers that they seem to clean regularly almost as a cat would. Both of my skunks are the biggest shrimp in the tank so there is not problem with them keeping everyone else in line.

As mentioned above shrimp need to molt (shed their exoskeleton) in order to get bigger, and one day I saw this on top of the rock and thought for an instant something was wrong with the shrimp as its almost transparent, upon closer inspection I noticed the other one was almost transparent! Then I noticed a movement from under the rock and saw that they were actually under the rocks I had just seen my first empty exoskeleton. You can see one right in the center of the picture, and the other in the bottom left corner, it was quite strange to see that both of my skunks molted during the same night.

Peppermint Shrimp(Lysmata wurdemanni)
This is the peppermint shrimp, which they get the name from the red peppermint like color (I'm guessing) although a Camel shrimp tends to look more like a peppermint candy as they are red and white striped, who knows how some of these creatures got their name. These are good scavengers to have in a tank, although I think I may of over done it when I ordered them, they will pick bits of dead fish, food, and whatever else they can get their hands on. I've seen them picking at corals and mushrooms when I first put them in the tank, but after that initial picking I never seen them go back, so my guess is they weren't eatting the coral they were eatting some sort of debris or hitchhiker on the coral. These are also known to be a biological form of aptasia control, but in all honesty if they had the choice between aptasia and a nice piece of fish, they'd take the fish. On the downside I have heard some horror stories about "peppermint" shrimp (unsure if they were the same kind) completely killing Fire & Scarlet Skunk shrimp in a particular tank, now I don't know if the other shrimp were tiny (as I've seen skunks no larger than a quarter in some stores) or if it was a space issue in the tank, I've not had any such problems personally so I can't vouch for how common an occurance it is, but the fact I don't see more complaints like this I doubt it's very common. Another note there is another species of Peppermint shrimp (Lysmata californica) that is not an aptasia control shrimp that often gets sold under the guise that it controls aptasia which it doesn't. This picture here is another flash shot, all but the biggest of my peppermint (I have 6 that I know of) usually hide all the time, as you can see the red peppermint colored stripes on the body with the rest of the body being more or less clear.

Pistol Shrimp(Alpheus armatus)
The final shrimp to my collection is the pistol shrimp, so called because of the popping sound the make, I even heard a rumor that the force of the snap is equal to that a of .22 calibur gun (although I don't know how true this is, as I'd rather not have 135 gallons of water on my floor one day). Not to be confused with a Mantis shrimp though as both make similar popping sounds, looks quite different and is completely not reef-safe unlike the pistol shrimp). There are a few different varieties of Pistol shrimp all of which are more colorful than the Caribbean version I have, but they hide in their holes all the time so I don't really see looks as an issue. Also known as a symbotic shrimp as they are often seen living with Watchmen gobies as the gobies have better eyesight and warn of predators the Pistol shrimp will share its food in exchange. That being said one might ask why have something in the tank if you're never going to see it? Well they do have the benifit of being sand stirers as they'll churn up the sand digging a burrows. That being said, I dont have any pictures of the shrimp, the only thing I have now is a probably location *grin* I occasionally see sand being flug about this hole, and I did put a piece of fish infront of it and it did get swooped back in, although he may have moved a bit to the left under the rocks as I'm seeing sand fly out of that area too, my newest anemone is directly above it.