cleaner shrimp died

I woke up this morning and found my cleaner shrimp dead, I got him when he was real small and have had him for about 8 months. He was just about to molt so i am woundering if something got to him while he was in the middle of molting. My guess would be my 6 lined wrasse or pistol shrimp maybe. anyone ever have problems with those 2 killing a cleaner shimp during a molt?

 

have you checked your salt level? shrimp are really sensitive to low salt levels

 

ya i just checked it last night about an hour after i did a water top off its was 1.024

 

That's a tiny bit low for a shrimp. They prefer 1.025~1.026. However, that's not likely the source. If they have trouble during a molt, they can wear themselves out and basically die. (This is typically how I've lost all my mantis). Pistol shrimp are very dangerous to other shrimp. However, you would likely see at least a few bites out of the body if this happened).

 

I have never personally, but I have seen what the "softshelled" inverts can go through.

I had a large CBS that was put in a 120 gallon from a nano tank. It was in there for about 2 months and we added 6 peppermint shrimp to erradicate the aiptasia nem issue we had (which 100% worked BTW) and when we came back - no CBS.

We could only guess that while he was molting and soft - he was ganged up upon by the peppermints.

I had personally witnessed this exact same CBS in the nano tank destroying 2 peppermint shrimp (at two diff. times) which had just molted and were "softshelled" - the CBS it seems either could see/sense/otherwise know that the pepp had molted and went after, killed, and at it.

 

ya ive seen that video, but i target feed my pistol shrimp mysis and theres been a few times when my cleaner shrimp would try to steal the food from my pistol he would just run back in his burrow, ive never seen him snap at the cleaner before. i also herd that wrasse with the pointy noses like the 6 line, will pick at shrimp when they molt. the cleaner was dead in the front of my tank so i figure if it was the pistol shrimp he would have drug it back to his burrow to eat it.

 

I had one die for no discernable reason.