Peppermint Shrimp Molting?

I get home today and my peppermint shrimp is hanging out in the corner like so:



He'll go through spurts of intense flailing of his legs like he's trying to molt, but I've never seen it happen in person. It's now been several hours and he's still there, still flailing every so often.

Marley keeps dive bombing on him like "Hey what are you doing over there?!" He'll wave his tentacles and Marley leaves. Does anyone know if htis is molting behavior? If so how long does the process take? He's a rather small shrimp so it wouldn't surprise me if its just a molt.

 

Don't know, but normally they will hide when molting.

 

He may be molting. I'm not completely sure though. My shrimp usually hid when they molted, due to having a soft skeleton afterward, making them easy lunch. If you have a lack of hiding places the shrimp may be using the corner of the tank as cover.

 

I have never actually seen it either , with any type of shrimp, just see the evidence the day after

but from what I have read it sounds like it could be
they break out of the old skin, rear end 1st , and the kicking etc is to try and get the rear end of the skin to split so that they can then reverse out of it

Steve

 

I've not only seen it, I got video...this one decided to molt by my skimmer intake. There's a not-so-nice surprise at the end too. Which will show you why they usually hide to do it.

Molting Peppermint Shrimp | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

Thats crazy! There aren't any predators in my tank, unless Marly goes after him. haha Killer clown. I guess I'll see what happens in the morning.

 

crazy is an accurate assesment IMO

I figured I knew what the ending would be, but I would never have guessed the species involved

Steve

 

You think you were shocked, here I was, filming for science and pleasure, and BAM!!!
Of course, there wasn't a darn thing I could do about it, either. I never saw another one molt in the open after that though!

 

That is a pretty cool link SushiGirl

 

Thanks Corailline!