A sad day in Brandon's neighborhood (1 Viewer)

[BP]

I came home from church yesterday to find my open brain completely deflated. I mean it was like the green was painted on the skeleton, no flesh. I was hoping that it was a temporary thing but alas, the peppermint shrimp I was so proud of came out and started picking at the corner. Today you can see clean white skeleton on that one corner. The odd thing is it showed no signs of illness in the past week and all things in the tank seem to be doing very well ( except that darn xenia and what's left of my leather ). I think maybe the peps cannibalized my little brain, so I lost a $25 brain to a couple of $3 peps.

That's a real shame, it almosts makes you wanna quit and give up.

 

[Guest]

Nay, you really don't want to quit. Otherwise you miss all the good things.

 

[Guest]

You did test your water params right?
If you do decide to get out let me know i need some lights. Just kidding.
My brain deflates and inflates almost daily. My damned peppermint shrimp keep stealing his food at night too!

 

[KarenB]

The peppermint shrimp more than likely started picking at the brain when it started dieing, as they are part of the clean-up crew of a tank and will be drawn to dead and dieing organisms for food. I have 16 peppermints in my 135 g and five different brains, none of which any of my shrimp ever bother, except as estone said, to steal food from them.

One of the two scallops I collected in Port Aransas died the day after I put it in the tank, and I knew it had died because the peppermint shrimp started to eat the dead animal. I have one remaining healthy scallop, and they don't come near it.

That being said, since peppermint shrimp are known for eating aiptasia, it may be possible that they are looking for something to eat if you are not deliberately feeding them, which I do. They have been known to pick on certain cnidarians, so make sure they are well fed.

As for other causes of the demise of your brain, there are many possibilities, but it may be possible that it was stressed or malnurished and could no longer hold on.

 

[BP]

I am just amazed at how quickly it happened. Saturday all was well, Sunday it was "sleeping with the fishes". All water params were in check on last week but have not checked since then. I have been feeding the tank about half a cap of Kent Phytoplex (sp?) and even target feeding the brain and candy cane some thawed brine shrimp. As for the peps, I fed them some brine and some blood worms ( just a little bit ) about every other day. Really ought to break down and buy some Cyclopeeze one day, I hear that's a great food.

Thanks for all your help,
BP

 

[Guest]

sorry to hear this I had some problems and I decided to get out of the it .......needless to say a few months later im back with a larger tank lol stick with it cause if I had kept my last one I would be much further along

 

[Guest]

BP totally off the subject, but your location, are you the guy with the tent living by the drainage ditch in the woods on the southeast corner of that intersection?

But really, sorry to hear about the brain. But you know, even in freshwater, the cheap stuff always outlast the expensive stuff, so if you want a tank full of unkillables, then you will only have a tank of bare rock.