# Cherry shrimp...acting like cleaner shrimp?



## tous (Jun 22, 2017)

Hey guys, my elephant nose got sick the other week. I did a massive tank clean (stired up a ton of gravel muck) and 24 later he was covered in a white film and struggling to swim. Spending alot of time upside down and wondering around the tank (normally fairly recluse) because his eyes were so milky, I think he was blind.

I was worried so I moved him into my cherry shrimp tank (same water system) purely for safety as there were a couple aggressors showing interest in him and I thought hed be safer there. 

He was fine for about 30 minutes in there, but eventually he settled near the bottom and the cherry shrimp swarmed him. This is a 4 inch or so elephant nose and he probably had 20 mid juvenile cherry shrimp scouring him.... but only on the white areas, there was no shrimp on clean space. He was swimming around, not super quickly, but obviously trying to shake them.

He was distressed as far as I could tell, especially when the shrimp would start to clear his eyes, but the activity honestly looked beneficial (apart from his distress) they removed lots of white material (Probably about 50% of the volume). I let this go on for 3-4 minutes but it just looked like too much so I moved him back to his own tank and just pulled the aggressors. 

24 hours later he recovered, eye cleared up. He now seems perfectly fine. Back to gobbling up bloodworms. 

Do you think this helped? Would you have let it continue? I've added cherry shrimp to his tank now, who knows maybe if he has an outbreak in the future they will stop it from getting so bad.


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