peppermint shrimp

[Salmon King]

Thinking of putting them in my tank for aptasia.I have been keeping them at bay with joe juice but keep spotting one every few days.I dont want to keep putting my hand in the tank.Just wondering the pros and cons of having these shrimp

[Skimmerking]

I have never has any problems with them. But I know they love my small feather dusters that i have in the tank. other then that they eat out of my hands which is pretty cool

HTH

[PoonTang]

Mine ate my frogspawn after they ran out of aptasia.

[marie]

The only problem I've ever had with them was stealing food out of corals mouths, other then that they were the best at ridding the tank of aiptasia :mrgreen:

[hillbillyreefer]

Mine were in the tank for about a week then one day the aiptasia disappeared. Haven't seen any since. They now steal food from the corals, so I feed them first then the corals, it helps but isn't foolproof.

One of mine is carrying eggs at the moment, pretty cool!!

[Drock169]

They have a tendancy to eat corals like Xenias after they run out of aiptasia. They also have a tendancy to kill dwarf coloured feather dusters, not sure about the larger ones. Also they only eat smaller aiptasia.

[Salmon King]

I also thought they only ate the smaller aiptasia but a friend had one huge one/I nicknamed the host that was in the middle in back of his tank that no way he could get at.They ended up eating it.He has 20 of these shrimp in his 135gal.I would also like to know if this was a fluke they ate the big one or has it happened to somebody elses.

[Delphinus]

I've tried peppermints dozens of times over the years and have never had any that would eat aiptasia ... maybe I have a different aiptasia or maybe I keep getting the wrong kind of peppermints .. there are 2-3 Lysmata sp. peppermints that look nearly identical, so who knows. Anyhow although some people have better luck with these things, I never have had luck with them, just my $0.02. They are interesting shrimp and they breed if you have 2 or more, which give your fish and everything else that feeds on plankton, a nice infusion of live food .... :eek: So that's kind of a nice benefit. Although you'd get the same benefit with cleaners - just need 2 or more.