Peppermint shrimp eating mushroom coral???
 

so we took the plunge today and purchased our first corals for our tank.. we got a few green striped mushrooms, and some button polyps. we put them in and they both appear to be doing well opening and such.. but our peppermint shrimp keeps picking at our mushrooms? are they supposed to eat these? is he gunna eat all of em? we had originally got the peppermint for aptasia.. but i didnt realize it would pick on our new mushroom.. is this normal? or has anyone else had this problem before?

my peppermint used to never even touch my mushroom but then again my mushrooms HUGE!

it could be some food or algae or ick or something on the mushroom coral because thats what peppermint shrimp are for is ick, and extra foood

well first thing that comes to mind when you say "eating mushrooms" is that you may have been sold a camelback shrimp(coral munchers) which look somewhat similar to an untrained eye. some lfs may unknowingly sell them as peppermints.

another thought is that it is simply doing its job and cleaning the rock the coral is on.

very rarely will you find a peppermint eating coral. rare but i know only one person who was addement on the pepprmint eating his zoas.

ps. the peppermint will only eat the aiptaisia when it is really hungry. this means if it is getting enough food during feeding time then it may not have the appetite for aiptaisa

oh geez... am looking at pics of the shrimp youre talking about.. and i really cant tell the difference between the two. there is no obvious hump really on our shrimp. are their stripe patterns the same? is there any other way to tell them apart?

and yah we kinda knew it was a shot in the dark for it to eat our aptasia.. but we figured it couldnt hurt to try.. lol

really hard to tell. mainly the white stiping on the camelback should give it away. where as the stripes on a peppermint are more red and translucent. no real WHITE.

http://forums.saltwaterfish.com/vb/s...melback-Shrimp.

see this link. i didnt really read it but it may help.

another link.
http://www.siamreefclub.com/forums/i...howtopic=23277

Ah that did help. its definately a peppermint shrimp.
he seems to have left the mushroom alone for right now.. maybe he was just cleaning stuff off it.. the one small mushroom is definately damaged.. maybe it wasnt doing well to begin with.
everything seems to be interested in these mushrooms, the turbo snails, our blue leg hermit, the peppermint shrimp.. lol

am feeling pretty excited with our first addition of corals
(mushroom, and button polyp)

how fast can we keep adding new corals?
any suggestions as to what our next coral addition should be ?

glad that helped ya. normally any new rock will get investigated by the clean up crew. pretty normal. the shrimp was likely picking at the mucous the mushroom has on it from shipping/acclimating.

first what kind of lights do you have?

as for your next coral....... its your call really. ricordea mushrooms are my favorites for begginers. most soft coral will be okay for starters.

"begginer coral" list:
mushrooms -many varieties
zoanthids/palythoas.
green star polyps.- start with small colony. they grow really fast
xenia- also grow like weeds
leaather corals- devils hand / toadstool / tree corals /

and as you get confident start with LPS like:
frogspawn / torch / hammer corals--- "easy LPS"

just a quick list of what i reccommend. adding coral can be done as your budget allows but go slow let it grow. always research before you buy.

we currently have a coralife aqualight t5 high output dual lamp with 1- 38 W actinic and 1 - 39 w 10 000k

A good start would be to describe your system a bit and how long it's been running and water parameters.