Experienced peppermint shrimp eating coral...

[Reefer_Joe]

SO... I'm new to reefing and all, but I know there is some concern regarding peppermint shrimp eating corals, even though they are considered reef safe. Well.. here's a quick story.

My nano reef is about 2.5 months old.. When I started I added a peppermint shrimp to my cuc rather early.. Seemed to be a great addition and never bothered anyone. About a month later I introduced a cleaner shrimp who turned out to be a real bully pepe. What a hog for food.. and always chasing pepe into corners..

Well, with that said... I think pepe may have gotten hungry. I got a few new corals at Reefapalooza the other week and all seemed to be pretty happy the next day, especially this one particular acan. A couple days later I noticed the acan had its tentacles out before I went to work. Great sight. But when I arrived home that evening that same acan was but a skeleton... About an hour later I found pepe devouring what was left. I was concerned, but not convinced he had eaten it..

.....Until a couple days later I found pepe hounding my short tentacle plate!! Right in it's mouth too.. The cleaner shrimp would constantly chase him away but pepe returned constantly over a 5-6 hour period. This was the first time I saw the plate fully retracted since I acclimated it 2 weeks prior. Later that night, I found pepe attacking another acan!!

At that point I was fed up and couldn't take another chance. I netted him out and threw him in the sump area of my biocube.. It has been 3 days and the plate is about 75-80% tentacle expansion compared to before pepe's attack..


Thanks for reading and feel free to comment ;). I honestly do not know what to do with pepe, or if he will survive in the sump area for long.. Funny enough, I bought him out of fear of aptasia. As soon as I remove him.... I find a single head of aptasia on a frag from my LFS.... ***.

 

[Hitman]

They destroyed my hammers, & frogspawn over night. Personally they should be relabeled as lps devils.