Should I get peppermint shrimp?

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I am strongly considering getting 3 to 5 peppermint shrimp for my 75G DT.

I like these little guys, and figured I am going to accidently introduce aptaisia evebtually, and would like to stay ahead of it.

Is it a bad idea, to get 3 or 5 of them, with no aptaisia yet?

I have 1 cleaner
2 emerald crabs
1 pitho crab
6 blue eyed / red reef hermits
Bunch of snails
Engineer goby
2 clowns
4 chromis
1 mandarin
1 firefish
A baseball size duncan colony when extebded
A frogspawn about tennis ball sized
A 12 headed candycane
F--ton of kenya trees.

I would of course be feeding the peppermints directly.

 

[Hidden426]

I love peppermint shrimp! They are funny little guys. As long as they have a good amount of space to stay away from you crabs I would say go for it. The Kenya Trees will give them a good place to get away. They are pretty social so I think 5 would be fine as long as you have the space for them and can keep up with the feedings.

Cheers!

 

[EakTheFreak]

I am strongly considering getting 3 to 5 peppermint shrimp for my 75G DT.

I like these little guys, and figured I am going to accidently introduce aptaisia evebtually, and would like to stay ahead of it.

Is it a bad idea, to get 3 or 5 of them, with no aptaisia yet?

I have 1 cleaner
2 emerald crabs
1 pitho crab
6 blue eyed / red reef hermits
Bunch of snails
Engineer goby
2 clowns
4 chromis
1 mandarin
1 firefish
A baseball size duncan colony when extebded
A frogspawn about tennis ball sized
A 12 headed candycane
F--ton of kenya trees.

I would of course be feeding the peppermints directly.

Speaking off my experience only here. I caught lots of mine eating corals. Mainly fleshy LPS. After further research, I found out that there are lots of shrimp thay visually appear similar to pepperment shrimp which is what happened to me. I know a camel shrimp is one that sometimes get confused and they eat corals.

Do enough searching on R2R and you will find lots of horror stories of them eating corals. Again, I think if you sourced them from a quality distributor your odds would be better.

Not sure how you feel about Copperband butterfly but it single handedly took care of Aptasia for my 131 gallon DT. They do require special attention and I feed lots of frozen to
keep him fat and happy.

 

[LeeLoo Lola]

I purchased a new coral and sure enough within a day or two spotted Aiptasia. So my husband and I went and grabbed a peppermint shrimp from our LFS. The Aiptasia was gone in no time. Awesome!

A few days later I saw the peppermint shrimp on my RFA eating it. My first thought was that the RFA must have died and the shrimp didn't kill it. Soon after, I saw it move to my other happy, heathy rfa and destroy it. My peppermint shrimp has now been relocated to my sump!

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I hear they like eating RFAs

I would love a CBB, but 75g I think is too small.

I do not have aptasia yet, but with my approach so far to get the thing to take case of it before it happens seems to be working out for me. So I figured if they will like all my over feeding, that will keep them happy, that way the aptasia that finally makes it into my system will be small enough to be a snack as opposed to hoping whatever I get to eat aptasia after they start popping up all over.

Basically, I like the guys, and they would check off profelactic for pest nems for me.

I plan to get them from reef cleaners, so I assume I will be safe from lookalikes.

 

[exnisstech]

I would love a CBB, but 75g I think is too small.

75 is plenty for a CBB

I plan to get them from reef cleaners, so I assume I will be safe from lookalikes.

This is where I got my peppermints from. I had no trouble with them eating coral.

 

[EakTheFreak]

75 is plenty for a CBB


This is where I got my peppermints from. I had no trouble with them eating coral.

Agreed 75 gallon is more than enough. I did a write up on how I succeeded with my Copperband Butterfly if you want to check it out.

Quarantine Experience with Copperband Butterfly Fish

Good Evening, I’ve documented my experience with BLUE STAR LEOPARDS which is considered a difficult expert level fish and they are now going on 3 months in my DT and doing wonderful. Figured I would document my CopperBand Butterfly experience even though I’m late to the game slightly since...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Makara23]

Get them only if you're ok with a very high risk of losing corals.

I bought 3 from AlgaeBarn, they're reputable, so it's not an issue of wrongly identification the correct peppermint species. They did eat a few aiptasia and were model citizens for 6 months, then all of a sudden turned rogue and ate $600 worth of various corals before I caught them in the act. They now live in a QT tank with no corals because I don't have the heart to kill them, despite my anger.

If you want peppermint shrimps that are confirmed to eat aiptasia and corals, I'll send you mine.