peppermint shrimp appetite

H

harial

If you don't want to read the story just skip to the last paragraph.

Ok so I went to the LFS a few days ago and on an impulse bought a peppermint shrimp that I was told would clean up the waste in my tank. So I thought "what the hell... I got a lot of crab crap and other undesirable stuff in my tank... and he is rather cute" So I had him bagged and took him home. And then I noticed some of my feather dusters starting to dissappear. In partiular there was an unnattached feather duster laying in the sand in the front of my tank and when I looked in there this morning the tube was jammed in between my rock and some xenia. I pulled it out since the end where the feather duster was was inside the rock cavern whre the flow was bad and put him back in the sand bed in front of my rock. Everytime I looked there was not any sign of him. I decided he was dead and started to remove a lone zoo polyp that was attched to the tube. As I removed the polyp the tube broke into three pieces with no worm in sight. Later when I was reading some posts in the stony coral section , it was mentioned that peppermint shrimp have been known for eating feather dusters.

Do they eat feather dusters? Because if they do, I am SOO getting rid of his candy-stripped a$$ :evil:. My feather dusters are my FAVORITE part of my tank and I love them.

thanks
Harial :evil:
 
Yes, some do eat feather dusters, but not all of them. I had one that was great, so I got a second one. He was a terror. He ate the feather dusters then started going after my mushrooms, so I sold him. I even tried feeding them more often, but it didn't keep him from picking at the corals.
sorry to say you may have gotten a bad one.
 
True, I just stay away from them. As Matt stated some will eat zos, featherdusters and anything else. Some do eat aiptasia but not worth risking it in my opinion.

Skunk cleaners are good for generally eating any leftovers. They are safe and I love them! They will not however eat aiptasia.
 
well after a half hour long struggle of trying to catch the shrimp I finnaly put on a pair of gloves and caught the little fiend with my hand. I took him back to the store and was told by a more experianced employee that what I had was not a peppermint shrimp but infact was a camelback shrimp. I was very annoyed because the kid who works there told me it was a peppermint shrimp. I will admit that some of the fault was mine simply because while I knew exactly what a peppermint shrimp looks like, I had never even seen a picture of a camelback. And they look so similar that I thought mr. shrimp-fiend was just a cool looking peppermint. So I traded him in for a real peppermint. mr. real-peppermint is acclimating right now.

ohh the sorrows of a newb :cry:

Harial
 
Live and learn.
I was talking with some guys at the meeting and one made a good point that even though you've been doing this for years you'll occasionally do something stupid and learn from it.
 
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