Aptasia and the Peppermint Shrimp

make sure its a peppermints shrimp and not a camels shrimp. Camels will nip/eat your other coral, i made that mistake.

 

My peppermints had all the aptasia cleared in 1 night. Easier and fastr then trying to find and inject them, plus they can get to aptasia that I can't.

After a few weeks in the tank, and learning food gets dropped in, they come out during the day to grab their share.

 

I had an aptaisia problem in my main (65 gal) tank about a month agao. I didn't have a huge outbreak, only 4 or 5 that I wanted to "nip in the bud". I bought two peppermint shrimp and within a week, all but one aptaisia were gone. The remaining one was lodged in a rock crevice and would only show itself occasionally. What was really cool is that the crevice was just above an overhang where one of the shrimps hung out. I haven't seen the crevice aptaisia in a few weeks so I assume my p'shrimp got him. I had the same problem with my 29 gal QT tank, bought 2 P' shrmp and they were gone in a week. So mine was a positive experience.

 

I have 3 peppermints and they are anything but nocturnal. They are very active all day in my tank and you should see feeding day. They scuttle up the sides of the glass and leap out trying to catch whatever's being fed that day. It's kind of entertaining watching them get blown around by the powerheads. They would do anything to the larger aiptasia, but they put a hurting on any smaller ones that tried to come up after I Joe's Juiced the bigger ones.