Time to Vent with a warning about pepermints

OK I just need to complain... I have no one to blame but myself but I am soo upset...

I had a pest problem and so as instructed I went and bought pepermnt shrimp (2) to clean out the bad anmones. I went away on vacation and allowed a friend take care of the tanks.

When I came back all seemed to be in order however there was something different. I could not really place my finger on it at the time. Today is the first day I was performing my night feedings.. As I was putting in my zooplex I find that all of my featherdusters were gone.. I do mean all of them. I had literly 50 on one special rock, they were everywhere and they were awsome. This rock was my pride and joy.. There was so much life on this rock, I just loved to sit and look at it because there was soo much going on, and now it is all gone.

Again I can't blame the pepermints, I was just unaware this was even the remote possibility.

On the brite side all of the anemone are gone..

** :-( ** I dont really feel better .... Sry for the whining... just really bummed out...

Figured I would give the heads up to fellow reefers in case someone was thinking about getting pepermints and has featherdusters...

 

I have watched peppermints destroy a few SPS frags (pocillapora, millies, and digis) by ripping every polyp they could get their claws on out. It happened in my 25 nano, so maybe they werent getting enough to eat . . . whatever the reason, I dont plan on fooling with them ever again.

~Will.

 

I've seen them accidentally kill corals by constantly walking on them so that they are permanently closed. Then they die from not having enough light.

 

that stinks sorry! and thanks for posting this, i had a few antispia (spelling?)anemones and was thinking of adding one or two of these shrimp. almost bought them 2 days ago. so gald i didnt. i will stick with injecting them after reading this.

 

Are you sure they were true peppermint shrimp and not the camelback shrimp that are often confused with peppermint shrimp? I only ask because I have had peppermint shrimp before and they never bothered anything, I am not saying they wouldnt.

 

I had a pair double team a pink plate coral. They now live in my sump.

 

Yea I am sure.. I have had Camels before in a different tank. Its funny I had them in the tank for like 3 weeks and they pretty much stuck to one side and kept busy cleaning up a FiGi rock. I caught one last night 2 hours after lights out and he was underneath the rock looking for someone else to munch on.
I did not expect then to go there seems how there is a Yellow Tang and a Grey Angel that share that space. The Tang is a little defensive to others coming into her space (except for the Angel-- somehow they are buddies)..

One thing I can say they CLEAN UP... There is not even a spec of the tube that the work hides in. It is like they never existed... Very efficent, I will give them that.

 

peppermint shrimp can and WILL be pests if they are not recieving enough to eat. They usually only scavenge but if they are very hungry they will be agressive in doing so. They can pick on corals, feather dusters, Star Fish and anenomes either as food or will damage whatever is in there way of finding food.

 

My cleaner shrimp (same genus as peppermint, Lysmata) went after my dusters when he was very hungry. Otherwise, he wasn't a problem in the tank at all.

 

Interesting, I recently bought a peppermint shrimp to get rid of a bad anemone. The anemone seems to be gone now, but a few days ago, I noticed a lot of my feather dusters were destroyed and I had no idea how. What is curious is that the shrimp is very shy and I don't see him often and these feather duster were on the outside of my rocks where I have never seen him venture!! I have set up a semi pyramid formation with my rocks and can see the hollow space that the pyramid has created and most of the feather dusters on there (on the rocks' inner sides or the floor) seem intact so far.

So, what would I feed him?