peppermint shrimp picking at corals

tiburon · 08-29-2006, 03:07 PM

Sooooo... sounds like the start of a potentially night-marish tank story, but it's not too bad.. still and all, I was pretty unhappy last night.. wow. I got a reef janitor package from saltwaterfish.com about 6 weeks ago... in that package was 5 peppermint shrimps.. very VERY small at the time.. over the last 6 weeks they have grown considerably! one of them is between 1 and 1.5 inches long now.. I can see them out at night.. they're mostly peacefull.. but yesterday I got my first real stony corals, a nice torch, hammer, one SPS frag, and a brain.. I popped them in the tank.. and there's this one peppermint shrimp, the largest of them, who it always very insterested in newcomers to the tank.. he/she was out and checking them all out.. then it started snipping part of the torch off and I could see the bits of green flesh being carried off in the current, like a scene from Edward Scissor Hands... I was shocked! so I shushed him away and moved the coral to the other side of the tank.. I put the hammer in that spot and it left that one alone..

So I thought maybe it's a camel shrimp, no dice. it's a peppermint for sure. so I put a trap out, gatoraide bottle on a string with sand in the bottom and a cube of mysis and left it there for several hours at night with the mouth propped on the rock right near where I see this guy hanging out at night... no dice.. but it made the nassarious snails and hermits go WILD.. sort of bad wild.. I don't want to have to put traps in like that on any sort of regular bassis, as in, I don't want to have to leave traps out over night for a week or two.. Anyways, I saw the shrimp picking at the hammer with the lights off.. but I think it was just pulling the excess slime coat parts away.. the hammer shed it's whole slime coat.. it seemed to be fine this morning, and there was no additional damage to the torch.. so I am just HOPING that it was just checking for parasites and dead flesh.. a bit more intrusively than it should have been on the torch.. what do you all think? Is it time for a flame hawk? I honestly could do without these guys as I don't want to worry about them damaging any other new corals I put in the tank... uugh! any ideas??

Oh, and yes, I'll take some pics tonight.. I was too involved with the trapping last night to get into paparazzi mode..

Scyre · 08-29-2006, 04:17 PM

I had a skunk cleaner that picked at my torch when I fed the tank and target fed at the same time. I got sold the shrimp back to the store once the torch became bleached and never came out of the skeleton, he got a bit better after that, but he never overcame the bleaching. He ended up dying.

IMO, its not worth it if they are going to damage more expensive/fragile coral.

LS

tiburon · 08-29-2006, 04:28 PM

Yeah - I think my next fish is going to be a hawk.. I wanted one of them anyways... my hermits and emerald crabs are beginning to tick me off also, so perhaps that's the solution for those issues as well. I would like to keep my coral banded shrimp and my fire shrimp, both of which are pretty large, so hopefully they'll be safe..

This is going to be like putting a snake in a mouse tank.

Brent Cone · 08-29-2006, 04:36 PM

Well mate's! i think it's time to Put another shrimp on the barbi! i had the same problem.
Brent.

Tim224DT · 08-29-2006, 04:38 PM

mmm barbi shrimp

Brent Cone · 08-29-2006, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim224DT

mmm barbi shrimp

Ditto! on that one Tim!!!!

Brent.

tiburon · 08-29-2006, 04:41 PM

OH SNAP! the LFS has a beauty flame hawk . . . it's now on hold for me! hah.. that was almost cosmic.. they never had one ever before and I was calling to have him get one on his next run to the traders.

yay.. I <3 flame hawks.. one of my fav all time salt water fish actually.

Tim224DT · 08-29-2006, 04:43 PM

I think i will have that for dinner now!!!

Congrats on the soon to get flame hawk! I have one in my tank he is awesome!

Tim

tiburon · 08-29-2006, 05:51 PM

heh.. it's going to be like that scene from shark tale.. when they try and make Lenny eat the shrimp.. lol. That's like the best part of the flick imo.

Oh - I just found this: seems EXACTLY like what happened to me

Quote:

Peppermint Shrimp(Lysmata wurdemanni)
This is the peppermint shrimp, which they get the name from the red peppermint like color (I'm guessing) although a Camel shrimp tends to look more like a peppermint candy as they are red and white striped, who knows how some of these creatures got their name. These are good scavengers to have in a tank, although I think I may of over done it when I ordered them, they will pick bits of dead fish, food, and whatever else they can get their hands on. I've seen them picking at corals and mushrooms when I first put them in the tank, but after that initial picking I never seen them go back, so my guess is they weren't eatting the coral they were eatting some sort of debris or hitchhiker on the coral.

from: http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~mbolling/invert/shrimp.html

In my case I had a green tentical with a bright yellow tip from my trorch foating around in my tank yesterday.. along with other tiny snips from that stalk.. it's hands were right *in* the cookie jar.. not just sneaking crumbs from the edges..

I'm still getting the FH! I think he'll keep it real in the ol' tank.

whatevva · 08-29-2006, 07:13 PM

I had the same problem! At first it looked like they were only going after dead tissue, but they'd go tooo far! I managed to trap 4 of them in one night with a 16 beer glass with a cocktail shrimp in it. As soon as the pep would dive in, I'd pull the glass out. BINGO!!