Are pepermint shrimp reef safe?

[wastememphis]

I had two pepermint shrimp after my tank cycled to get rid of apastia but during the last month i've seen more come back... (the cycle was about 10months ago) so... i was wondering if one would be alright in my tank. (I traded in the two I orginally had awhile ago). I don't use kalswiker (sp.) and there are alot which are behind my rockwork which I would like to leave alone since I probably wouldn't get my rocks back the way they are now, any advice.

 

[caz]

i have one in my tank. he cleared out a ton or aipasta in a few weeks. i have mushroom corals button polyps, star polyps, and all seem to be doing fine. i think they are generally considered reef safe though.

 

[becky_e]

I have a peppermint shrimp in my reef tank and the only trouble with him was that I think he ate a few nassarius snails. It wasn't his fault though. I didn't know how much to feed my tank when there were only inverts in it. I now make sure he gets a little when I feed the tank and my snails have stopped disappearing :dance

The reason I think he was killing snails is because I found him feasting on one, but I don't know for sure if he killed it.

 

[mogurnda]

I have had them eat nassarius snails, terebellid worms, small sandbed clams, and steal food from anemones. Cearbhaill lost a whole bunch of zoanthids when she mounted them on toothpicks (on my advice). I consider them little demons.

A few peps in a large-ish tank is probably fine. They will hunt for food when hungry, and may include something you like in their menu.

 

[Dewey115]

For the short time that I had a peppermint shrimp (about a month) he didn't seem to bother anything. When I first put him in he went around and pinched everything, but did no damage, just scared all my snails. He may have had a little run in with my pistol shrimp (found the little pistol missing his smaller claw one morning) but cant in any way say it WAS the peppermint shrimp its just merely a guess. Otherwise I haven't had any problems with mine, no killing of snails or anything like that. I only had him for a month though, so dont base any decisions on my post alone, just offering what little experience I have...

Rick

 

[wastememphis]

I have two skunk cleaner shrimp, i was just hopeing that it wouldn't go after them. The apstasia has gotten worse, and its making me super mad. I had one stalk of it when I got my rocks and they ate it within two days... but now I have some polyps which aren't looking good and some caplernia (sp.) stalks that don't look good. The tank is 29gallons... when i feed things I hand feed my shrimps. I also only have one tonga nassarius snail which i love (my lfs only gets the super small ones now) so i'd be mad if it ate my snail. I'm probably going to trade in some hermit crabs to get the shrimp, since i hate hermit crabs. thanks for the advice guys (it'll be wednesday before i get the shrimp maybe even thursday so keep chiming in with your experience) The reason I traded them in the first time, was because I saw them pinching an anemone i put in the tank... which sucked... so i traded them in (they might have been checkn' it out but it look like playing.)