will peppermint shrimp eat Aiptasia?and will banded shrimp eat brisle worms?

[mchotdog]

i bought a peppermint shrimp today hoping it will get rid of the Aiptasia anemones in my tank.
but the guy at the store told me that the shrimp wont eat them unless the shrimp gets really really hungry.
what do you guys think?
and i heard coral banded shrimp will eat bristle worm is that true?
my shrimp only hides in rocks during the day and only comes out at night. it doesnt really eat the shrimp meat i offered him.
how and what do you guys think i should feed him?
thanks
derek

[bluepointer]

the peppermint typically does (one of the best ways to get rid of aiptasia), though I have heard of some that don't.  don't know about the banded shrimp eating bristleworms though...kinda doubt it

[Vincenzo.]

no they do not.

get a Arrow Crab, or a Wrasse.

[White Lightning]

If you wanna get rid of aptasia then you should consider "aptasia x"  It works great!

[groupie02]

the peppermint, like other critters, will go for the easy food source. If you feed your tank and it can get food, it will most likely not eat your aiptasia.  Also, if you get 3 of them instead of 1, they come out at night like a hunting party.  You have a better chance of getting them to eat your aiptasia as they are less afraid of predators while together.

Also, some of the shrimp sold as peppermint aren't even peppermint. 

[mdugly]

+1 on banded's eating bristles

Mine would pull them out of the rocks.
The long ones that managed to hang on became short ones 

[Fishhead89]

I have two tanks, a 75 gallon reef, and a 25 gallon seahorse tank. Both had apstasias. I put a butterfly fish in my reef tank. He took about two weeks to settle in, then I woke up one day, looked in my tank, and then there were no apstasias left.

Tried lemon juice in the seahorse tank (actually injecting the apstasias with lemon juice.) No luck on the big ones. Also having no luck with peppermint shrimp - I have two in there, only see one. I guess he's getting too much food.. as he hasn't touched the apstasias.

I am picking up a Bengaii nudibranch tomorrow from Az at Aquavalley... He should do the trick. I'm also going to drop off a piece of livrock COVERED in Apstasias for the display nudibranches.. I'll take a photo when I leave the rock, then again in a week or two. We'll see what a group of those nudibranches will do to some major apstasias.

[Hookup]

The right peppermint shrimp will eat aptasia, no two ways about it, however size does matter... once your aptasia is up the size of a toonie (the mouth part) forget it... that's a mission for some other method (kalk+food mixed as a paste in tap water is what i use)...

The problem is locating "the right peppermint shrimp"... this comes down to finding specific peppermint captured from a specific geographic region/location. i.e. indo peppermints do not work, carribean's do... the reason being, the location where these "MAGIC PEPPERMINTS" exist aiptasia is the primary food source... generation after generation grows up eating these things... so they are expecting to eat it as a preferredz food source... not a last resort from starvation... Again, first and experience confirms this because i massively over feed my system, so there is no possibly way my peppermints are starving... however, the aiptasia is under control... (I say under control because you do not see any, but once when the peppermits (and other inverts) died, within 6 weeks I was like..where'd all this aiptasis come from??)


If you can get your hands on a pair or tripplet of these "magic peppermits" from the "magic region" then you'll be blown away... if you do not get the right ones, then you'll have mixed or limited results based primarily upon starvation of the shrimp...

[mchotdog]

thanks guys. i am having no luck with the peppermint shirimp. and i still dont see my banded very often. he hides in LR when light is on. i guess ill get some the chemicals to get rid of the apstasias. 

[Funkmotor]

You might want to give the Peppermint some time.  It's not going to ravage the entire tank clean of aiptasia in a couple of days.

I had a small aiptasia problem last year in my 40 and I got 3 Peppermints.  It took a while for them to get through everything in the tank...perhaps more than a month.  I haven't seen an aiptasia since...but now I've got majanos!

Time.

[Rybren]

I had a single peppermint in my 30G tank.  It did a great job of keeping the aptasia in check.  It took a few weeks before it even started looking at the pests, but once it did, it cleaned them all out.

Unfortunately, the peppermint molted on Friday night and the coral-banded decided that a midnight snack was in order.  I just happened to look into the the tank with a flashlight and there was the banded, happily munching on the peppermint's head.