All You Can *Keep* Shrimp!

[salty27]

Hey folks,
I have a 45 gallon hexagon tank (live rock, live sand), fully cycled. Currently, I am fish-less as I'm waiting out the starvation of an ick invasion which took the lives of my previous scaled inhabitants. Aside from a clean up crew, I currently have one cleaner shrimp and one fire shrimp.

I noticed a couple of small Aiptasia the other other day, and would like to get rid of them before (1) they mutlipy and (2) I re-add any fish. My question is: would adding a peppermint shrimp be too many shrimp in my size/shape tank? The Cleaner's body is about the size of a pinky from head to tail (not small for a shrimp), while the Fire is fairly small.

Naturally, when I do add fish, they won't be many and won't be large in size. Just wondering if the extra shrimp would be too many.[/i]

[tecwzrd]

Peppermint shrimp is one way to control Aiptasia but can be hit or miss.

A 45 gal can handle 3 shrimp without issue IMO. You probably should add 1/4 cube of frozen twice a week since you don't have any fish though.

[afilter]

JOE's Juice all the way!

[MT79]

I agree w/ Tecwzrd, should be no issues w/ the shrimp you chose. Peppermints have worked well for me at controlling aiptasia. Good luck.

[Lance M.]

I bought a rock with about 4 big stalks of xenia on it with an aiptasia in the middle of them and on on the bottom of the rock. I tried joe's juice and it killed the on in the middle of the xenia along with 3 of the xenia stalks. I don't know how becuase none of the juice got on the xenia but they where dead the next day. I couldn't get the other one cause it was on the bottom of the rock. I put the rock in my little 10 gallon nano that has 2 peppermints and the aiptasia is gone, so I'd go with the peppermint shrimp even though joe's juice works.

[melosu58]

I use a salt paste and put a big glob of it in their mouth and they disentigrate. As mentioned earlier shrimp are hit or miss. Some people use Hot water in a syringe.

[pipermurphy]

Joes juice is cheap, easily available and QUICK. I had peppermints when the outbreak started and tey did not do a thing for the Apstasia

[Ziggy953]

I agree with the Joes Juice. you do have to be careful of how and where you put it as it can and will kill other things. I've had very good success wih JJ and I have several peppermint shrimp. I've never noticed them even near any aptasia. HTH

[kimberly]

I have had the fortune or misfortune to have been plagued with infestations of aptasia several times in my tanks. I have tried several methods. The following are the pros & cons:

Joe's Juice:
Pros . . .
Lot's of fun to watch the aptasia dissolve before your eyes.
Can kill super sized aptasia.
Cons . . .
Impossible to get all aptasia especially with an infestation
You get really wet if you have a deep tank
If you miss a few aptasia you get to keep on applying
In one interesting case, an aptasia was smart and would curl away from the Joe's Juice & not ingest it. Took quite a few applications over a week to kill it.

Peppermint Shrimp:
Pros . . .
Natural way to take care of the problem
Voracious eaters - great clean up crew
If you get several, you have a great chance at them breeding and filling the tank with natural food for the fish.
Will get all the hard to find aptasia.
On my last infestation in a 120g tank, 5 of them cleared out the tank within a week.
Cons . . .
They tend to leave the super size aptasia alone
Sometimes they like the served food better than the aptasia
They can compete with certain spot fed corals and take the food off the coral

Hot water in a syringe:
Haven't tried this one but seems like a good idea. It would probably have many of the same pros and cons as Joe's Juice.


In regards to the number of shrimp for a 45 gallon hex. I have seen 24gallon nanocubes set up with 3 shrimp in it, 55 gallons with 8 to 10 shrimp in them. I would think that 1 shrimp per 10 gallons would be the limit for peppermint. I had a cleaner shrimp in my 90g and it would dominate the available space (he had really long feelers), so I would not make this recommendation in regards to cleaners.

Hope this helps.

[hc8719]

if the shrimp are a miss, they may be camel shrimp, commonly sold as peppermints