Are peppermint shrimp ok for my tank.
 

I want a shrimp and thought I'd add a peppermint since they're cheaper. Are they a good shrimp in a reef tank? I have a 30 gal reef. Will they be fine since I don't have apstasia, because I have read on several threads that you need to get rid of them once they eat all the apstasia, but another site says they eat prepaired food, so I'm hoping you guys can help me make a good decision. Thanks in advance.

Tank run down.

Fish: 1 coral beauty, one black clown, 1 lawnmower blenny.

Inverts: 1 small brown brittle star, 1 emerald crab, and a mixture of snails and blue leg hermits.

Coral and nem: several zoas, shroom, ric, PSP, clove polyps, and two condyalactis anemones.

They eat everything your fish will eat - pellets, flake, and especially anything meaty (mysis, krill, etc.).

Great! So they will be fine in my reef? I have read they will eat yellow polyps, I guess because they're like little nems. Do you know if all my corals will be safe?

make sure they're peppermint shrimp and not the closely related cousin camel shrimp... camels can eat corals.

How can you tell the difference?

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<img src="http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh266/WM15_reef/camelshrimp.jpg" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"><br><br>
<img src="http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh266/WM15_reef/PeppermintShrimp512.jpg" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"><br><br>
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the top one is a camel shrimp and the bottom one is a peppermint
you can tell by the bigger hump on the back of the camel shrimp

Thanks. Color is different too. I looked around and couldn't find anything saying the difference but noticed the corlor difference so I went to my LFS and bought two that look like the pep shrimp pics you posted. Thanks again.

I have a 12g nano and have had a peppermint in there since it finished cycling. The little guy is extremely hardy, and will eat anything. Not a single aiptasia showed up after he's been in there. Apparently there are 2 different kinds of these peppermint, I made sure to get a Lysmata wurdemanni, since those are known to eat aiptasia (the main reason I got him for). He seems to be doing quite well in the nano, he's molted about 4 times now, and keeps growing. I also have some soft and stony corals in there, and he never touched them in months.

you can hand feed them small pieces of krill if you never see them eating

Thanks for the input. Yeah I got them in there and couldn't find them anywhere. Then I fed the fish and they came out. I guess they could smell the food. I held the end of a piece of mysis shrimp and one of them jumped on my hand to get it. They are neat little critters, just hide alot though.

I heard that Coral Beauties eat small shrimp? Have you noticed anything like that? Because thats the only thing thats stopping me from getting a coral beauty.

My beauty swam down by him and look like he sniped but then swam away and left it alone. That was the next day after it was added so the beuaty might have been checking it out. Other than that no problems they hide too much.

Any body got any input on whether they will get along with skunk cleaners?