Force Peppermint Shrimp to eat aptasia?

[hmmmmm]

Just a quick thought.. From what I gather you need to be lucky for a peppermint shrimp to actually eat aptasia. Especially if you feed the tank regularly, they don't really have the need to go out and find every last bit of food.

Now I have multiple frag zoa frags with aptasia on them. I want to remove them but using chemicals is not an option, they seem to spread fast that way. Don't want to cut them with a scalpel because the frags are new and fragile, and also quite expensive (for me at least).

So I was thinking what about putting a couple of pep shrimp in a 2 gallon bucket with just the infected frags and an air stone\light. When they get hungry they will surely hunt down the aptasia? After they are clean I can just drop everything back in the DT.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[James M]

Although that sounds like a good plan they will most likely end up starving to death.

 

[mattdg]

In the past, I've had luck placing them in a breeding basket hanging just inside the aquarium. I'll feed them some pellets (so they don't starve) and place aptasia scraped from the reef into the basket. They tend to go for the ones that are injured first. Assuming you have the correct type of peppermint shrimp, over a month or so, this will train some of them to develop a taste for the little creeps, while maintaining them in SW that matches your tanks parameters. Let them out into the reef with caution, since they may become accustomed to the reduced flow in the basket.

 

[hmmmmm]

dangit so I guess I'm not a complete genius

I like the idea of training them for it. Not going to try that as a basket won't fit in the nano but that should work on a seperate tank.

 

[mattdg]

Great minds!

 

[Brew12]

I've found that adding a larger group of shrimp is much more effective. The few that do eat aptasia will teach the others. Adding more shrimp increases the odds that one will be a natural predator.