Quarantine

[aduckett]

Hello guys, should I quarantine peppermint shrimp before adding to display tank? Do I need to purchase aiptaisha for them to eat while in the QT...?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

should I quarantine peppermint shrimp before adding to display tank?

Chances of inverts bringing in disease are low, but - unfortunately - not zero (see the quote below), so I would personally QT them, but most people don't. The QT (as mentioned in the quote below) should last a minimum of 45 days if kept at 81F (longer is safer; 76 days is the usual suggestion here on R2R). If the temperature is lower than 81F, the QT needs to be longer.

The odds are astronomically low - but not zero. For most people, nothing bad will happen (at least disease wise; algae, hydroids, and the like are a different matter) if they don't quarantine their inverts at all. For a few people (like the OP in the thread below), however, they'll draw a short straw.

Whether the extremely low-probability of a highly negative outcome is worth quarantining for 45 days at 81F (the temp being 81F or more over the duration of the QT is important for maximum biosecurity here) over or not is up to you, but most people will say it's not. If you're particularly risk-averse (like I am with things like this), though, then you may believe it to be worthwhile.

Keeping CuC Alive in Quarantine.

So it’s coming time for me to restock the crew. While the exact composition and numbers are TBA, thinking it will be around 15 blue leg hermits, 5 nassarius, 1 mexican turbo and a skunk shrimp. Ultimately they’re going in my 260gal, which currently has a tuxedo urchin, 1 hermit crab, 1...

www.reef2reef.com

Do I need to purchase aiptaisha for them to eat while in the QT...?

No, you don't need to. For reference:

"No special attention is given to the adult shrimp. Generally, frozen Mysis and brine shrimp are fed to the tank every day, as well as Tahitian Blend algae paste (see note 1). The adult shrimp will generally eat anything that they can catch and tear apart with their pincers."*

Generally, from what I've seen with shrimp aquaculture, things like frozen pods or enriched frozen brine shrimp are great for shrimp; a high quality frozen or pellet feed would work well too (preferably with ~60% or more crude protein and ~10-15% crude fat content with plenty of good fatty acids - that high of a protein content is pretty hard to come by with available feeds though, so for a generic feed that'd be pretty good for shrimp and really good for fish, I'd settle for one that's over 50% crude protein).

*Source:

Captive Rearing of Peppermint Shrimp (Lysmata wurdemanni) - Reef Keeping Online Magazine

reefkeeping.com