peppermint shrimp for aiptasia control.

[newtankman]

I posted in another post but wanted to open a post for this specifically. I have a few aiptasia that are rapidly multiplying at this point in time in two of my tanks with soft corals.
Ok so the peppermint shrimp will eat the common glass nuisance anemones, a.k.a the aiptasia. But will they harm anything else, i.e soft corals, sponges, or other desirable anemones? Someone on the other post said that they will eat yellow polyp.
I know that there are treatments that will kill them, but I prefer to do it naturally if possible.
So what is everyone’s experience’s with this?
And yes I have searched for info before posting but wanted to see what your inputs are.

 

[fedukeford]

Theres pretty much a 50/50 chance pepermint shrimp will eat aptasia (smaller ones). Sometimes they've been known to pick at Zoos, SPS polyps, and a few other corals. So just like dwarf angels, theres a chance they will do what you want them do to, but theres always that chance that they could eat some coral.
Feduke

 

[saltn00b]

i disagree, from what i have seen peppermint shrimp 100% harmless to any coral, it is the often miscontstrued-for-peppermints Camelback shrimp that are definitely not reef safe and will eat Zoos, etc. I have purchased a 'peppermint' from a LFS and found out later that it was a Camelback.

 

[reefkprz]

peppermints will eat yellow colonial polyp (wich are actually anemone and related to the aiptasia) but other than that I have never expirienced them being harmfull to corals.

 

[saltn00b]

the one i have eats aiptasia, no harm to the yellow polyps yet tho.

 

[reefkprz]

my pepp doesnt touch my colonials either, but they have been known to. just a heads up sort of thing.

 

[fedukeford]

I had 6 pepermint shrimp in my 125 reef, a couple picked at the zoas, one was picking at my frogspawn, another was bothering my brain, and I dont think ANY of them at aptasia. (and they were deffinatly all pepermints) but fortunatly a dottyback killed all but one of them and the last one i havent seen picking at anything.
Feduke

 

[saltn00b]

wow first i heard of this.

 

[newtankman]

There seems to a lot of conflicting information on this.
So I think I will try one in my 10gal with an aiptasia problem that has one cleaner shrimp, and some soft coral.
If the lfs has one, I will place a peppermint shrimp into that 10gal and document the progress as well as take photos of before, during and after with notes of the peppermint shrimps activities in the tank and post the info here.
Any thoughts or suggestions?