Urgent: Peppermints attacking new anemone

[barry cuda]

I just put a flower anemone in the 100g tank tonight...it's my first anemone and I didn't expect what happened next. Literally as soon as it was in the tank, before I even had it settled on a rock shelf, my three peppermint shrimp were all over it. They keep picking at its tentacle area, even reaching their claws inside as it tries to close up. I'm afraid they're going to either kill it outright or stress it to death. I just spent 1/2 hour trying to catch the little b*stards, but of course that's nearly impossible. Two questions:
1. Are they trying to eat it, or just picking at slime/feces/whatever in the tentacles? It's about 1.5" across...much bigger than I expected them to try to eat. I know they'd never eat an aiptasia this size.
2. If they aren't trying to eat it, will they eventually stop harassing it?
Help!

 

[barry cuda]

My superior (to a small crustacean, anyway) intellect finally prevailed. I managed to trap two of the three offenders with a piece of shrimp in a glass ale mug laid horizontally on the sandbed. Both have been banished to the sump
The third hasn't shown in over an hour, despite the anemone and the baited trap there for its dining pleasure. I hope I didn't hurt it when trying to catch them with nets. After all, they're just doing what nature programmed them to do for survival. The fault was mine for not researching this more carefully before combining the species.
Footnote: Can/will they eat pods in my sump? I might have to catch 'em again and trade them away.

 

[nitram]

Well Ihad the same problem with my flower and a peppermint shrimp they have been togeather for about 6 months now and the anenome seems to just close up when he comes over just right when i star feeding he runs to the anenome and starts grabbing so i just give him a flick and he leaves him along. I added a curly cue anenome though and he attacked at once grabbing tinticals and ripping them off I had to grabb the anenome out at once. I think he thought it was a glass anenome or something like that. pepermint shrimp do eat anenomes of diff types usally the bad ones that hitch hike in on your rock so play it by ear and see what happens. I'm sure its not good for him to set and pester your anenome though.

 

[thomas712]

Interesting. I personally had a beautiful green and white rock/flower anemone, and I remember the greedy little buggers (pep shrimps) bothering it as well. Eventually they left it alone though, it died months later of other reasons. I make sure that I feed peppermint shrimp before adding new additions like that.
Thomas

 

[yaksplat]

I had a green bta that was killed by a group of peppermint shrimp. I'm not sure why they did it, but they had no problem with an rbta that i've now had for 6 months without issue. I guess it's just a random occurance.
Jim

 

[barry cuda]

I've just decided to leave peppermints out of that tank I never really saw them during the day anyway, so I'm going to trade them away to a better home.

 

[hagfish]

I was curious about this as well. I recently introduced a tube anemone (little different of course since it's not really an anemone, but still) and one of my two peppermints did just like yours and dug into the closed tube and started pulling tentacles off and running away with them. I trapped him like you and put him in another aquarium. The other peppermint has not bothered the anemone at all.
I've thought about putting the shrimp back in that tank just to see if it had something to do with the initial introduction for some reason. But I'm afraid to risk it.