Apitasia gone in 24hrs. Now what???

[madequity]

I have a 20g that had a bit of a problem with Apitasia. One came in as a hitchhiker and needless to say within a month I had what seemed like a few hundered "baby" apitasia.

So that said my tank is all softies with an out of control Xenia population and only one LPS a beautiful green favites. Before last night my only invert was my small coral banded. So I went with 8 peppermint shrimp to try and take care of the apitasia problem. They arrived yesterday from Live Aquaria and I placed them in late yesterday evening. After some posturing with the coral banded they seemed OK.

So this morning I woke up to not 1 single apitasia in the tank! I will keep an eye for the next few days but these guys went to work like surgeons even devouring the larger ~ 1" apitasia which I had figured they wouldn't touch.

So long story short my question is now what do I do with the peppermints? I would love to think I could support all 8 of them in my 20 but I am sure long term I cannot.

Any thoughts?

 

[AIMFish]

You mention another tank in your sig, could some go there? I'm confused why you bought so many for a 20?

 

[Carl_in_Florida]

Yeah, you really only needed one.

You could take it to the local shop though getting them out will be harder than you think.

 

[Gillybaby]

I have had a similar experience with 3 peppermints bought to get rid of an aip plague in my 15g nano. Within a couple of days they had devoured all the aips and have since fed quite happily on flake food and frozen which I feed my tomato clowns. They've all grown and are carrying eggs. Just make sure you get some food to them and they'll be fine. Good characters as well and fun to watch.

 

[Carl_in_Florida]

As I see it there are only 2 problems with peps.

1. They look like roaches. They used to freak me out a little. Now not so much.

2. They sometimes get a taste for zoos.

On the good side, they are scavangers. They will eat any waste left in the tank.