lysmata wurdemanni at LA?

[SSpiro]

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+2857+701&pcatid=701

Thoughts on whether or not these can be trusted to be lysmata wurdemanni?

 

[LeslieH]

It won't matter. Did you read the last paragraph at the end? It says that the shrimp they sell might not be L. wurdemanni but will belong to a group of species related to wurdemanni. They've checked with the guy who described these species & does research on them, Andrew Rhyne. All of them will eat Aiptasia.

 

[SSpiro]

LOL, oops, no did not read.

I've purchased so many of these things over the last month or two with ZERO success and its getting old. These ones are on the higher end, price wise.. and id hate to spend another $30-40 on shrimp that MIGHT get the job done. ;(

 

[LeslieH]

Aiptasia problems, huh? Too bad....

It's more individual feeding preference than species-level preference. Even if you have true wurdemanni some love to eat the pests while others will ignore them.

New products promising to control Aiptasia come on the market periodically. 3 recent ones are Zap-Tasia, the Aiptasia Zapper, and Aiptasia Free. You'll have to do a google search for them; the RC filter didn't like the site I linked to.

 

[donya]

id hate to spend another $30-40 on shrimp that MIGHT get the job done.

I would say that "might" is actually the best you can do with any animal where a relationship like this exists but is not required for survival. Speaking of Andrew Rhyne, I was reading one of his papers recently, "Biological control of aquarium pest anemone Aiptasia pallida verrill by peppermint shrimp Lysmata risso," that gives a pretty good anemone-eating rate for the species tested, but it still says that one shrimp of each species in the first experiment showed no interest in eating anemones (1 in 9 if I interpreted it correctly).