I noticed a couple of aptasia on one of my zoa frags and noticed a couple more tiny ones on my sand bed, hardly an outbreak, but wanted to nip it in the bud early. Seems like the consensus was the Peppermint shrimp was highly effective in this regard. I picked up a couple rather than one suggested to me by my LFS, and after a few hours of observing their funny behavior under my rocks, thought they would make a nice addition to my tank. First couple of days, they just hung upside down under the rocks. Next day, I noticed one on the affected frag and also noticed the tiny couple of aptasia in the sand bed were gone as well. Yay!
Day 4 I noticed them hanging out on a bare piece of rock where all my brittle stars have their arms hanging out. Noticing the lack of arms, I quickly researched if they preyed on brittles, and some people attested they did. This kind of bothered me as I grown to like all those arms sticking out but I wasnt proof positive that they were eating them(maybe they just scared the arms back in the rock crevices. However on day 5, I woke up to them perched on my favorite frag (and only) acan. Looking at the acan, you could see the severe damage to the heads. Almost like the rings that give it the great color were scraped clean. I immediately researched this as well and was met with an onslaught of horror stories of Peppermints eating acans. After doing a little more research, I noticed them picking at my Hammer as well!. They had to go right away...
Now came the horror show that was catching them. This was the worst and most frustrating part of the whole experience. Long post already, but to summarize, it took me all day to net them. Knocked over a bunch of my corals countless times, spread sand everywhere, rearranged my rockwork, water everywhere, fish ****ed.. coral retreated.. I got lucky with one relatively quickly, but the last one was a nightmare. I tried the bottle trap multiple times, and on every instance all I got were happy Nassarius. Didnt want to risk trapping overnight and have more damage done to the corals, so I was determined to get it done today.
I am sure I could have captured them better, but as a new reefer, this is my first experience taking things out as opposed to putting in. I feel like posting this in this forum as a precautionary tale. The difficulty in catching them and the bulldozing of my new tank had me seeing red, so I am venting at my keyboard now with this long winded post. I just don't know what to do next time the Aptasia comes.. Hoping there's another natural course of action.
Day 4 I noticed them hanging out on a bare piece of rock where all my brittle stars have their arms hanging out. Noticing the lack of arms, I quickly researched if they preyed on brittles, and some people attested they did. This kind of bothered me as I grown to like all those arms sticking out but I wasnt proof positive that they were eating them(maybe they just scared the arms back in the rock crevices. However on day 5, I woke up to them perched on my favorite frag (and only) acan. Looking at the acan, you could see the severe damage to the heads. Almost like the rings that give it the great color were scraped clean. I immediately researched this as well and was met with an onslaught of horror stories of Peppermints eating acans. After doing a little more research, I noticed them picking at my Hammer as well!. They had to go right away...
Now came the horror show that was catching them. This was the worst and most frustrating part of the whole experience. Long post already, but to summarize, it took me all day to net them. Knocked over a bunch of my corals countless times, spread sand everywhere, rearranged my rockwork, water everywhere, fish ****ed.. coral retreated.. I got lucky with one relatively quickly, but the last one was a nightmare. I tried the bottle trap multiple times, and on every instance all I got were happy Nassarius. Didnt want to risk trapping overnight and have more damage done to the corals, so I was determined to get it done today.
I am sure I could have captured them better, but as a new reefer, this is my first experience taking things out as opposed to putting in. I feel like posting this in this forum as a precautionary tale. The difficulty in catching them and the bulldozing of my new tank had me seeing red, so I am venting at my keyboard now with this long winded post. I just don't know what to do next time the Aptasia comes.. Hoping there's another natural course of action.
