peppermint homicide?

[rworegon]

Hi all,
New here and would like to say hello.
I had a couple of aiptasia pop up on a piece of rock and wanted to rid the tank of this pest before it got out of hand. Went to the LFS an picked up ( 3 ) peppermints. By the time I had floated the bag for 15 minutes to temp acclimate the critters I noticed that two of the little bastages had the third on his back and had killed him. I fished the deceased out of the bag and finished acclimating the other two but noticed them still "fighting" with each other. When I released them into the tank they swam to opposite ends of my 48" long tank. Within minutes one of the two remaining was dead. The last remaining Pep crawled into a cave in a rock next to my Brittlestar's home rock and seemed just fine.

Has anybody ever seen this kind of aggression between peppermints before? Should the LFS bagged the three separately?

BTW: when I got up this morning and checked the tank the shrimp was nowhere to be found, but the aiptasia, (2) heads were either gone or completely withdrawn into the crevice it had been in. Shrimp is probably hiding in a rock somewhere sleeping off his meal.

 

[worm5406]

I have 4 that sstarted real small. Now they are good size.

I have seen them fight before at the LFS but not in transit or in my DT.

Interesting.

 

[Dr. Reef]

shrimp are territorial. they will chase one off or even be aggressive towards one if in same area. LFS messed up by putting all 3 in same bag.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I had 4 in my tank,when one of them molted the other three killed it pretty fast.I couldn't get to it fast enough for all of the liverock.

 

[worm5406]

Humm mine molt one after another... Then they well... you know what happens when they molt...

A few days later the eggs are gone and I assume food for the other fish...

 

[Orm Embar]

What kind of peppermints did you get? Hopefully Lysmata wurdemanni and not Rhyno-somethingorother Latin name . . .

 

[Biocubehqi]

I had horrible experiences with pep shrimp.... I swarn them off... Straight evil critters

 

[nwnugget]

I loved mine. Until last night. Bought a nice piece of torch coral. 2 hours to acclimate it. Was placing it into the DT and my peppermints came out to see what was going on. One of the shrimp started to tear into the torch like it had not eaten in a month.

Now I am torn, return the torch coral and keep the shrimp? I think they do an awesome job of cleaning the place up. No food goes uneaten in the tank. Get rid of them and keep the torch, it really is a nice little two headed golden tip torch frag. My first piece of flowing coral like that.