Hello,

For those of you who keep a peppermint shrimp in smallish (<20 gal) tanks, what do you guys feed the things cuz mine refuses to take anything I offer. It has refused frozen mysis, omega one shrimp pellets, and generic marine fish granules...
I know I only had him for a few days but this is starting to worry me..
I acclimated him for well over an hour. The LFS's water salinity was 1.024 and my tank's is 1.025.
My tanks parameters have been very stable - 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, 0 phosphate, no copper no impurities, pH8.3, temperature at 80F.

I just can't seem to get the shrimp to eat anything. He also hasn't touched my mystery nems in the tank (what I thought were aiptasia) so I know he's not really eating anything, and I don't want to starve him for fear of him going after my soft corals...All he does all day and all night is dance in his hideout and periodically crawl all over the rock work, my corals, evidently trying to find something to eat...

So I would like to know if anyone here who keeps these guys can help me out

My first pep ignored the Aiptasia. Now, one of the ones I have destroys any hint of the stuff. I don't feed it specifically. It eats whatever I'm feeding the tank. It seems to really enjoy Zooplankton, frozen brine and even flake food. HTH

lame....how does it catch it's food? do you even present it the food or do you let the food float around until the shrimp catches it with it's antennae?

Tomorrow is tank feeding day for me, this is when I feed zooplankton and cyclop-eeze so we'll see if it reacts to those foods...I just expected it to eat larger foods like frozen mysis u_u

I kept one 7 years ago so y mind is foggy but...

my cleaner and blood shrimp loved mysid so I'm guessing your peppermint should love any meaty food the size of mysid or smaller but would lean more towards the size of cyclopeeze

flake,frozen or freeze dried should do their not picky

this one sure damn is...maybe it is just because it is breaking into the new tank? seems rather afraid of the tweezers and everything...and it doesn't bother picking up the food off the rock or sand if I leave the food next to him >_> He is so annoying.

I really want him to eat the food I give and not eat my soft corals

My peppermint shrimp are little pigs. They have picked up on the feeding schedule just as much as the fish and are always eagerly waiting when it is feeding time. Often they will catch flakes that are floating around or that get caught in the rocks. I also will sometimes taken pieces of frozen mysis by hand and simply put my hand in the tank. They all climb on my hand and devour it...also very amusing to watch.

This being said they were't like that at first, took them a couple of weeks to get over being shy. Don't give up on him yet. Peppermint shrimp are nocturnal so I'm sure that he's cleaning up left over food at night.

lol very little leftover food as the system is young and I do not have any fish to feed.
I feed all my large polyp corals every other day, and I give my super tongan nassarius snail a shrimp pellet every few days as well, but really there is little to none leftover food...which is why 'm so concerned. He was pacing all over the tank in broad daylight today. wasting a lot of energy, so you can see why I want to feed him. He will no doubt soon turn on my zoas and shrooms

My peppermint shrimp eats like a pig. It devoured all aiptasia I had in one night when I first introduced it to the tank and it will eat anything that I put in the tank. I usually give it a bunch of mysis before I feed corals otherwise it will steal the food from them.

how do you feed it? with foreceps or just by turkey basting some mysis near it's location?

I use a turkey baster and gently squirt some by it and it will gather up as much mysis as it can hold.

bah mine just picks up and throws the mysis on the sand. It's like it's saying that the mysis is not good enough for it or something

It is always so frustrating when our marine friends like to be picky! How big is your peppermint shrimp, is the mysis your feeding him too large? If you have a tiny peppermint I could see that being a possibility.

he's medium sized. he ignores all food period. this better be a phase he's going through becuase otherwise he will be dead of starvation very soon (he aint getting any of my corals)
I was stupid enough not to ask the LFS what they fed their shrimp but last time I talked to them they said that they feed most of their picky live stock Hickari frozen mysis, which is what I have..........pep is gonna have to eat sometime

Rod's food (so chunks of all sorts of meaty junk and plant bits). It eats the scraps or you can let it eat from the turkey baster. Mine would climb halfway inside the baster once he realized baster=dinner.

LOL! I will have to try frozen brine shrimp tonight... if that fails the he's getting frozen mysis tomorrow night when I feed my corals..

You probably don't even need to be feeding him. They will eat a lot of things you don't know are in your tank, i've also seen mine go for worms and things growing in the sand and rock, though I'm not sure how successful he is.

When I bought my peppermint I made a point to ask, even though I had heard they would eat a lot of different things, I was told "almost anything", so I ended up going with some cheap sinking pellets. It took a few days before he started taking notice of the tank feedings, but he goes nuts along with the other critters almost regardless of what kind of food it is now. They don't need to eat much, so don't bother feeding it mysis or anything, the little fragments left over from feeding other critters will be plenty, though appeasing your shrimp with something may keep it from stealing from other things.

maybe he was going crazy yesterday becuase he molted today...I highly doubt he will come out for a few days now when I feed. He did sorta respond to frozen brine yesterday but not really...

The thing is all I feed in this tank is the corals. there is not much food leftover for anything else... and w/e is left over usually winds up in my filter anyway because the flow in my tank is crazy. Obviously I turn off everything when I feed but still...

I have a few feather dusters in my tank, and he hasnt touched those either...nems are still there, he pisses off my rhodactis often by trampling it...

If you guys think he can scavenge his way to survival in my tank, then so be it.

any update on the peppy's behavior?

I just got a peppermint the other day. He didn't eat the first day, and hid from the blood shrimp and the cleaner.
The following day he started eating. Then he molted the following day.
He LOVES brine shrimp, as do all of my other creatures in the tank.
Just squirt some brine shrimp with a turkey baster right next to his claws. Make sure it is very close to him though - it annoys me when i'm spraying brine all over the place and no one is grabbing it, They don't tend to chase the brine shrimp unless it floats directly past them.

For some reason my blood shrimp and the peppermint shrimp have become friends, and inhabit the same cave. I'm not sure why, because my blood doesn't get along with my cleaner, he even attacks him.

lol thanks man, but mine now eats anything. i mean anything, he even comes up o the top and does his grabby swimming jig on the water surface to collect flakes and such, its quite funny. No probs keeping him fed, he finds food very well by smell if i drop it in the tank.

He was moved to my 10 gal clownfish tank recently, so he gets even more food now, and i dont have to spend time to feed JUST him like it was back when he was in the 3 gal.