Peppermint shrimp eating snails?

[magicstix]

Has anyone ever heard of a peppermint shrimp catching and eating a live nassarius snail?

 

One of my peppermints was eating a miniature nassarius this morning and I'm wondering if it was already dead or if it's possible he caught it and ate it.

[namxas]

How hungry are your peps?

 

Do you have Lysamata wurdemanni (true peppermint shrimp) or one of the "look alikes", such as L. californicus or especially the camel shrimp (Rhynchocinetes durbanensis), which are pretty predatory?

 

IME, unless they're starving, true peps pretty much leave tankmates alone unless they're dead or dying, altho they will sometimes groom their piscine tankmates.

[msscha]

My peppermints (the "true" kind, as indicated by namxas) had only ever eaten aiptasia and bristle worms. I have seen both, but have never seen them go after anything else, and it's possible the bristle worm was already dead or injured. After a few days in the tank, my peppermints learned to dine on brine shrimp along with everyone else in the tank!

[magicstix]

I have true peppermints. They're clear with red/pink. No guarantee they're wurdemanni though (wurdemanni was recently split up into a zillion nearly indistinguishable species), but I can guarantee they aren't camels.

 

I'm not sure how hungry they are. I feed mysis every couple of days, and throw in some spectrum pellet food. They seem to pick up the pellets and chew on them a bit then drop them. They also seem to hoard up a bunch of pellets, so I'm sure they're getting some nutrition from them. They come out and grab mysis off the substrate as well when I feed that. Occasionally they'll pick at the rocks as well.

 

None of my zoanthis/palys/misc polyps have been touched, though I did see one of the peppermints picking at some worm tubes on a new frag that went in the tank recently.

 

One of the shrimp recently molted, and I've seen larvae from their spawnings at least once in the tank, dunno if that's relevant or not.

[namxas]

Cool...I didn't know your level of expertise in terms of ID-ing shrimp, and I see them mis-ID/mis-sold fairly often.

 

I'd say your snail was likely on the outs, esp if it was on the surface of the substrate.

[BioCube Newb]

I have a pair of peppermints, feed them daily and they still ate 5 margarita and 2 astrea snails,  the margaritas were eaten within 3 days of adding them, astreas lasted couple weeks