Losing my CUC, i think its the peppermint shrimp.

[jefferythewind]

Recently i've slowly watched all my 6 turban snails show up with the shell empty and all cleaned out. Now i realized today that i cant see any brittle stars anymore either. The tank used to be full of them. I little while back i bought 2 peppermint shrimp because mt aiptasias were getting out of hand. The aiptasias are under control now. i'm not really sure if the peppermint should have been eating them or not. In fact I hardly ever can see the peppermint shrimp. I just have a feeling that the peppermint shrimp has been eating the snails and now eating the brittle stars. Has anybody ever had the peppermint shrimp eating cleanup crew like this?

[Murphs_Reef]

I doubt the peppermint are killing the snails but they will most definitely be cleaning the shells out. 

Your peppermint will be out during lights out.  

 

What's the tanks parameters? What fish do you have?

[gen]

I agree, shrimps don't attack CUC on purpose. However they will eat dead or dying animals (they know it dying before you might notice anything). 

 

My 2 cents : 

• Understanding what happened with snails is probably the priority.
• Brittle stars might disappear if there is not enough food to sustain their numbers (if the population grew too fast). I used to have hundreds, now I barely see a dozen. Happens with differents hitchhikers. 

[jefferythewind]

4 hours ago, Murphych said:

I doubt the peppermint are killing the snails but they will most definitely be cleaning the shells out. 

Your peppermint will be out during lights out.  

 

What's the tanks parameters? What fish do you have?

Tank params are pretty consistent. The tank is getting close to 2 years. i've kind of figured out what I was doing over the past year. Now I test Alk and Phosphates a few times a week and change water also at least once a week. I test CA/Mg periodically and they are always in the right range. I dose the 2-part to keep Alk at 8.5. 

 

My tank started out too sterile with all dry rock and little diversity, then about 8 months in I added some live rock and few more things. My phosphate was bottomed out a zero so I started to dose phosphate and other coral food and slowly the tank and corals got healthy and grew. Now I have a mix of hard a soft corals. Over the past years I saw a lot of these little animals appear. Then about 6-8 months about I started getting a bad algae problem and only recently i realized that when I stopped dosing phosphate it stayed at an acceptable level. Obviously the point is to try to stop so much algae from growing. There is still plenty of algae all over the place. I also feed twice a day. I have a hard time thinking the snails and brittle stars starved. 

 

For fish I've got 2 clowns, a cardinal jackfish, an indigo dottyback and a green wrasse. I know the wrasse likes to pick a lot and I think it helped clean up the mini feather dusters which were all over the tank.

 

OK well thanks i was just worried I added 2 little killers to my tank, and now I don't even know where they are in there. It seemed the snails started disappears shortly after adding the peppermint shrimp.

 

[Clown79]

I've seen peppermints eat coral but not shrimp unless they are dying/dead.

 

Any chance your wrasse is doing it?

[WV Reefer]

4 hours ago, jefferythewind said:

Tank params are pretty consistent. The tank is getting close to 2 years. i've kind of figured out what I was doing over the past year. Now I test Alk and Phosphates a few times a week and change water also at least once a week. I test CA/Mg periodically and they are always in the right range. I dose the 2-part to keep Alk at 8.5. 

 

My tank started out too sterile with all dry rock and little diversity, then about 8 months in I added some live rock and few more things. My phosphate was bottomed out a zero so I started to dose phosphate and other coral food and slowly the tank and corals got healthy and grew. Now I have a mix of hard a soft corals. Over the past years I saw a lot of these little animals appear. Then about 6-8 months about I started getting a bad algae problem and only recently i realized that when I stopped dosing phosphate it stayed at an acceptable level. Obviously the point is to try to stop so much algae from growing. There is still plenty of algae all over the place. I also feed twice a day. I have a hard time thinking the snails and brittle stars starved. 

 

For fish I've got 2 clowns, a cardinal jackfish, an indigo dottyback and a green wrasse. I know the wrasse likes to pick a lot and I think it helped clean up the mini feather dusters which were all over the tank.

 

OK well thanks i was just worried I added 2 little killers to my tank, and now I don't even know where they are in there. It seemed the snails started disappears shortly after adding the peppermint shrimp.

 

I would say it’s the wrasse and the dottyback. They both will eat anything and everything. 

[jefferythewind]

7 hours ago, WV Reefer said:

I would say it’s the wrasse and the dottyback. They both will eat anything and everything. 

you may be right. Pretty sure it was them that took out 2 threadfin cardinals that i tried to add as well