Scarlet Skunk Cleaner and Peppermint Shrimp, get along?

[das75]

Already have one cleaner but got Aiptasia that are starting to get out of control so considering a peppermint.

Wondering if the two species would be okay together in a 145g?

 

[Len]

Yes, they'll get along IME. The one really mean shrimp is the Coral Banded Shrimp.

 

[Anonymous]

All shrimp are territorial though, if given the opportunity they will kill another shrimp.

I had a Coral Banded, 2 cleaner & a couple peppermint in a 135g tank, I set up a new tank and decided the CB was to be that tanks "show shrimp" and put 2 cleaners from another tank in with the other 2, and even in that 6 foot long tank I only see 2 cleaners, unless the other two are hiding, I assume they got axed.

 

[Meloco14]

I have a scarlet cleaner with 5 peppermints in a 55. They all get along fine. For the most part peppermints tend to hide during the day and forage at night, so I dont seem the 2 species interacting much. But when I feed the tank the pepp's and cleaner will often race eachother to get leftover pellets, but neither has ever acted aggressively toward the other, they seem to play fair.

 

[Anonymous]

I had a peppermint that went completely insane. As a result, I will never get another one of this kind of shrimp.

Before I was finally able to trap it and get it out of my tank, I actually observed it killing and consuming the following (not to mention the things that went missing when I wasn't looking!).

One peppermint shrimp
One skunk cleaner
One blue linkia star
Several snails of different species and sizes



After it killed the $20 cleaner shrimp and the blue linkia that I had for a long time (and blue linkias are hard to find and keep in good healthy condition), I decided it was time to get it the hell out of my tank.


Before the peanut gallery says my killer shrimp was a camel back and not a peppermint, I know the difference and the two species don't look so similar that I would confuse them. I posted a picture of my shrimp here back when this happened and it was indeed a peppermint shrimp.

When this happened to me, I searched for similar stories and found several accounts of peppermints going berserk and becoming canibalistic.

My LFS guy says that when he has aptasia problems in his display tanks, he tosses in a group of peppermints. He says that in his experience, they often cannibalize eachother and do damage to other animals.