Hammerhead being eaten by peppermint shrimp?

I just got a new hammerhead frag after my last one mysteriously fell apart (i looked in the tank one day and saw all the little heads just floating around the tank and the "shell" was empty) and as soon as I put it in my tank my peppermint shrimp immediately went to town on it, and there were little heads floating all over.

I moved the new frag to my refug so the peppermints didn't keep harassing it. But do peppermint shrimp actually eat hammerhead corals? Is there anyway to keep the hammer head in the same tank as the peppermints?

Thanks

 

My experience with peppermint shrimp was not good. They ate my maxi-mini anemones and ripped my lps to shreads.

Your is by far not the first story I have heard of peppermint shrimp eathing LPS.

 

Peppermint shrimp will certainly eat LPS. I had one kill a tri color frogspawn in about 30 seconds. It came back eventually but I vowed never again.... until i got bad aptasia. Now I wonder if they are eating MY hammer.... its been receeding.

 

We had several peps in our softy/LPS reef and never had any troubles. The tank also had fish in it, and the peps were well-fed as a result, which may have been the key.

 

Usually when people have trouble it is actually a camelback shrimp, not a peppermint. Sometimes people do seem to have trouble with peppermints though. I think at least some of it is due to use for aiptasia control, if we teach organisms to eat aiptasia, why would we expect them to know the difference between aiptasia and coral? Regardless, if they can eat an anemone, such as an aptaisia, certainly they are capable of eating similar organisms. So, there could be problems with them on occasion. Personally though, I haven't had issues, other then having them steal food from corals.

 

I have over 20 zoa frags and several lps and some sps and the peppermints only seem to go after the hammerhead, which I find incredibly strange. They sometimes steal food from my anemone. So I guess my options are separate the peppermints from the hammerhead or sell one of the two.

But on a similar note are zoas not lps corals then? Because the peppermints have left all my zoas alone

 

I agree its strange. I've only seen peppermint shrimp go after corals like torches, hammers, and frogspawn, even though zoas are closer in relation to nems.

 

Mine were peppermint and not camel, they did do an excellent job of cleaning up the aiptasia, they were also very well fed.

Moved to----- Inverts.

 

If they are already attacking it I would say no and get rid of the shrimp.I lost both my hammer and frogspawn to peppermints and both were large healthy colonies.I caught and removed the shrimp by luring them out with nori on a clip near the sandbed after lights out,put it in an area large enough to get your net in behind them,when frightened they always dart upward and backward.

 

I would definitely choose the hammer over a shrimp....