Molting Peppermint Shrimp

[mandi]

I just thought these were kind of interesting, so I thought I'd share.

I thought it was funny the way it was still standing on the rock:

Sorry this one is a bit out of focus, but I thought it was funny because Mr. Shrimp was hanging out, looking at what he'd left behind:

Edit:
Please excuse the algae on the walls of the tank too. ) I'm still getting the hang of saltwater stuff. Heh.

 

[Aquascaper]

First of all

The shrimp looks more like a Camelback shrimp to me (often mis-sold as a peppermint shrimp).

The "true" Peppermint Shrimp (Lysmata wurdemann) is great for controlling Aiptasia and is an excellent scavenger. The Camelback Shrimp (Rhynchocinetes uritai) is also a good tank cleaner but it known for a liking of Mushrooms and Zoanthids. Might be worth checking if you have these types of soft corals in your tank before he eats them all A great site for help with ID'ing stuff is:

http/saltaquarium.about.com/

HTH

P.S - The red algae can be a sign of 'dead spots' in water flow or overfeeding, I know because i've got it too

 

[mandi]

Thx for the info.

I had a pretty long thread going over in the forums on Nano-Reef.com a while back and I'm confident its a true peppermint shrimp. I know they're often mistaken for eachother though. Not that it would matter all that much right now, I neither have aptasia nor any coral in my tank (yet). Haha.

Here's another couple pictures of him. I have the worst time trying to get a detailed shot of him thats in focus (the macro on my digital camera is crappy):

He has the very faint red lines that run all one direction like this rather than the brighter colors & humped back.

Hm, I'll have to experiment with the water-flow thing. And I think I may be guilty of overfeeding at times. I'll have to keep an eye on that! Thx!

 

[Aquascaper]

From those shots he does look like a true peppermint

I have neither in my tank, just 2 cleaners and a fire B)

 

[cometcattle]

Cool Pics!