Interesting advice given :scratch:
Wingo, I've seen peppermint shrimp go anywhere in the tank to get to food. How would raising a plate coral (typically found on sandbeds in the wild) into the rockwork dissuade hungry peppermints?
Vic: If the peppermints are bothering one coral, what's to stop them from moving on to the next if the plate coral is removed?
My suggestions are based on my several own observations over a year with couple tanks having similar environment.
1)The peps do come to grab food any where in tank at the beginning for a couple of months, then later on they will retreat to the more remote area properly fear of the bigger fish in the open water. Furthermore, whenever the tentacles of the bigger cleaners that frequent in the open water touch the peps, the latter retreat right away.
2)The peps seems not able to float in the mid water as good as the cleaners
3)Once the tank are well fed and the peps realize there are always food, they become lazier to come out to get food. That's why I think many people claim their shrimps will eat aptasia for a while then stop after coupel weeks. Probably, they think food floating right to their mouth is eaiser than fight for food. After they are used to the tank, the only time when they are very aggressive for food is when they are carrying eggs. I don't understand why since I think they don't have to feed the eggs(correct me if I am wrong about this point)
4)Even though plate is a sandy bottom coral, I found in CAPTIVE SYSTEM, there may be too much stuff such as snails, craps, hermits, and worms(I feel most captive system have much denser population of animals in the sand bed then the wild) going on in the sand bed where the back of the coral sit. My plates tend to open more in the flat surface of rock where they can still cover their own a$$(their bottom side). Depite that their skeleton is hard, overtime it will slowly warp it's structure over a somewhat flat rock surface covering all the gaps and holes so that flow cannot enter the bottom side of them when they swell up.
5)The thread says the pep is picking on it not really eating it. If the a pep decided that the plate is his dinner plate, I am sure the pep will take it down in one day because I found that plate could be very easy to have rtn(right term??) once it is wounded. When my peps eat the aptasia, you see them really tearing the hell out of the anemone.
6)Well I might be all wrong in this so I ask him to consider my
suggestions instead of saying what I posted earlier as if they are
advices.
>>>Keep us posted what happened-cumulative sightings will become knowledge.
