I feed my favia soaked pellets every now and then and it eats very slowly.
I do this with all the pumps off except the return pump.
This evening when I was feeding the favia, the cleaner shrimp hopped onto the favia and started grabbing the pellets from the favia.
The shrimp then broke apart each pellet and ate big chunks of it, and then started using its two front arms (the white ones) to shove small bits into the favia's polyps.
The favia then readily ate these bits. The shrimp kept systematically doing this until almost all the favia polyps had food in them.
Has anyone observed this before? At first I thought that the shrimp was just stealing the food outright. But it looks like it was actually sharing with the favia and helping it eat.
This is the cleaner shrimp that is shunned by all the fish in the tank, regardless of how much it prances and preens with its antennae. I wonder if it decided to be buddies with the favia because it was getting lonely.
I do this with all the pumps off except the return pump.
This evening when I was feeding the favia, the cleaner shrimp hopped onto the favia and started grabbing the pellets from the favia.
The shrimp then broke apart each pellet and ate big chunks of it, and then started using its two front arms (the white ones) to shove small bits into the favia's polyps.
The favia then readily ate these bits. The shrimp kept systematically doing this until almost all the favia polyps had food in them.
Has anyone observed this before? At first I thought that the shrimp was just stealing the food outright. But it looks like it was actually sharing with the favia and helping it eat.
This is the cleaner shrimp that is shunned by all the fish in the tank, regardless of how much it prances and preens with its antennae. I wonder if it decided to be buddies with the favia because it was getting lonely.
