Coping with self-willed no-brain critters...aka nems and shrooms.

[Sk8r]

The nem tends to vary between cave A and B (it has its foot attached, but since it can stretch out about 15", it can appear in either, but now it has found a hole straight vertical toward the lights. So on any given day, it will pop up and expand in any 1 of the three. And it's nudged my best mushroom rock, as in---rested on it and caused about half the shrooms to bail out and attach elsewhere. It even burned a hole in one shroom. You'd think this would be a totally bad thing.

But these critters do get along together in the wild, and they have survival mechanisms. The burned spot has healed. The shrooms that fled, being discosomas and tough as nails, have attached in the places where they bailed TO, and have now re-expanded. They and a cluster of rhodactis even seem to have reached detente with the wandering nem, as it rested quite well atop them without damage. One wisdom I have learned in this hobby---arguing with a nem about location is pretty well useless and at worst destructive: they will go where they want to go and your only hope of dealing with them is by altering the currents that bring them food: they will relocate to take advantage of those. But otherwise, they will make a place for themselves and neighbors have to adapt or move.

OTOH, since my hope with this tank was to get the shrooms and zoas to multiply, I think the nem has become my ally: it has now got shrooms populating three more rocks than originally, and they're in relatively good spots and seem healthy and prospering. Nature does have its ways of coping with and taking advantage of change.

 

[Sk8r]

Well, it's been an adventure, but everything is still ok, IF i can find the zoa frag a giant snail dislodged. It's an old tank. I had 5 really large marine snail-types, over an inch, and speaking of self -willed creatures, I am here to tell you a large snail can suck a piece of rock right off its glued base. Complicating matters, I decided to go to dimmer lights to help out the mushrooms, which annoyed the nem---which went walkabout to the top of the tank and across the front glass. Best rule with nems is NOT to try to move them, but to change the situation that caused them to move--lighting or current movement. I reset the lights, and the nem meandered exactly over the course it had followed previously, perfect backtrack. Now it's back where it was, the shrooms are relatively happy, and I have managed to catch the mega-snails and move them to a useful career in the sump. The Gyre hasn't been operating. I'm getting it set up, and hope to avoid another nem migration. I think I can. The zoas and shrooms meanwhiile are happy, and I'm thinking of installing some LPS stony on the higher tiers of rock, letting the shrooms have the lower tiers. This will mean calcium supplement, but it will not hurt the shrooms.