Need advice-My first hammer coral and my peppermint shrimp

[Katarnie]

Hi, I got a green hammer coral a week ago it was doing really well up until a last night and now tonight, I'm just not sure if this behavior is normal for this coral so just want to check with experts

I have in my tank 2 trochus & 1 nassarius snail and 2 peppermint shrimps. 2 ocellaris baby clowns. When the moonlights go on my green hammer would never retract and glow beautifully but now at night its retracting and I've heard stories of peppermint shrimp getting a taste for lps corals so I'm wondering if one of them ( which is bigger than the other and bolder) is starting to annoy my coral. I've seen the bigger pep go very close to the coral during moonlight setting first night I put it in but I didn't think shrimp could hurt it. the clowns don't even notice it...

so is the retracting under moonlight normal or is the peppermint shrimp doing something to bother it?

Thanks :hmm6:

 

[triggreef]

Normal. If the peps were bothering it then it would stay closed. I had peps go after a Yuma once, it was shriveled to nothing. After the peps moved on to a knew spot it still took the Yuma a week or so to recuperate. It was odd because there was an identical one just a couple inches away they never bothered.

I'll add most of my euphillia corals close up just after lights out, & open up a little again after an hour or so.

 

[Katarnie]

I ended up having to pull all my rockwork apart and out just to get the two little peps out of my tank and back to lfs :S They are very smart and didn't fall for any of my traps, took a good couple of hours to put humpty back together again! From what you said doesn't seem like they were bothering my hammer at all and my coral was behaving normally but I took them out anyway as a precaution as I'd rather not have to worry about them taking a liking to certain corals in the future like yours did, thanks for advice

 

[Aquarist007]

Feed them around dusk and they will stay open