RBTA moved for first time in 8 months

[hotelbravo]

Hello again everyone. i just cant stop posting threads about things.. Well today i woke up to my RBTA moving for the first time in 8 months... well for the first time since i put him in the tank. he has never moved. The day i bought him i placed him next to a conch shell my wife just had to have in the tank. he moved into that conch shell and has been there since. i have tried getting him out of the shell by putting him in undesirable places but no matter what i tried he would never leave the shell. Well i recently upgraded to this new 75 gallon and he was settling in just fine i got two new clowns that im sure everyone has seen from my thread "Thanks to you i have my new clown pair". There are two changes that may be the reason to his discomfort in the shell. First change is that since upgrading my jet was very underpowered and the tank had almost no flow. so yesterday i bought a new high powered jet and put it in the tank. i kept the old jet in also and pointed the stream going parallel with the new jet but both going in opposite directions.. He wasnt getting blown around hard or anything he was pretty undisturbed where he was. he was getting flow but not to much, he has had harder flow in the smaller tank. The second change is that i added 3 fish all at once to the tank. not sure how this could affect him but somehow maybe it did.

My concern now is that he is retracting back into the darkness underneath a rock and towards my filter which does not have sponge covering it to keep him from getting sucked up.. i never expected i would need it since he never moved.
The lighting has never changed i have Orbit current LED's 48" ones. i had the 36" ones for the previous tank. the light has been on a schedule from the beginning.

BEFORE PICTURE


AFTER PICTURE

 

[hotelbravo]

Update

He is moving further into the rocks...

 

[golferbud101691]

this is very interesting. my green bta has done the same thing and stayed behind/inside my rocks. the first thing is DONT try to move it. let it do its thing. personally you have been lucky it hasn't moved before because mine moved about once a month. Some feel it has something to do with the moon and its gravitational pull. Who really knows. Bta's have a mind of their own. you were lucky for 8 months lol.

 

[hotelbravo]

I would be fine if I could get to my filter head and put a sponge around it but I was being dumb and stuck it between rocks. I was never planning on him moving

 

[DaveRaz]

Very common. Don't fret. He will move when he is ready too. If he is there for several weeks and doesn't, turn around the rock he is attached too.

 

[hotelbravo]

He hasnt really stopped moving since the beginning of this post. luckily he is moving away from the powerhead.