What is Riccordia doing?

[hunkafish]

when my Ric's shrink up to about the size of a dime what are they doing. are they expelling something? Eating what they've gathered during the day? sick? Normal? Not normal?
Some do it while others don't seems to very a couple do it every day at some point. How the he** do you feed them shrimp? it just lays there on them until my shrimp or fish take it. Thanks for the help i really like them, just want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong I have a lot of them, so any advice is appreciated

 

[hunkafish]

BUMP anybody?

 

[DetectiveTofu]

Picture?
What color is the stuff they're spewing out?
To feed corals can be a pain because you always have fish and inverts trying to steal food away from them. Try feeding the fish to satiation first; likewise with the inverts. If this still doesn't help, you may need to put the food onto the ricordea's mouth, and place a small plastic container over the polyp to prevent theft. That or keep an eye on the polyp and manually wave away any thieves.

 

[Micer]

Most likely it's expelling waste which is normal. When I first saw it happen I was worried they were expelling zooxanthellae especially because I wasn't feeding them anything or I should say they weren't eating. This is what I've learned about my ric's ymmv. Whenever the ric isn't curling up over the shrimp and engulfing it, it's just not hungry. What happens is the shrimp just sits there and either something steals it or the ric pushes the food away until the current catches it ect. You will notice right away if it's hungry because it will close over the food pretty quickly.

I feed my fish first then spot feed the ric's. I usually cut a small piece off of a raw frozen shrimp and slice/shred it up a bit. Then put it in a cup and get some water from the tank with a turkey baster to thaw it and then use the baster to suck up and gently squirt that directly onto the rics. They can eat a rather large piece of shrimp even at smaller sizes but I find they are happier with manageable pieces. My smallest one hasn't eaten anything in forever until just recently he ate a piece of shrimp that was as big as he is lol. It took ages for him to get it all down and he hasn't wanted anything since. Compared to my largest one that will happily eat pretty much everyday. They should be nice and spread out if they are shrinking up regularly during the day the light is probably too intense. Which would stress them and cause them not to eat. Even in a poorly lit tank the light can be too intense for them if they are placed high.