Cbs Strangeness

[Donya]

I mentioned in another post that my CBS basically adopted my tongue coral for no apparent reason. It rather visciously defended that coral too. When I had to move that coral to my other tank, the shrimp went bonkers pretty much immediately. It kept running around the tank trampling everything and wouldn't take food that I offered it, which was not the norm. The new behaviors continued until I put in a hammer coral frag (subject of another post since I had started wondering if it was really a hammer). CBS was an instant happy camper and is acting normal again...best buds with the frag. Of course it'll try to rip apart my hand if I go near the hammer coral, but that's no big deal lol.

There are 2 things that are getting me:

First, it's not exactly like the shrimp is limited to occupying corals. There are other things and rocks it could take as its territory. It wouldn't settle for having a plain old rock in place of the plate coral--I tried that. I thought these guys wern't supposed to care much what they sat on/around?

Second, if it wants to sit on or near a coelenterate, why didn't it like my big mushroom? It walked over the mushroom, but didn't stay there.

It's bugging me that I havn't seen my shrimp's behavior described in the large amounts of info out there that I've sifted through. CBS seem pretty well documented behaviorally, but I havn't found much detail about their prefered environments. Any insight from other CBS keepers?

 

[Navarre]

Not sure on this one really. My only thought might be a mutial defence partnership. Whilst the hammer is not an anenome it does have sweeper tentacles and can catch prey with this. perhaps the shrimp finds this limited defense is good for it.
The true answer i feel is simply we dont know. Some clowns will jump right into an anenome and others will never venture into them .. why? we simply dont know for sure.. as long as the shrimp feeds and is not harming anything else then i would not be too concerned.

 

[Donya]

The shrimp did take to the coral when the sweepers were out. The hammer was catching brine shrimp about an hour after I put it in the tank and the CBS gravitated to it at that point. It's an interesting case...equipment and funds willing I'd be interested in seeing how the shrimp reacts to other corals with sting potential. Makes me wonder if some of the erratic CBS behavior I've read about is due to the shrimp not being satisfied with the presented choice of corals/anemones.