Thieving Clowns and Shrimp

[Treebeard]

Hi everybody!

I am a very new to this highly addictive past time and just stumbled across these forums today. There is a ton of great information here and I have already spent a couple of hours reading old threads.

Back to the problem....I have been hand feeding a bubble coral small bits of shrimp a couple of times a week (also a couple of brittle stars) but one of the clowns and cleaner shrimp have caught on and steal the shrimp before the bubble can ingest it. The clown tries to grab the shrimp from the forceps before I can even get it to the coral. Any suggestion on how to get the food to the intended recipient would be greatly appreciated!

[Delphinus]

Welcome to Canreef!

Keep the theives reasonably well fed before trying to feed the bubble coral.. and then chase them away with a stick or something. Once they catch on that they can steal food, they're not going to easily forget about it ... maybe put a strawberry basket or a jar over the coral while it's swallowing ...

Good luck! Haha, been there. What am I talking about, I'm still there. My shrimp and fish steal food from anyone whom they can get away with doing it to.. Luckily we don't need to feed bubble corals all that often .. but something like a sun coral or dendrophyllia is probably out unless in a different tank!

[Treebeard]

Thanks for the tip! The shrimp usually hang out on a live rock in the right side of the tank so I moved the bubble to the far end. I used a net in one hand to keep the clowns at bay while I fed the bubble with other hand. I feel so proud of myself now that I was able to outsmart a fish!

[Brighteyes_13]

another method ive heard of using is the top of a 2L pop bottle, you can put that over your coral and put the food in through the top