[Sk8r]

The nem tends to vary between cave A and B (it has its foot attached, but since it can stretch out about 15", it can appear in either, but now it has found a hole straight vertical toward the lights. So on any given day, it will pop up and expand in any 1 of the three. And it's nudged my best mushroom rock, as in---rested on it and caused about half the shrooms to bail out and attach elsewhere. It even burned a hole in one shroom. You'd think this would be a totally bad thing.

But these critters do get along together in the wild, and they have survival mechanisms. The burned spot has healed. The shrooms that fled, being discosomas and tough as nails, have attached in the places where they bailed TO, and have now re-expanded. They and a cluster of rhodactis even seem to have reached detente with the wandering nem, as it rested quite well atop them without damage. One wisdom I have learned in this hobby---arguing with a nem about location is pretty well useless and at worst destructive: they will go where they want to go and your only hope of dealing with them is by altering the currents that bring them food: they will relocate to take advantage of those. But otherwise, they will make a place for themselves and neighbors have to adapt or move.

OTOH, since my hope with this tank was to get the shrooms and zoas to multiply, I think the nem has become my ally: it has now got shrooms populating three more rocks than originally, and they're in relatively good spots and seem healthy and prospering. Nature does have its ways of coping with and taking advantage of change.