Brain coral with feeding tentacles out at nightWhen it comes to acquiring food, fish will take the path of least resistance. And one of the best ways for a fish to score an easy meal is to snatch morsels away from their glacially slow-moving invertebrate tankmates. Heck, it’s practically like taking candy from a baby, except babies usually cry a lot louder when they’re robbed of treats. For hobbyists who keep corals or other invertebrates with a high demand for regular targeted feeding—e.g., many LPS corals and anemones—such food thievery can be a genuinely aggravating issue. The good news is, using one or more of the following techniques, it’s often possible to eliminate, or at least reduce, this bad behavior:Distract the culprits You may be able to buy your coral a few precious moments at mealtimes by first delivering food to the fish in another part of the tank and then quickly target feeding the coral. Of course, this is only effective if the fish haven’t already learned to identify the coral in question as a source of easy victuals. In that case, they’ll likely just gobble up their own food and then proceed to shake down the coral anyway
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