Natural Behaviors and Interactions

[Brisk]

How can you encourage natural behavior and interactions among the inhabitants of a reef aquarium?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

How can you encourage natural behavior and interactions among the inhabitants of a reef aquarium?

An aquarium is not a natural habitat so many behaviors and interactions might be different from animals in the wild. We are giving them security/safety in exchange for an "unnatural" environment. For example, most fish have a natural instinct to hide from/avoid possible prey, but (hopefully anyway), our tank inhabitants don't need to worry about being eaten so the behavior may change and they often become more "tame" and outgoing. Also, most aquarists keep animals that would never encounter one another in the wild, so all bets are off when they meet in a small box of water...

*I am guessing you're really asking about anemones hosting clownfish... If that's the case, in my experience, just let nature take its course and if the fish find the nem, great but if not, you still have a pretty nem and interesting fish ;)

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

How can you encourage natural behavior and interactions among the inhabitants of a reef aquarium?

As mentioned, we can't (and in the case of predators/aggression, often don't want to) perfectly emulate a natural environment for the critters in our tanks, but there are some things we can do to help them display more of their natural behaviors:

-Make the tank look like their natural environment as much as possible.
-Provide plenty of hiding spaces in the rockwork.
-Provide natural foods as much as possible (pods, macroalgae to feed on, etc.)
-Feed enough good, quality food.
-Emulate species-specific circumstances (sand for burrowers/sand-sifters, symbiotes for critters with symbiotic relationships - like clownfish and nems, watchman gobies and pistol shrimp, etc.; etc.).
-Run a biotope tank with critters, algae, etc. from the same region (so critters and such that would see each other in the wild).
-Play natural reef-sounds into the tank (I know this sounds weird, but it's an actual thing).
-Emulate weather changes and seasonal changes (this one is intense, and very, very few people would bother).
-Etc.