Shrimp and BTA

[FishHick]

I recently purchased my first BTA. I have a cleaner shrimp and peppermint shrimp. They are all well fed, but they cant seem to leave my anemone alone. My cleaner harasses it during the day by constantly landing on it and picking at it, and I just came to to seem my peppermints picking at it with the lights off. Are they just cleaning it? T he BTA shrinks away from them. I am afraid they are going to harass it to death.

Also how long should I leave it covered after I feed it? I put a strawberry crate over it while I fed it a silverside today because my cleaner shrimp was trying to take it. After it had swallowed the silverside I took the crate off, and my shrimp landed on it and kept picking until it spit out the silverside. So I gave the silverside back to the nem and left the crate on it for a couple of hours. Now it appears it may have just spit some out because of peppermints. It has been about 6 hours since I fed it.

Thanks

[jwilliams0423]

I've read -- mostly from karensroseanemones.com, check it out -- that if you give your shrimp a little silverside before your BTA, that it will let it be.

Also, if it is spitting it out, the silverside may be too big. Try cutting into fourths.

But definitely check out karensroseanemones.com. There's some good stuff there.