I think I’m making progress with Kyo, though not at much as I’d like.  I did the usual water change, with sponge rinsing as quickly as possible.  This time he did not hide under the ledge, but buried himself in his algae home. That’s progress. But though he came out and is swimming around quickly afterward, he was still sticking close to the rock and would not come up for the food pellets I put in. (His loss, Calypso and Cortez’s gain.) I’m hoping to eventually convince him that hands and fingers are Good. That whenever hands and fingers go into the tank food will be forthcoming. He’s still too edgy after a water change to accept food, though. Perhaps I need to let him get hungrier. He’s accepted food right after I’ve hand-fed Kalimba near him, but the water change is just too much disruption. Perhaps he’s freaked by the current being turned off while I clean the sponges, or the light being removed. (I can remove the top, reach in and feed Kalimba without removing the light, but I can’t remove the sponges and do a water change without taking everything off the top.)

I have made a change in feeding Elle (who is looking better daily, btw). I’d noticed that lately when I’ve smoked her that when the current was turned back on she’d startle and spit out a glob of something. Not mucus, solid matter, like maybe a conglomeration of the microvert that had accumulated? I dunno, but she hasn’t in the past startled so much with the turning on of the pumps, nor ejected anything after being smoked, so what I’ve started doing is just putting microvert into the tank, not really measuring it, using a bit more than normal, leaving the pumps on. Though this is wasteful, it will make the nutrient more diluted than my usual dilution and her feeding and reactions more normal, so hopefully she’s getting more of it than lately when I’ve been “smoking” her. I think I’ll eventually be able to return to that technique—afterall it’s worked for a very long time—but for right now I’m working around her startle reflex.

Kalimba is getting bolder about going out and retrieving pellets that Kyo misses, but she’s so skittish (one step forward, two steps back) that the faster moving bristleworms and hermit crabs usually get the snack. Yesterday she scared away a bristleworm, but then got spooked herself by being so exposed, that she retreated without the food pellet when she was just a whisker from it! Then she got into a race with Calypso for a pellet. She saw where it landed went through the back entrance to the cave to come up near it, but because she then kept going back and forth at the cave entrance, Calypso was able to make a course change and beat her to it by just a fraction of a second. I mean they were both right there, both scrabbling for it and he won. She retreated into the cave and I generously dropped 3 small pellets of “the good stuff” (Kyo’s food, not the usual she eats) into the cave and watched her snarf them up.

Kalimba hasn’t been fed today. She’d come out late when I’ve dropped pellets in for Kyo.  The hermits are eating well, though. Kyo is thrashing around in the Neomeris. When I’m sure that he’s over his “thing” with the water change I’ll try to get some food directly into Kalimba’s little “hands”.