Astrea snails eating live coral tissue

[ReefKeeperMN]

Hey, new reefer here. My Astrea snails are eating the body wall plump live over tissue (that extends out of the soft head and around the branch) of my torch and hammer corals. Isn't this harmful to the corals over time? I would assume peeling could result as a significant amount of this over/rim live tissue is being eaten back by the snails. What's been your experience with this problem??

 

[edsbeaker]

Probably eating algae off of it, not the coral.

 

[BryanM]

Agreed with the above.... they are herbivores, they shouldn't be eating flesh.

hermits will use those shells though, if you have hermits I'd make sure its really a snail on the torch/hammer.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

snails will regularly crawl on or around coral eating micro algae

 

[ReefKeeperMN]

There was an outward (about 4mm) white fluffy bulge around the rim of the coral head that I'm sure was overgrowth portion of live coral and is now indented inward to the point I can see much more of the hard stock/branch. I'm sure it wasn't micro algae as it was part of the consistent white color of live coral tissue all the way around?