Hermit and Emerald caught eating SPS today...

donnievaz · Sep 17, 2016

I'm not a fan of crabs tonight. This morning I caught me emerald crab chowing on a Stylophora. It was before the lights came on so I thought "maybe he's just eating some micro algae or something". Came home tonight to find 50% of the stylo polyps gone. I start taking a closer look and there's more damage to other corals. So I catch the Emerald and banish him to the QT. Come back upstairs and notice that the one fairly large blue hermit (he's all blue and significantly larger that a regular blue leg) has been parked at the base of a digitata for at least an hour so I grab him and sure enough he's made a feast out of the base. I don't know if this just started or what but it just ended tonight...

Elementalj · Sep 17, 2016

Evict! Evict! Evict!

bios · Sep 17, 2016

If can help you my opinion is that are some problem in your tank corals start to die and they eat death parts of them
I will check for everything in the tank

Karmann · Sep 17, 2016

bios said:
If can help you my opinion is that are some problem in your tank corals start to die and they eat death parts of them
I will check for everything in the tank

That is typically what I noticed with my hermits, cleaning dead tissue but everything is possible.

Keepswiming · Sep 17, 2016

I have one mini colony that the base is not looking so hot. I always see my crabs grouped up ontop of the base. Idk if some pests are eating the base or if it is the hermits fault... All other corals look great and are growing.

Roboson · Sep 17, 2016

Crabs love dead tissue. Make sure there are no signs of problems or pests. Also make sure they're getting enough food, keeping a real clean tank leads to rogue crabs.

aaron23 · Sep 17, 2016

Feed a little more maybe they won't pick

donnievaz · Sep 20, 2016

They're still in QT, the dead/dying tissue theory is probably the most likely scenario although I don't know what would have caused it on these few select corals and not the rest. The only thing I changed was about a week before this started I bumped up my whites by 5% for about 4 hours during the peak lighting window. I guess that could have done it. I went ahead and raised the fixture about an inch to see if that helps. This hobby is enough to make you lose your mind. Just one glitch after another. I guess that's what keeps it exciting.