unknown predator

The Fragmaster · Oct 29, 2006

"They are calcarinid foraminiferans, very common on real reefs and not uncommon in artificial ones.

The would and could NOT eat zoanthids. They would be able to eat bacteria and very small particulate material. If they were found where zoanthids died, those animals died from some other cause and these ate the leavings...

Cheers, Ron
See my blog at: http://blog.ronshimek.com/".

Well Eric didnt know but his friend Ron did LOL!!

jessiesgrrl · Oct 29, 2006

He didn't happen to mention if any sort of dip would work to get them before being added to QT, did he? Like as a new buy coming in?

Laurie

czieler · Oct 29, 2006

Hmm..if they don't eat them..then maybe they are just irritating them..because none of the ones that have them on there are opening...

czieler · Oct 29, 2006

reef gardner...I posted that as well..figured if I posted it in both places someone might know what they are

Azurel · Oct 29, 2006

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/foram/foramintro.html

Kinda explains them a little bit....

revhtree · Oct 29, 2006

Wow cool! I guess they do irritate the heck out of them then, cause the ones I had would not open with them attached.

The Fragmaster · Oct 30, 2006

There are 300 plus species of them.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-2803(2000)46<105:BOS"F>2.0.CO;2-5&size=LARGE

This is all I can find on them right now but I will dig a little more tonight, and see if I can find any data specifcly related to this species.

organism · Nov 22, 2006

to update this thread, I saw some colonies coming in lately that are INFESTED with these things, they embed one of their arms into the zoos, possibly while moving around, and have to be pried off, they won't shake free. while they may not eat zoos, which until reading the above Shimek quote I found doubtful since I've had colonies with these things on them disappear in a matter of days, they certainly irritate the zoos, they seem to breed quickly in captivity (again, anecdotal), and the irritated zoos are much more likely to develop a fungus on them from stress. They may not eat zoos, but I'd certainly classify them as a pest to be wary for, also let's keep in mind that these things are coming in LOADED on some zoo colonies, but on no other corals picked in the same areas, and believe me I've looked, isn't there a chance that they'd be on other corals if they were widespread along the reef? Why would there be 100+ of these on zoo colonies, but none on anything else, unless they specifically eat either zoos or something that the zoos produce? Just my 2 cents...

Who Dah? · Nov 22, 2006

hey organism: think you could get a close-up shot of them w/ their arms embedded into a polyp? i'd love to put them up as (at least) irritator's on ZoaID!

organism · Nov 22, 2006

well, one supplier was selling the rocks infested with these super cheap, I guess they know something we don't, ie, they don't make it a week in their systems either. I'll pick up a colony next time and get some pics before experimenting with removal, I just didn't feel like dealing with them anymore after tossing out all of the colonies that had them. Funny thing is, I dealt with these back in June, and figured either everyone else knew about them or... dunno, guess I should've taken some pics back then...

but anyways, since there's rocks of these being sold super cheap on nice color colonies, they'll doubtless be showing up at a store near you, most of the stores I've seen around here avoid them like the plague, they actually warned me back in June about them, but I had to learn the stubborn way

Who Dah? · Nov 22, 2006

cool - thx organism!!

and ty too czieler! i've currently got them listed as an irritater w/ a possibly upgrade to predator, heh!

http://www.zoaid.com/index.php?module=Gallery2&g2_itemId=3332

organism · Nov 27, 2006

ok, picked a rock up today that has them all over, now to be honest it's the same rock that I passed up last week, so it's been there for a week and hasn't lost any polyps, on the other hand the polyps have remained half closed as far as I could tell for the entire week, here's some pics, in some you can see that they're really dug into those polyps. also, there are spots on this same rock that have no zoanthids, those spots also have none of these little critters, they're only attached to the zoos on the rock

a hard shaking under a freshwater lugol's dip didn't remove a single one, they had to be removed manually, I put the rock into qt to see if maybe the dip would kill them or if they'd continue on