What is eating my frogspawn??

[McCarrick]

Something keeps ripping heads off of my frogspawn. Its only this frog spawn. I have several torches and even other frogspawn and a large octospawn that is untouched. Any ideas on what is causing this? 4 heads gone so far in 2 months.

2 clowns
1 hippo tang
2 chromis
1 gramma
1 mandarin
1 watchman/pistol shrimp
Serpent star
Conch
Various snails and brittle stars

 

[JayM]

I’d suspect the tang first if it is truly a fish doing the damage. Are you sure it isn’t a pest of some sort?

 

[McCarrick]

I’d suspect the tang first if it is truly a fish doing the damage. Are you sure it isn’t a pest of some sort?

Im not 100% but its not a slow eating, its I wake up and the head is shredded. I was suspecting the tang but not sure why its been doing it. This is my first tang and it came with the tank that I bought

 

[BonnieB]

My guess is the tang. They are notorious for taking the heads off corals!

 

[McCarrick]

My guess is the tang. They are notorious for taking the heads off corals!

Anything I can do to dissuade him?

 

[BonnieB]

How are you feeding him?! Giving him nori to distract is what I’ve done in the past but the bottom line is you may not be able to stop it. If you want to find out the culprit, what I did was get a little camera (made for tank viewing) from Amazon and attached it to the tank and turned it on at night ( so I didn’t have to stay up all night!). That will tell you for sure who’s doing it and then you can decide what to do.

 

[McCarrick]

How are you feeding him?! Giving him nori to distract is what I’ve done in the past but the bottom line is you may not be able to stop it. If you want to find out the culprit, what I did was get a little camera (made for tank viewing) from Amazon and attached it to the tank and turned it on at night ( so I didn’t have to stay up all night!). That will tell you for sure who’s doing it and then you can decide what to do.

Thank you for the response! He was in there with all the same coral for years (as far as I know) so its interesting for sure. I feed nori pretty much every day. Ill make sure to keep an eye out and set my camera up! Thanks!

 

[Reefering1]

Make the rest of the coral retract and get pics of the stalks/fleshbands of the colony.

 

[BonnieB]

How are you feeding him?! Giving him nori to distract is what I’ve done in the past but the bottom line is you may not be able to stop it. If you want to find out the culprit, what I did was get a little camera (made for tank viewing) from Amazon and attached it to the tank and turned it on at night ( so I didn’t have to stay up all night!). That will tell you for sure who’s doing it and then you can decide what to do.

Thank you for the response! He was in there with all the same coral for years (as far as I know) so its interesting for sure. I feed nori pretty much every day. Ill make sure to keep an eye out and set my camera up! Thanks!

The other possibility is coral bailout. That would mean something specific to that coral has gone awry. Curious, besides missing heads, are you seeing any signs of anything like BJD? Or euphyllia eating flatworms?

 

[McCarrick]

 

[McCarrick]

Ive had flatworms in a tank before and managed to eradicate them, unless they appeared out of nowhere, i haven't added anything new. Its also not the only euphilia in the tank

 

[Macropharyngodon]

There was a thread here quite recently that discussed many anecdotes of blue tangs eating quite a bit of coral once they tried it. Generally as time passes in the tanks they try something, and if they like it... They will obliterate it. Maybe not him though.

 

[McCarrick]

I started almost overfeeding the tang and the frogspawn suddenly stopped disappearing. ALSO magically on the same day I threated to rehome him.... coincidece? I THINK NOT