Any idea what is snacking on my hammer?

[Shablin]

Anybody have an idea what could be doing this to my hammer coral? It seems more interested in the skeleton than the flesh. Would a bristle worm do this??? My tank is 215g without any coral crunching fish (ie. tangs, clowns, wrasse, gobies, etc.), and no unusual inverts (that I know of). The only other coral that was damaged over the past several months was my elegence which is still rebounding. Almost all of its tentacles disappeared and a small part of the skeleton. It is only about 6 inches away from the hammer. There are several other stoney coral frams near the hammer and a KoKo worm which has not been touched. If you look at the photo, you can see bite/mouth marks below the head.

 

[davewbush]

What kind of wrasse do you have, and tang?

 

[Shablin]

yellow tang, canary wrasse; powder blue tang just expired...

 

[davewbush]

I would lean toward the yellow wrasse. I don't think it could be a bristle worm. The yellow wrasse is usally listed as caution for reefs because they have beenknown to eat feather dusters. Some times the fish don't read what we read and eat othre things. I have this problem with bleenies eating some of my porcilapora's before.

 

[Shablin]

this wrasse is pretty small - about 1.5 inches; its mouth is pretty small- i dont think it could break the skeleton like this; it has enough trouble trying to eat mysis!

 

[Shablin]

Ive had a couple more stalks completely dissappear from the top down through the skeleton since posting this. Does any body have an idea what would do this? should i place a bristleworm trap? (i guess i have nothing to lose) Ive not seen anything the few times at night that ive looked.

 

[convict3]

do u have a emerald crab i had one walk around the tank with my new hammer feg in one claw and picking it apart with the other and ran in the rock with the *** before i could get him. the next day i took him to visit a mantis shrimp.

 

[Shablin]

i have a couple emerald crabs in my tank, but this damage seems too much in a short period for those guys. Whatever this is literally chewed the skeleton not just the heads. If you look at the pick you can get an idea of the bite size. The pic is maybe twice the actual size.

 

[Emory Speight]

The only experience I have had with something like that was caused by pencil urchins.

 

[rendogg]

Could be a number of things...urchin,predatory crab, large worm, etc. Do a late night vigil and try and catch this thing red-handed. I think that's the only way you'll find out for sure...unless you have an urchin(long spine, pencil).

 

[Shablin]

only urchin is a spiny urchin (diadema); ive never encountered any problem worms, would they do this?

 

[rendogg]

Oh yeah, culprit found, pretty much guaranteed! They seem to be awesome algae eaters when they're young and turn out to be indiscriminate omnivores that eat whatever is in their paths.

 

[Shablin]

The bite marks probably would match this urchins beak, and I guess if he was scraping algae of rocks it wouldnt be difficult to imagine it scraping the outer skeleton.

However, this long spine urchin seems to big to fit between the stalks and do the damage in the other areas that have been attacked, which makes me think worm or something along those lines. The space between all of these heads is about 1 to 1.5 inches

 

[fishndive]

My peppermint are chewing on mine, they're bout to go bye bye

 

[Shablin]

as far as i am aware, peppermints might nip at the flesh, but not the skeleton; I found an untouched head seperated from the stalk and I dont see any other corals or coraline algae damage yet.....

 

[Shablin]

I did catch this little guy (?limpet?) on the hammer last night; I know some of these have been reported to be destructive. I think this guy may be a little small to do this much damage.

 

[ReefLuvR]

Did you ever figure it out? I'm having trouble with someone eating the edges of my corals. Candy Canes and Zoanthids. I have a Longspine Urchin who is huge, so I'm beginning to thing he may be the culprit. Bummer since I just "adopted" him from a friend who didn't want one that huge anymore.

 

[Anemonebuff]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14575478#post14575478 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shablin
I did catch this little guy (?limpet?) on the hammer last night; I know some of these have been reported to be destructive. I think this guy may be a little small to do this much damage.

He is a stomatella, not a limpet, he is an algae eater and not the cause. I would guess the urchin. They eat coralline algae. If there was coralline on the stalks it would strip it along with some of the skeleton. The skeleton of a hammer is somewhat hollow, an urchin could easily have done that with it's beak.

 

[Anemonebuff]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14566879#post14566879 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shablin
The bite marks probably would match this urchins beak, and I guess if he was scraping algae of rocks it wouldnt be difficult to imagine it scraping the outer skeleton.

However, this long spine urchin seems to big to fit between the stalks and do the damage in the other areas that have been attacked, which makes me think worm or something along those lines. The space between all of these heads is about 1 to 1.5 inches

I would frag those heads and crazy glue them to bigger rocks.

 

[back at it]

I've had the same thing happen to my torch coral. I was able to repair the stalk with underwater epoxy. As for the culprit, I'm fairly certain that it was my cleaner shrimp. At night they were the only one on the coral. I'm keping an eye on those shrimps. If it starts again, out they will go.