Did my hermits eat my fungia?

[Randrew215]

Picked up a beautiful orange/yellow plate coral at ARC a couple of weeks ago. It's almost totally dead. I was really surprised because not only have I not lost a coral in ~6 months (I'm about 2 years deep, so that's good for me), but I have another plate coral that is thriving in similar flow and lighting. Tonight I see a couple of hermits picking at the remaining tissue on the skeleton. Are they like maggots eating necrotic tissue, or could they be eating healthy tissue? They are blue-legged hermits. It's a frustrating loss.

As far as parameters, phosphate is zero, nitrates are >5, mag is 1380, calcium is 420, kh is 10.9. Sg is 1.026, though I did bring it up gradually from 1.024 over the last two weeks (uncalibrated refractometer)

I'm leaving the skeleton in the tank in the off chance that it will regrow or bud when I can correct whatever caused it to recede in the first place.
-Andy

 

[magdelan]

To the best of my knowledge, Blue legs will only go after already dead tissue. I don't believe that they would mow a healthy coral down. How many hermits are in there?

I suppose it's also possible that the fungia came into your tank with an infection that was too small to notice. The hermits, however, did notice it and began to "clean up the area" for you. The recession of the tissue from th infection was now compounded by the irritation of the hermits on it and continued to receed. This was followed by more cleaning of the area from the hermits and other sand dwelling creatures which eventually resulted in total tissue loss.

Who knows, it's hard to say.

 

[oneradtek202]

i love eating mushrooms haha


no clue, i know emeralds like to destroy things