Tiger cowry damage to anemone? What would it look like?

[delphinus]

I was noticing some tissue damage to my S. gigantea this week (had it approx 5 years so far).

I was trying to speculate what the cause could be when it dawned on me that the tank has a tiger cowry in it. I never see the thing but I think he's still in there.

Did some reading and sure enough there are claims that these can be predatory towards anemones and other softies. So for now I will assume he is "public enemy #1" and next time I see him I will sump him; but I'm curious, has anyone seen cowry damage to an anemone? What would it look like?

What I see is one side of the anemone is pulled in (not unlike a pinched mantle on a clam), and there was slime around the affected area. It's what I would speculate the reaction would be if the anemone had had a bite taken out of it at that spot.

 

[marc price]

sounds like the perpetrator left some evidence at the scene of the crime. if you haven't noticed tiger cowries secrete copious trails of slime. tiger cowries are omnivorous. doesn't surprise me.
i had a humpback cowrie for 13years which didn't bother S. haddoni, H. crispa or E. quadricolor. it's still alive after 15years only now across the street in a FOWLR aquarium which has a algae problem
i still keep money cowries, token cowries and snakehead cowries.

 

[delphinus]

Interesting. I've never noticed a slime trail.

To be honest though I'm not sure it's even a tiger cowry, I'm just guessing. It's a brownish spotted cowry about 2" in size. I gave the thing a home when a fellow reefer shut his tank down.

 

[traveller7]

IME, cowrie damage appears as if portions of the anemone have been pinched off. The anemone will then pull these pieces back inward as it retracts from the offending predator.

Damage is done after lights out.

I had one decide it liked the taste of S. haddoni after living with it for quite awhile. If it was my gigantea, the cowrie would be taken out regardless.

Best of luck.

 

[delphinus]

Interesting. I've never noticed a slime trail.

To be honest though I'm not sure it's even a tiger cowry, I'm just guessing. It's a brownish spotted cowry about 2" in size. I gave the thing a home when a fellow reefer shut his tank down a couple years ago. He never asked for it back when he started back up. :lol:

 

[marc price]

2" is small for a tiger cowrie, not much slime would be noticed at that size. they can have a white or brown base color/dk. br. spots this site will help you i.d. Cypraea tigris :
www.oceanlight.com/cypraea.html

 

[delphinus]

Of course now I can't find it. But I'll keep trying.

But I'm thinking this is a slam dunk ID on the problem. It occurs to me that when I lost my brown carpet a few months ago (which was at the 5 year mark too), it was the same pattern of what looked like burnt tentacles on one side and the oral disk folded in. I am kicking myself for not putting two and two together sooner. If I lose THIS one I'll never forgive myself.

I'll see if I can post a photo of the damage. It's looking better today than it was yesterday but there's still clearly a distressed part of the oral disk.

 

[marc price]

they're nocturnal, look for it using a flashlight the middle of the night (if you can). that was how i caught the Cypraea arabica cowrie munching on Pocillapora.

 

[delphinus]

I found him, took me a little while of checking all the caves. I like to believe in innocence until proven guilty, but part of the smoking gun here is he was in a crevasse right underneath the injury on the carpet.

I hope that I've correctly ID'd the cause of the injury and hope that by sumping the cowry that the carpet recovers.

Here are some pictures. Sorry for the picture quality, I always have trouble getting the items in focus. Looks in focus on the viewfinder, then when I upload to my laptop I'm like .. argh, discard them all and start over..

Here's a picture of the tissue damage .. you can't see it in the photo but the "edge" of the oral disk looks ripped.

Here is the cowry.

 

[adtravels]

I had one severely munch my sps. I posted it on the sps forum
I have also had alk burn look like that on a haddoni, any chance of something caustic landing on that area of the nem?

 

[delphinus]

Hmmm. Interesting. Not something I can rule out entirely in this case as what I've been doing to dose for Alk and Ca is by adding into the overflow which is right behind. Although I try to be careful, it's not impossible that I spilled something. To be safe I'll stop adding into the overflow and switch to the sump. Thanks for the suggestion.

It wouldn't explain the same injuries on my other carpet which I did lose a few months ago though, since at that time the tank was in a different spot, and had a different sump, and I was dosing into the sump not the tank itself. Unfortunately what happened with that guy was that he subsequently stopped eating and starting diminishing in size. I was not able to get him to restart eating. So there is enough cause for concern here, I think, for me to try to get to the bottom of this. It seems that even with established and seemingly hardy and healthy specimens of this species, if they stop eating it's bad news.

 

[marc price]

that's a Cypraea arabica cowrie. i had several of them together with S. haddoni carpets for a few years without any problems, also with a H. crispa for a year and a bta before i caught one feeding on Pocillapora. you won't know for sure until caught in the act but i'd remove it.

 

[delphinus]

Thanks for the ID. After checking out that site you linked to that was my guess, so thanks for the confirmation.

It is a pretty little thing. Don't want to condemn it needlessly but I am rather shell shocked this week. This week I also lost a BTA (powerhead), it was the last clone I kept for myself after giving away many clonal siblings over the years. I had the BTA strain for 10 years now so I'm still reeling a little over the loss and then finding the injury on the carpet is really kinda stressing me out.