What ate my zoos?

[builderguy]

okay...here's the deal.

I epoxied a rock containing 30 - 40 bright orange zoanthids to a piece of my live rock on Saturday. All looked well through the weekend and last night when I got home from work.

This morning the rock was no longer attached (could have fallen but may have been ripped off) to the live rock. It was lying face down in the sand.

When I turned it over almost all but a few of the zoanthids were gone!

What could have eaten that many in one night?

I have a 2.5 to 3" unidentifiable crab in the tank that I found when I broke everything down...I left him in and now I'm wondering if it was him. I looked for nudi's and sundial snails and couldn't find anything.

Any ideas? I'll have to take all the rock out to find the little b*stard.

 

[sabodish]

do you remember what hte crab looked like? i had a gray/white marbled looking crab that ate about 2000 zoanthids and 15 rics before i caught him. he was about 2-3" in body diameter when i took him out. if you have soemthign that large, he could easily eat a rock of polyps in a night.

 

[alde]

If you find out please let me know so I can get one. They are taking over my tank.

 

[builderguy]

He did have some marbling at the edges, but was mostly solid grey/brown...unless he was just dirty

 

[Aquabucket]

Sounds like a Calico crab. One of the worst for doing damage to corals.

Do a search on google for some pics.

 

[builderguy]

That's the right shape...looks like it could be him if I cleaned his shell. So they eat zoas?

 

[Aquabucket]

Yep

Here is the latin name: Hepatus epheliticus

 

[builderguy]

Crap...I'm going to have to take all the rock out of my aquarium to catch him!

 

[Aquabucket]

You could always spear it with a piece of shrimp stuck on the end.

They will attack and eat fish too so no-one will want one in their tanks.

The crab can then be fed to your fish.