Mushroom and Corraline eater

[jlehigh]

Hey All,

About 2 weeks ago Corraline started getting picked off the rocks in spots.. Now those spots are adding up and whoever is eating it is ticking me off!

To make things worse last night something munched on my only Blue Ricordia mushroom..

Now comes the sad part! I have next to nothing in my tank!!! A cleanup crew of blue leg hermits and vrious snails, 2 Serpant Stars, 2 Brittle stars, a couple emerald crabs, 3 pepermint shrimp, and a spidercrab.

Any ideas who the culprit/culprits may be? I think one of the serpants are guilty for the mushroom munching..

 

[Nautilus]

The emerald crabs killed a group of my mushrooms.
I have alot of blue legs and peppermint shrimp and they have not harmed anything.

 

[j.stagner]

I have seen my emeralds pick chunks of corraline off of my rocks, though they didn't seem to actually eat it. They only seem to pick it off where they can get a good grip. Last night one of the darn things picked up my hydnophora and tossed if off the rock it was on. It landed right on one of my favorite colonies of blue mushrooms, just barely missing my large leather and squamosa.

The mushrooms are really suffering today. It must have been on top of them for about 10 minutes before I could get it off. Now the hydno is securely glued to its rock!

These guys are very strong, I've seen them pick up rocks that are four times their size! My Sally Lightfoot, which is twice the size of my largest emerald, runs away from the emerald. The emerald will chase it for a couple of inches and give up.

Overall they haven't done much damage, so I'll leave them in. For now. FWIW, I've had like 5 others who've never done any of this kind of stuff.

 

[jlehigh]

hmm I've seen an emerald hang out under the cover of the mushroom but never witnessed any damaging acts.. So you think the starfish may be innocent and the Emerald crabs can be trouble...

Anyone else have a mushroom tragedy occur last night like j.stagner and I? Maybe it's an annual Oceanic event where a mushroom must be sacrificed

 

[j.stagner]

Well, depends on the starfish. I used to have one that was green, bought it real small. I gave it to the LFS when it was around 5" tip to tip. The thing is now 18" tip-to-tip, and eats everything it can catch or crawl over.

I've never had any other brittle or serpent eat anything I cared about, to my knowledge.

 

[jmaxwell]

I have never seen my emerald crab do any significant damage, however I have seen brittle/serpent stars eat corals in my tank and I have also seen a cleaner shrimp pick at my corals. I think one of the problems is that if these critters don't get enough to eat from feeding the tank they will start to pick at or eat certain corals.

Jim

 

[G~]

there is also the big unknown. what is in the LR! you may need to do some night time watching. there are some pretty sneaky worms out there that could be eating the shrooms. as for the coraline, i would think a small urchin could be hiding somewhere.

my .02

G~