Hermit eating chunks of base of leather coral, while leather coral base is shrinking, but polyps extended and head looks healthy.

ktw

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Kinda fit it into the title. Walked in late last night and watched my scarlet crab eating a nice size chunk of the base of my leather coral, i watched him for a couple minutes until I was positive and then got him off, as i did i saw a nice little chunk of the corals base missing. I cannot find anything online that states red hermit crabs would eat corals unless they are decaying. So does this mean my leather coral might be decaying? If so, why do the polyps and head of the coral look so healthy? He has been in there a couple of months now and was growing a good amount, the past couple week or two the base has not been as big as it was, and slightly noticeable streaks down its base.

Sequence of events: Was battling dinos for about a month, (came in on a snail and was overskimming with an oversized skimmer) phos was .01 and nitrate was barely 1, started over feeding and turned off skimmer, I let nutrients climb back up a little and then with manual removal, and while adding brightwell bacteria, handled that fairly quickly, (lost some snails and crabs to them however as they pretty much blanketed everything) Right as it was clearing up, my lfs finished qt'ing the tang I had been waiting on and I added that tang Oct 31, Skimmer was still turned off, as I did a water change, and ammonia hit .02 after adding the tang. It stayed right at .02 for a couple days, with water changes and starting to skim for 12 hours a day, added 2 doses of Brightwell bacteria over 2 days. A couple days later it was back to 0, while all other parameters are back to steady.

Could it have simply been the stress of the parameters losing stability? Odd because all other softies, LPS, and SPS corals never had an issue through out any of this other than when they got covered in dinos, but just blew them off and they were fine.

Parameters:
Alk: 8.4 (dosed from 8.2 to back to 8.4 over 2 days this past week)
Nitrate: 2-5 ppm
Phos: .03
Salinity: 1.025
Calcium: 420
Mag: 1350 ish?
PH: 8.2
Temp: 78
 

Mr. Mojo Rising

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all that writing but no pics? Its very hard to imagine what someone else is seeing, please attach some pics in white light if you can.

Crabs definately eat corals 100%, I've seen them myself many times, I don't keep crabs in my coral tanks anymore.

Besides that, your nitrate and phosphate are kind of lower than leather corals like
 
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ktw

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all that writing but no pics? Its very hard to imagine what someone else is seeing, please attach some pics in white light if you can.

Crabs definately eat corals 100%, I've seen them myself many times, I don't keep crabs in my coral tanks anymore.

Besides that, your nitrate and phosphate are kind of lower than leather corals like
hahah fair enough, I posted this at work and after I posted it realized pictures would help. Will post some when I get home.

Please Correct me if i’m wrong, want to be corrected if I have mis-information, but thought for leathers nitrate and phos are best under 10 and .1 respectively? I only ask because that’s what seems most agreed upon online, (which i know doesn’t always mean it’s right), which my usual parameters are 2-5 (once it reaches 5 PPM i’ll do a small water change of 5-7 gallons in my 75 gallon) and .03, i’ve kept that pretty steady as can be for months since adding SPS corals, at least before my tank pretty much crashed while out of town about 6 weeks ago, that’s when the dino’s came.

Thinking about heading in the no crab direction, crabs at this point they have just added another worry.
 

exnisstech

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Please Correct me if i’m wrong, want to be corrected if I have mis-information, but thought for leathers nitrate and phos are best under 10 and .1 respectively?

Not correcting you because every tank is different but the tank all my softies are in runs nitrates 15-20 and phosphate 0.3ish. P has been as high as 0.6 but nothing seems to mind.
 
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ktw

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Not correcting you because every tank is different but the tank all my softies are in runs nitrates 15-20 and phosphate 0.3ish. P has been as high as 0.6 but nothing seems to mind.
Sweet, okay. Its been working with my tank for many months now, my first reef tank so my definition of "working" could be so different than actually thriving and growing as much as possible. I have seen pretty solid growth from everything (been a little less than a year but as much as one could see over that time and months following as I added more). Only reason nitrates are as low as 2-5 or 2-8ish are because the SPS corals. Phos will go back and forth between .2 and .3 since but I never get anything other than those 2 readings on my hanna tester.

Hopefully it was just a rouge crab that I can fix by getting them out.
 

exnisstech

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Only reason nitrates are as low as 2-5 or 2-8ish are because the SPS corals.

Ya I keep lower nutrients in my other tanks that have a lot of sps frags growing out. I don't really target higher nutrients where my leathers are. It's just kind of where the tank has settled in at after 8 years and I try to keep things as simple as I can so I just keep an eye on it. I'll toss a few spoons of gfo in if phos gets too high.

I'm not a big fan of hermit crabs. All mine ever seem to do is fight each other and kill snails but I've not had them eat coral yet (fingers crossed)
 

hexcolor reef

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Ya I keep lower nutrients in my other tanks that have a lot of sps frags growing out. I don't really target higher nutrients where my leathers are. It's just kind of where the tank has settled in at after 8 years and I try to keep things as simple as I can so I just keep an eye on it. I'll toss a few spoons of gfo in if phos gets too high.

I'm not a big fan of hermit crabs. All mine ever seem to do is fight each other and kill snails but I've not had them eat coral yet (fingers crossed)
I love hermit crabs, I have a leather never noticed them eating at it. They go after uneaten food and algae. I keep a ton in my tanks no snails
 
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ktw

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I love hermit crabs, I have a leather never noticed them eating at it. They go after uneaten food and algae. I keep a ton in my tanks no snails
yeah i’ve actually never had them go after snails other than one blue legged crab that I got out quick. Mine were model citizens until this happened
 
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ktw

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Ya I keep lower nutrients in my other tanks that have a lot of sps frags growing out. I don't really target higher nutrients where my leathers are. It's just kind of where the tank has settled in at after 8 years and I try to keep things as simple as I can so I just keep an eye on it. I'll toss a few spoons of gfo in if phos gets too high.

I'm not a big fan of hermit crabs. All mine ever seem to do is fight each other and kill snails but I've not had them eat coral yet (fingers crossed)
hahaha knock on wood,
and Fair enough, I got my fingers crossed in hoping it is just the crabs hahaha
 

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