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
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
