What ate my Xenia???

[MarkO1]

Last night I added 4 frags of varying types of xenia to my 75 gal. This morning one of the frags was cleaned completely. The others are fine.
My inhabitants are:
yellow tail damsel,
4" purple tang,
3" flame angel,
4 peppermint shrimp,
1 Scarlet (red) shrimp,
50-75 small blue legged hermits,
75 +/- turbo snails,
2 serpent stars,
2 sea cucumbers,
one Atlantic anemonie,

Thanks in advance!

Also, do shrimp molt?

 

[playnhooky]

MarkO,
My tellow tail damsel did the same thing to all my xenia and killed it all off.It took me a couple of hours spying on the tank but i finally saw him do it.Small world im from lowell,Lived there for 14 years off walker street.

peace out...........Steve

 

[tazdevil]

marko-have not had any exp. keeping soft corals, but here's the list (in order to suspect) that could've done this
1- Flame Angel (most likely)
2- peppermint shrimp if no other or too much competition for food, and the hermits if there was any sign of degradation/rotting-they'll go after it immediately.

The flame is most likely suspect (imo) due to the fact that they prey on corals on reefs.

Yes all shrimps molt-that's how they grow and replace any lost pinchers etc. from fighting.

 

[DEADFISH1]

I had 2 small stalks of Red Sea Xenia in my 7 gal., I have no fish, all I have is 5 or 6 snails and that is it other than the live rock and some mushrooms and such.
one of the Xenia's stalks had a complete melt down, it wilted for about a week and then it just fell apart into pieces, the other one is doing just fine, no problems, is that strange or what?

 

[Anonymous]

Flame angels are not coral predators, that is a really bad unsubstantiated myth. Most centropyge angels have a tendancy to pick at LPS and SPS coral and clams, but most of the times this is a case by case basis. I would have no qualms about putting a flame in any tank other than they tend to have a poor survivability rate due to unknown shipping stresses.

Xenia often crashes for no known reason. IIRC Borneman speculates it may be a natural life span as similar action has been seen in the wild.

 

[MarkO1]

Hey guys, thanks for the quick replies.
playnhookey, U-Lowell grad?
I suspect it's the Angel. These are my first soft corals and he's new also. I know it happened last night in the dark. So whomever it is, they have an evening appetite.

 

[tazdevil]

Mick I have one question-why do all the online stores for livestock put the "larger" dwarf/centropyge species in they're do not keep in reef tanks lists? Is it just because of theyre tendacy to pick on sps/lps corals?
I would like to put one in my 75 gallon reef but have not because of these dire warnings.
Also-does anyone know if multicolor or nahackyi dwarfs are easy to keep??

anyone know if petwarehouse.com is good supplier or not??

 

[davelin315]

I would say that all of them except for the 75 +/- turbo snails, 2 serpent stars, 2 sea cucumbers, and the Atlantic anemone are suspect from having seen various inhabitants in my tank picking at my xenia. The only time they completely disappeared though, was when an urchin mowed them down in my tank.

Shrimp do molt, by the way.

 

[MarkO1]

Oh sh!#, I forgot about that little guy!!!Yesterday, I found a small 1/2" diameter black sea urchin in the tank. I thought he was harmless, but probably not, huh?
Into the sump he goes.

 

[scooterr]

Might be the tang. My powder brown eats xenia like it's macroalgea. I'd leave the urchin in the sump till you can prove it's anyone else.