Yellow tang or clownfish eating my hammerhead coral?

[yomibro]

I noticed that my hammerhead coral has been chewed up (2 heads), does anyone now if either the YT or CF nip the corals?

 

[frank180reef]

neither are known too

do you have a picture?

 

[yomibro]

Here is the picture, not great but it's pretty much been nip down to the stem.

 

[dz6t]

Unlikely those fish will eat hammer coral. How long do you have the hammer?

 

[yomibro]

Have had the hammer for around two months, noticed that the heads were nipped overnight.

 

[dz6t]

what other fish do you have besides the tang and clown?

 

[sumant19]

Could it be shrimps? I have heard that peppermints sometimes nip on lps corals

 

[JayM]

could be a shrimp or crab. unlikely to be a tang or clown

 

[danzig]

I had 2 peppermint shrimp, and added a hammer coral. Not even 2 minutes after my gf was like "those shrimps are eating your new coral" i put it off and didnt really take here seriously.. then i looked and was like WTF they were tearing it to pieces and eating it so fast. Needless to say i listen to her a little more now (lol) and sold the shrimps.

 

[yomibro]

No other fish aside from the YT and pair of clowns. I do have two peppermint shrimps, they never gave me any trouble in the two months the hammer has been in the tank. Feed the fish and shrimps a combination of seaweed/pellets twice a day, should I increase that to three times a day instead? I should add one of the shrimps had eggs a little while back, I'll assume they have hatched since the female doesn't carry the eggs anymore but I have to say I have not seen any baby shrimps anywhere. Not sure if the YT/clown ate them or they are just all hiding somewhere underneath a rock and come out to feed at night when the lights are out.

 

[frank180reef]

even feeding twice a day is a lot for your bioload..................so I would say no dont increase feeding

 

[sumant19]

yes.. twice a day can be too be much of a bio load. I feed my fish pellet food once in two days and on saturday give them special treat of frozen mysis/live brine shrimps.

As far as ornamental shrimps laying eggs; my cleaner shrimps do it all the time but from what I have observed and read chances are extremely rare that those eggs will hatch and you will get baby shrimps in your aquarium.

And shrimps can be nasty. My shrimps so far have not eaten any corals but quite a few times i have seen them putting their hands in duncan coral's mouth and literraly pulling out the food from there.

I would say keep an eye on peppermints especially when lighs are out and see if they are the culprit. All the best!

 

[frank180reef]

my guess is for whatever reason the heads died (low alk or something) and the shrimp were just cleaning up?

 

[yomibro]

There are (were) six heads, only two of them died though. I also have a torch, duncan, candy cane, kenya tree, clam, red wells and mushrooms in the tank and they all seem to be doing fine. I have the hammer nursing in a friends tank right now so at least that solves my problem in the short term, have to figure out who or what is the culprit before I decide to bring it back.

 

[yomibro]

There was some algae growing on the hammer coral heads, could that be a reason the fish might nip on them?

 

[afrankiewicz12]

i think thats probably the clown trying to host the hammer causing it to become very irritated.

 

[yomibro]

Have a BTA in the tank for the clowns, unfortunately it decided to hide behind the rocks out of view. I fished out the peppermint shrimps today so let's see how this goes.

 

[danzig]

Have a BTA in the tank for the clowns, unfortunately it decided to hide behind the rocks out of view. I fished out the peppermint shrimps today so let's see how this goes.

im pretty confident they were the problem, at least they were for me. Stick them in your fuge for awhile and just keep them fed, if the hammer is fine then i think your safe to say they were the culprits