Something is destroying my finger leathers...

[Stoll]

This is sort of old news but please bear with me. A while back I had a thriving Spaghetti Leather and what I will call a Blue Finger Leather that was also doing well. I started to notice that every couple days a different piece of the Blue was gone. It looked like each piece had been sheared off. I never saw it happen, and eventually the blue was down to a tiny stub, which eventually disappeared as well.

After that everything seemed fine for a while, then seemingly overnight my thriving Spaghetti Leather was sheared off about a cm above the rock and disappeared as well. We later found a chunk of it in a crevice in different rock, but it eventually disappeared as well. On a brighter note the stub of the spaghetti is regrowing, and the pink finger leather I have hasn't been touched.

I have no idea why this happened, or what could have done it. I didn't put anything in my tank that eats soft corals. I did find the corpse of what looked like an emerald style of crab the other day that I never introduced into the tank. Both of my emeralds are still alive, so this is a completely different crab that came into the system hidden somewhere. Could the crab have been eating my corals? I'd hate to keep getting soft corals only to have something systematically destroy them...

[amcarrig]

Originally Posted by Stoll

Could the crab have been eating my corals? I'd hate to keep getting soft corals only to have something systematically destroy them...

Easy answer....yes. There are some crabs that hitchchike in on live rock that are coral eaters. From the sound of it, something is chopping up your leathers because when these corals die, they tend to rot and dissolve away over a period of time. They don't disappear piece by piece. I would try to trap and remove that crab ASAP.

[Stoll]

Well, it wasn't that crab that I found dead the other day unless I have multiples of them. Last night something went and chewed my regrowing spaghetti right down to the rock, just a little bit of it left clinging to the rock...

Anyone think of anything else that thinks fingers leathers are tasty?

[Jason McKenzie]

I had a tang that would eat my leathers. But it would do it as soon as I put it in the tank.

There is also a Nudi that eats leathers. You would think if it was a crab there would be scraps floating around?

[Covey]

The corpse might have been a molt. My big male emerald crab picks chunks out of my toadstool. It leaves the Sinularia and devils hand leathers alone.