when good reef critters go bad

[hobogato]

ok, so ive read a few horror stories of "reef safe" critters turning to the dark side, and thought it would be interesting to hear some more stories

fish turn on another? or you turn on your coral or inverts?

corals attacking each other when it didnt seem possible?

i have a couple:

1. used to have a 7" green brittle star in my reef (when it was only 60 gallons - wow, that was a while back). anyway, i started to lose fish and coincidentally, the brittle star kept growing. tested the water, no visible parasites on the fish, but all of the fish i lost were fairly small and slept very close to the sand in the rocks at night. last fish that disappeared was a beautifull austrailian tusk from aquarium sales that had been in the tank about 6 months and ate from my hands the day before he was gone. in the process of looking for him, noticed the brittle star in the fish's normal sleeping hole, and the rocks were shifted around. :unsure on closer inspection, lumpy - as the brittle star came to be called, had an austrailian tusk shaped and sized lump in his center region. :angry exit lumpy to the predator tank, where the triggers and eel took care of him ;)

2. more recently - 6" long scribble rabbitfish that we have had since it was about an inch and a half - with no incident - started eating christy's zoanthid garden. at first, he was picking on the rocks around some new frags that had just gone into the tank, so we both said "oh, how nice, he is cleaning those up for us" then, we noticed about 15 different colonies spread throughout the tank that seemed "sparse" and closed up :o :blink
sure enough, that PITA was munching on our zoas! the last straw was a colony of true blue with red skirts :cry three hours later, he was in the sump and i was rebuilding my rockwork :wacko he did get to go to a nice new home tho - thanks bobby - and good riddance to mr. nibbles!

[Ross]

People come into Fin-Addict all the time saying their cleaner shrimp ate their fish :roll . They dont realize the fish was already dead and they won't beleive me when i tell them that cleaner shrimp won't kill and eat your fish.

[Instar]

Bicolored blenny that ate sps, esp. cats paw, eydouxi and bites clam mantles. Easy to catch with a hollow barnacle. Won't have another of those or yellow clown goby.

They look harmless enough, but, a male from a mated pair of yellow clown gobies kills areas of coral to nest in with his hormone slime and both male and female eat sps polyps.

Nassaius vibex snails: Fish food settles around a clam or another snail dies near the hinge of the clam and these little devils think they can get to it through the clam. Then they fall in while climbing on the shell, clam closes and opens when its dead. They seem to learn to kill clams this way and it seems as if it becomes a sport. No more Nassarius vibex for my tanks with clams. The other species of N. in the same tank don't to do this at all. Had them together for several months then lost 6 healthy beautiful blue teardrop clams to the same method within a couple days.

CBB with smaller clams on the sand bed. (Move the clam off the sand into the rocks, at least till the CBB is trained.)

(Large brittle stars are always noted predators in a reef, btw as are any species that grew larger than expected. One member has a sally light foot that is larger than my hand with fingers spread wide! He'll steal lunch for you; That thing is big enough to be lunch!)

[GaryP]

I personally think that brittle stars are just scavengers and get blamed for fish being lost in other ways. I have a huge green brittle in my 75 and I haven't lost a fish in there in years. of course he gets fed well too. He cleans up the leftover mussels that I feed my fish. I have to keep moving the mussel around so he doesn't get it before the fish are through with it.

[hobogato]

so what are you saying gary - i was killing my fish and the star was helping me out? :blink

i thought the same thing until the tusk - there were signs of a struggle! :o :wacko

[GaryP]

I simply offered one alternative suggestion. No two critters are ever alike and most of my fish are larger. I do have a small blenny in there that has survived for a year in the tank.

[hobogato]

just giving you a hard time gary - like i said, i thought the same thing for several missing fish. ;)

[Fin-Addict]

The other day a guy brought in a huge serpant star, and when we opended the bucket he threw up a clownfish.

[Thunderkat]

I have an algae blenny that loves mysis (what happened to algae) and flake food.

I also have a cleaner wrasse that loves to eat everything (flake food, mysis, clams, shrimp, or whatever else I put in the tank for the fish to eat with the exception of nori).

My clownfish have also hosted in a Tunze, that is very wierd to me anyways.

Good thing though that is as crazy as I have seen in my tank.

I did get a mantis shrimp hitchike into my tank when I was in Hawaii, it left my fish alone but all my inverts would disapper as fast as I added them to my tank (I did not add any corals to that tank). :lol It took the spiral drain when I found it.