Cleaner shrimp eating and killing corals!

Well neither shrimp, hermits or snails should eat corals. However out of the three it is most likely the hermits doing it.

Did you use live rock or dry base rock? Is it possible you have something else hiding in your rock that you are unaware of? Hitch hiker crab maybe?

 

I am with everyone else and would say you got either a hitchiker or a crab. I personaly have 3 cleaners and never had any problems with them.

 

Ok, I have a decorator crab, which is a filter feeder, a red hawk fish and sixline and about 60 lbs of lr. 29 gallon. See, the reason I thought it was the cleaner was because he put an interest in the yellow polyps and picked on them and then 2 days later they disappeared. the same thing happened to the hammer and candy cane. the only coral I couldn't connect him to was the zoos, which he stays away from. There definitely could be a hitcher because some of this is gulf rock but in the past few months I haven't seen or heard anything and this cleaner is an aggresive little sucker. I'm just going to have to wake up in the middle of the night and spy on things until I find out. thanks for all the help.

 

is your decorator crab covered? he could be picking at the corals for himself.

 

Oops. not a decorator crab, it's a filter feeding crab, i think it's called porcelain. I wanted a decorator but I heard he tore up your reef to put it on his back.

 

lol ok. I was about to say the decorator crab is most likely your problem. I am still curious if you have a hitch hiker crab doing this. I didn't notice my hitch hiker for like 4 months, just noticed missing green chromises.

 

very frustrating, i should have done a little more research on live rock but I went ahead with gulf because it's so loaded with nice stuff. Didn't realize I'd be getting bad stuff too. Already had to take out several bad anemones, aitapsia?

 

Actually.....I have a cleaner shrimp that is not eating my corals, but I have caught him going into the mouth of my corals and pulling food out of it! He sticks his little leg down the mouth and pull things out....I place krill on some of my LPS....... and I saw him yank a piece of krill out that a duncan had halfway down its mouth, and eat it! I was so shocked by this behavior! It wasnt like he broke it off...he pulled the whole thing out!

He even goes down their mouth to get smaller pieces of food....coral freenzy etc!

So now I give my cleaner whole piece of krill when I feed my corals!

 

This is what I was going to say... lol mine do that. I have to protect my non-photosynthetics when i feed >< ugh.

 

i dont think flame hawk fish are reef safe. not sure if they will nibble on coral but i have been told that they will attack shrimp and crabs when theyre bigger.