+FluxCapacitor Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 Hello everyone, My girlfriend's birthday was on the 14th of last month and I purchased her a 12G AquaExcel cube for her viewing enjoyment. We have 5 sexy shrimp and about 7 different kinds of corals in the tank now. Everything **seems to be ok with a few exceptions and notes: 1. Our emerald crab that has been in the tank since we first introduced animals died the other day. He was seemingly healthy, cleaning, eating, etc. Two days ago I woke up and looked in the tank to find him missing ALL of his legs. His legs were in another spot kind of in a pile and his body was in a different place. I turned his body over to see flesh where his legs were so I don't think this was a molt (he also hasn't "reappeared" in the tank anywhere). He was removed from the tank. I have no idea what could have done this to him because it doesn't look like he just "died" because he didn't like the water. It looks to me like something attacked him but he's the largest thing in the tank that I know of. 2. After watching the zoanthids closely I noticed a black/white striped tentacle reaching around for stuff between the polyps. I looked it up and found that this is very likely a brittle sea star. I now believe there are ~3-5 of them total living in the coral "rainbow rock" colony I bought. My studying led me to believe these guys are ok for the tank's other inhabitants. They don't ever come all the way out where I can get a full view of them but I'm nearly 100% certain these are brittle sea stars. 3. We have two snails. As they move around the sand they leave these snot trails that kind of roll up with the current. There were some that were close to the frag colony and I assumed the turbulence of the water caused the snail mucus to just roll up like that in that area. I now think I was incorrect about what that is. Yesterday I noticed 2 or 3 of these "rolls" of sand all kind of pointing upwards into a crevice in the live rock..... close to the bottom of the aquarium by the sand. I noticed that there were TINY hair like tentacles lifting small grains of sand off the floor of the tank towards the point where the rolls met. I watched this behavior for close to a combined hour yesterday and it's definitely something with very fine hair like tentacles pulling pieces of sand up towards itself. It's living right at the base of the green star polyps. The tentacles are pretty long for their diameter, I'd say they're 3" or so and less than the diameter of a hair (from the looks of it). Is this something that green star polyps do, or do I have another un-id'd hitchhiker in my rock? Is it potentially some sort of predator that killed my crab? Any help is greatly appreciated. I work third shift so if it looks like i'm some crazy person staying up all night surfing reef forums..... well you're right. --Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolt Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 1. Weird, no idea 2. Score! 3. Spaghetti worms maybe, if so they're not bad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Reefer Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 pyramid snails maybe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 Do you have any pictures? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gig 'em @ NDstructible Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 1. Did your crab have much algae to eat? It didn't starve to death did it? 2. Awesome, great little critters to help keep the tank clean. 3. Spionid worm? Does it look like this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FluxCapacitor Posted May 5, 2016 Author Share Posted May 5, 2016 I was never able to see anything other than almost microscopic width strands of "something" pulling single grains of sand across the ground. Today when I got home from work the strands seemed a bit longer and they're now curving around the rock's base. I've also noticed very tiny bugs walking around the sand. They seem to walk around rather than swim and they are very small. I don't think they're copepods. For the first time today the Green Star Polyp wasn't open when I came home. Maybe these small bugs are irritating my coral? One last thing, there are probably 10 or so of the very tiny star shaped guys in the last picture. You have to zoom in on the picture to see any detail. They look like tiny starfish but I don't think they are since they're not really moving. Is this hydroids by chance or is t too early to tell? --Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FluxCapacitor Posted May 5, 2016 Author Share Posted May 5, 2016 I was never able to see anything other than almost microscopic width strands of "something" pulling single grains of sand across the ground. Today when I got home from work the strands seemed a bit longer and they're now curving around the rock's base. I've also noticed very tiny bugs walking around the sand. They seem to walk around rather than swim and they are very small. I don't think they're copepods. For the first time today the Green Star Polyp wasn't open when I came home. Maybe these small bugs are irritating my coral? One last thing, there are probably 10 or so of the very tiny star shaped guys in the last picture. You have to zoom in on the picture to see any detail. They look like tiny starfish but I don't think they are since they're not really moving. Is this hydroids by chance or is t too early to tell? I dunno if the crab had enough algae. He seemed to be eating stuff off the rocks so I thought he was fine. Maybe I did starve him, I'm not sure. --Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FluxCapacitor Posted May 5, 2016 Author Share Posted May 5, 2016 The first picture above has to be zoomed in on to see what is attached to the glass. It's those two small specs that are close to each other. They have what looks like clear arms and little dots on the end of the arms. They're super small so it's not easy to get a picture of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolt Posted May 5, 2016 Share Posted May 5, 2016 Looks like hydroids to me ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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