Blood red shrimp and torch coral

[rmlevasseur]

I had a very large torch coral in my tank. A month or so ago I had a minor crash, and I noticed my torch wasn't looking so good. Two weeks ago I decided to frag it when I noticed I had lost a head to brown jelly.

I'm happy to say that all the frags survived, and the tank has 100% recovered and the frags are great. However, today I noticed that my blood red was sitting on top of a frag, had caused a head to close up, and was vigorously either cleaning it or eating it. I've never heard of these shrimp to be coral eaters, and I even fed him today. What you think? Just eating some slough-off?

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Not sure. I've heard of all sorts of shrimps bothering many different types of corals, causing them to close, but never of the shrimp eating a living coral. My guess would be no. Usually when you put your hand in the tank, cleaner shrimp will pick off dead skin, but they won't hurt you. I think it's the same deal. Corals are just a little more temperamental than our hands

 

[BigJay]

oh heck yeah. Shrimp will definetly take advantage of a weekend coral and go to town. Peppermints are the worst for that, but I wouldn't put it passed anything with a claw in the tank. Most of the time though when you see a cleaner like that pecking into the coral is because its robbing it of something its currently eating or ejecting.
Definetly keep your eye on it. If it continues you might want to quarantine the coral and make sure its not dying.