Ok, so I have a question....
We had a 2 head torch coral, it started out somewhat small and then became pretty full in a 6g nano. After quite a while though it started to look bad, and one head of the coral died.
At this point we brought it home and put it in our 24g tank, where we have 2 huge frogspawns (started out small and are now doing great - have grown by like 10+ heads each), and two torches (are a little different than the one we added, but torches none the less).
At first the torch was retracted most of the time, but slowly started to expand, never full, but it did expand and stretch out some. At this point I got placed a magnetic frag rack in the tank to add some new frags that I recently purchased. To give the new torch more room to expand, I placed in the rack (which now made it closer to the light - but we recently had a 70w HQI which is messed up and we replaced it with a 24" coralife dual bulb t5 fixture (two normal output bulbs, one 10k and one actinic blue)). I figured moving the torch closer to the top wouldn't hurt since the lighting was not as intense, since there was no longer an HQI above it.
The torch didn't do very well there. It shrunk up and didn't want to ever expand....so... I moved it back to the bottom of the tank. I just moved it yesterday, and when I did I noticed a white sponge-like appearance in part of the skeleton where the head of the torch was. The sponge was on one side of the skeletal head and the shrived up coral was on the other. I do not know if this was some sort of sponge, growth, dying torch or what. I figured I would watch it here and see if it did better. Today I noticed a hermit crab digging in the skeletal head of the torch, the coral itself looked even more shrunken than previously. I figured this was just because the crab was annoying it. Later on I noticed two crabs digging in the same spot on the torch. I was like...OK, either they are eating the coral, or there is some type of growth around it and they are eating that. We came back home tonight and guess what....a crab is STILL in the coral, digging. I was finally able to see inside the 'skeletal head' and the coral is gone. It had appeared even more shrunken previously, but now it is completely gone....WTH!!!
So, my question is.....Do hermit crabs eat torch corals??? Did they eat it because it was sick or had some type of 'growth' on it? I just don't understand as they have never messed with my other torches and are supposed to be 'reef-safe'. I know they can be nuisances by moving corals and knocking stuff over, but will they actually eat your corals?
I am not sure what kind of hermits we have. They are just your average small hermits with brown legs and red antennas. Has anyone else had this happen? I just am shocked and if they are 'eating my corals' then I want them out, and I will just buy some dern snails to replace them. I have snails already, but these guys really help keep the hair algae out of the tank, so I like to keep them around.
Anyway, sorry for the long post...I just wanted to find out if anyone else has ran into this before.
Thanks!!