What’s eating my coraline?

Sometime during the night last night something chipped up a lot of the coraline algae on my rocks.  What kind of animal does this?

I recently added to my tank: Astrea snails, Redfoot snails, Mexican Turbo snails, Lettuce nudibranchs, and Emerald crabs.  Most of these have been in the tank before.  Only the Mexicans and the Red Foots (Red Feet! ) have never been in the tank before.

I spent hours last night showing off my tank to friends and looking closely at it so I know that this "chipping" has happend just overnight.  Many of my rocks have little white spots now where it is obvious the coraline has been eaten or chipped off.

Also I would like to mention that I highly recommend a couple of Mexican Turbo snails like the ones Mark had for sale.  In each of my tanks I have a green ugly stripe of algae on the glass just above the substrate.  I find it difficult to clean off because I don't want to get my magnet scrubber down in the substrate.  (Another employee decided to help me out at the office while I was gone and did just that.  Now I have horrible scratches all over the front of the tank where they continued cleaning with the magnet after it picked up some substrate.)  After putting several of these snails in my tank last night that ugly green stripe is almost gone.  They are still working on it now and it probably will be gone by the end of the day.  No other snails have never been interested in doing this job.

I suppose these guys are going to want a raise now.

No Urchins or Sally Lightfoots.  Maybe it is the emeralds, but they have never done it before.

Oh well, I suppose it will grow back as long as they don't keep doing it all the time.

Emeralds will pull up the coraline as they eat the soft algaes that grow on the rock.  Does it look like scratch marks?  That's what it looks like when my emeralds scrape at the rock.

Adam, I have plenty of hermits in the tank and I wouldn't be surprised at all if I found a red leg or two occasionally.  Unless of course they were from Cincinnati.  Then I would be very surprised.  (Man, I really gotta stop.  I must feel really corny today.)

Jfinch, it doesn't look so much like scratches.  It's looks more like someone took one rock and chipped at another knocking little pieces of coraline off it.  However, it still wouldn't surprise me terribly to find out that it is one of the Emerald Crabs.

Since were talking about emerald crabs, has anyone seen their emerald actually eat bubble algea and if so do they keep it in check? I was told they may eat it but mine has never even touched the stuff. Just wondering.

Thanks

Kevin wrote: Since were talking about emerald crabs, has anyone seen their emerald actually eat bubble algea and if so do they keep it in check? I was told they may eat it but mine has never even touched the stuff. Just wondering. Thanks

I had heard that emerald crabs ate bubble algae, so I got a couple of them.  I never saw them eat the bubble algae...but...I think they found it after a week or so, because the algae disappeared. 

Will, If the large Mexican Turbo Snails are doing that good of a job, you might want to watch them and remove some or most when the job is done, otherwise thay will get so hungry that they start to live up to their reputation; moving and toppling rock and coral to get at more food.

The Mexican Margarita Snails and Astrea Snails are less likely to topple rocks.

Have you seen any Cerith Snails along the bottom edge down in the substrate?

I have noticed that 2 of my redfoot snails have been sitting attached to a rock underneath my Flower Anemone for 2 days now.  It seems they are not doing a thing.

By redfoot, do you mean the margarita looking snails with a red foot?  I've got the blackfooted variety.  I believe Kevin is correct.  They both (along with the large mexican turbos) come from colder mexican waters.  I bought 40 blackfooted margaritas and 10 mexican turbos back in early January.  These were the margaritas that I posted about that would fall off my rock and not be able to flip over.  I lost at least half of those margaritas in the first month.  The ones that died were very lethargic and ackward (how many healthy snails fall off the glass on their own?) from the start.  Right now I have about 10 - 15 of those original margaritas left and they appear as healthy as a hog.  They don't fall and when I knock then down they flip over better then any snail I have (other then nassarius).  I wonder if the ones that died right off were in bad shape when purchased?  Pound for pound I've never had a better algae eating snail then the mexican turbos.  Mine will eat anything... green, brown, long, short, it doesn't matter.