Nasty Inhabitants

Try a tux urchin if it ain't Anchor it is going for a ride

 

Try a tux urchin if it ain't Anchor it is going for a ride

 

I would add sea apple to the list - was given one as a gift years ago and promptly returned it.

Also box fish and cow fish - very cool but would never have one due to their potentoal to release toxins.

 

I had a problem with a pink tuxedo urchin biting through my powerhead cord back in May. It sent voltage through my whole tank and killed all of my SPS and ravaged my LPS. It was a small amount of voltage apparently, because before I saw the bubbling coming from the cord I had stuck my hand in the water but didn't get shocked and my fish lived through it... but it killed all of my sps, my hammer coral, my condy anenome and my cuc. My rockflower anenome, still hasn't recovered even though it's still alive. It's smaller than it was before, not sticky, and not taking food still to this day. Also, am still staring at this ugly version of cyano algae that grows in tendrils from the whole ordeal that I never had before thats left over to this day.

So if you have an urchin of any kind... make sure that algae is kept off of your cords, you have the tank on a gfci (you should have that anyways, for your own safety), and a power head cord guard (or a cord guard for any cord that's in the water. period. although, they chew threw rocks...don't know if it'd really stop them). I don't know if I'd try an urchin again or not, I like them a lot but I'm very wary.

So be warned. I couldn't find any information on them doing something like that before it happened to me. It's not really information you come across readily. It's more like a "freak accident" with them, but after it happened to me I found out that it's happened to a few other aquarist too, so yeah... the whole event was very depressing. Especially since I was new to SPS and coral in general, had them for like a month (the sps pieces, not the lps), got an urchin and literally 3 day after I bought him he wiped out himself and most of my tank.

So that's my horror story. I kept it to myself until now...the only person on here whose heard it before was @Dave and now unfortunately he's going through his own ordeal.

 

Sally Lightfoot Crabs. I banished mine to asump long before it became a problem, but I've heard that they are prone to eating either CUC or fish when big enough.

 

I had 2 peppermint shrimp that constantly pestered a nem and my Duncan coral, they got put in permanent time out in my fuge. I currently have a black long spine, I've had trouble with it eating SPS, it once ate an entire brand new orange digi frag. Started feeding it algae sheets as often as I could for a while to distract it, it's been fairly good now for the last 6 months but I often wondered what damage it might do if it croaked.

 

I got a flame angle that's a real asshat. He's very destructive. He likes eating only green corals tho.

On a side note he does eat aptasia!

Also +1 for the peppermint shrimp, I had one eat a rock flower right in front of me and when I tried to stop him he ripped it off the rock and took off carrying it with him... I put him in there to eat Aptasia and he never touched it.

 

Butterfly fish but i like mine........I'm okay with no SPS or LPS in 1 of my 3 tanks