leather dieing need help

[qc2001]

yes that is right, i found at the base of my finger leather (I beleave it is lobophytum) any how the bast few days it has not been doing well. today when i got home i notested that there was a hole (circular area) at the base. when i went to pull it out, a bunch of "skin" fell out of the area. water is good, my glass removal was not the cause due to it started this before i pulled it off. i have notesd that the coral beauty has been niping at a few things here and there, could he have been eating the leather? well i pulled out the leather and cut (fraged) it above the injored area. should i do any thing else? iodine dip? if so how do i mix it for a dip solution.
thanks
frank http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

[AquariaUSA]

Iodine dips on leathers can be fatal, so I would avoid this unless you make an extremely mild solution and test, which can be hard to do.

Was this the spaghetti leather or another? What did the hole look like? Could the leather have been splitting (hole at base of rock?). There is a predacious species of snail that can bore into leathers, eat the inside up...causing the leather to dissolve from inside the trunk to the top. The snail is nasty, so be careful if you do have/ handling it.

Otherwise fragging by cutting should be fine, be sure to place cuttings in aragonite with good flow and they should do fine.

[NAGA]

If you can wedge it in a hole in a rock with good flow would be good as well.  I recently had the problem of one of my leathers disolving from the inside.  It was a beautiful 14" diameter leather that suddenly stopped opening.  It had started the day before I had the tour over at the house.  A couple of days later it had a big hole right down the middle of it and it was like a rotting tree from the inside out.  I took a different approach and took one of the Tunze Turbelles and blasted it hard for a good bit.  It clouded up a bit and all of this crap poured out of it...........it was the insides of the leather just blowing away. Then I took a small brush and took a look inside to notice that it looked like something had been eating it........or so it seemed.  Anyway after that it came back bit by bit and it about 90 percent of what it was before.  It was probably one of those snails if I were to guess.

good luck with yours

Jeff

[qc2001]

if i do have a snail, would i see it? it is big enoughf to be seen? i hope it is not a snail, cause it is loose in the tank some where. it is not the spaghetti. that is looking very well. well i hope it was nothing major, and i hope i was able to save it when I fraged it. i hate fragign lethers, they allways look bad the few day after. i wonder if it just was not gettign enoughf or to much current where it was at. who knows. oh well i'll keep an eye on it and report any other observations.
thanks
frank

[AquariaUSA]

Frank, sometimes those snails can be pretty darn fast (they are also nocturnal...so you will not likely see it). If you had a gaping hole I would bet it was a snail. Sometimes they come in on liverock, and then come out months later. If there is little available excess fish food, eventually they will look for what they eat in nature. As for fragging, is it a toadstool or umbrella leather? Umbrellas have a tunk and sort of a flat top, whereas the toadstools look like a fat mushroom. The umbrellas are generally very easy to frag, as long as the frags are placed in good clean substrate (cut end down). I can show you a few at the upcoming tour (long as I get the house cleaned up~ Cuban women don't let guests over if the house is dirty) hehe

[NAGA]

Frank,

I did not see any snail but, I would bet it was. You could see right where something had been going to work on it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If it weren't for the size I surely would have lost it. When I blasted it with the Tunze it cleaned out all of the "scraps" he didn't like. Who knows he might have been blasted out with it because the leather is fine now. I am sure he is looking for another target.......I just hope he doesn't like clams http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

Jeff

[qc2001]

well a bit closer look at the leather showed that there was infact a hole right up the middle of the "trunk". i went a head and fraged it, again. so far it seems stable, hope i saved it.
frank

[NAGA]

Good Luck with it Frank!

[qc2001]

could this be the guy that ate my leather? what snail is this. it it aprox. 1/4" long. it is safe reguardless?
frank

http://www.thesea.org/gallerydata/1463/pic01673.JPG

[NAGA]

I will have to look at mine to see if I have something like that.
It seems though I have seen those before. I am sending the pic to someone that may know for certain. will let you know.

Jeff

[AquariaUSA]

Evil limpet! I would recommend removing them from an SPS/LPS tank. Generally nocturnal, there is also a black species that seems to pair up with the mottled one in your pic. If anyone has Ron Shimek's email list, I am sure he would know the species. If you can get a closer pic, post it on ReefCentral.org or Blane Perun's site to see what others say.

This is not the snail I was talking about that can eat leathers from the inside out (common name is Rapa Rapa). I caught some of those limpet b*stards eating the skin off of some wild acros a while back, and they multiply like rabbits! I have been trying to find something that eats them over the past few months with no luck thus far. A research site I came across mentioned that limpets do not eat corals, but this species does and will from what I have seen. Never seen it eat a leather though, and have left a few of them living in the softy tanks (they eat algae on the glass, never seen them on soft corals, even at night).

If you go to grab them, the top shell will come off, and the limpet goes flying into the waterflow never to be seen again. It is best to slide an old credit card or library card (like you use it anyway) under it, and cap your finger on top of the limpet and pull it out. Under 1/4" they eat green algae, once they get bigger so does the appetite.

I was going to save a pic for the upcoming website, if I can add a "coral predator" area, but who knows when that will be. hehe

[qc2001]

thanks Rich, i posted the picture at thesea.org. so i'll have to see what they say about it. so it is bad news for sps! OH NO! not something else i need to wory with! you are right about them loosing there shell, well mine split in half. i found 3 of them yesterday and a black one a few days ago (on an sps) http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif well i guess it is time to declare war on them! http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif
thanks for the heads up on the snail. have you tryed arrow crabs to take them out?
frank

[AquariaUSA]

For the limpets thus far I have tried....
Arrow crabs, large emerald crab, coral banded shrimp, peppermints, xl hermits, sponge crabs, decorator crabs, few species of wrasse, and a puffer. I was going to try a few different triggers, but hate to chart uncharted waters (unless I missed something on the net) without knowing what eats what. Unfortunately most of the above species would not do to well in a reef, so the attempt was not really worth the merit. I am wondering however, if the mottled limpet is a male or female, and the black is the mate. When I took most of the black ones out a few months ago, I did not notice a population explosion. I did notice a population explosion when I fed nanochlopsis,etc. to the systems.
It is much easier to win the war during lights out if you are up. They cover the glass, etc. so much easier to remove.

[qc2001]

according to the guys over at thesea they feel it is a stomatella snail. all say it is a good snail to keep around. guess i will need to search the web for some pictures of each and see what one looks the most alike.
frank

[AquariaUSA]

I used to think they were stomatella's until I saw em eating :O)

[NAGA]

I hope mine doesn't come back http://www.cmas-md.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif