Is something trying to eat my dendros?

[ultimatemj]

Generally speaking my dendros are happy and healthy

But every day this week I've woke up to find a 1/4" x 1+" tube sack thing on my dendro colony.

It's empty like a used cocoon (reminds me a bit of a shed snake skin) but the polyp it is on doesn't want to open. I scrape it off every day and every night it comes back! In the top left pic you can see it trails down and off to the right. So it may have been 2" long. It's kinda sticky, but it breaks up failry easily when grabbed with tweezers.

Is something trying to eat my dendros?

Only other info is I recently had some kind of bristle worm hitch hike in, and the size/shape of the sack seems similiar. Reading up on these, it seems there is a particular kind that will 'lick to death' gorgonians.

Egg sack or saliva sack?
Infestation of some kind? Dip it?
Other?

:suspicious:

 

[ultimatemj]

Houston, we have a problem!!!

It's obvious the polyp that is not opening has been attacked, the mouth and an edge have pieces missing

This means war!

 

[ultimatemj]

Minor progress - no attack last night after the relocation.

Fed the dendro this morning and the damaged polyp acted like it wanted to open...but didn't. At least it's clearly still alive.

 

[Ian Eisenberg]

Eunicid worm. Track it down asap.

 

[stunreefer Verified Sponsor]

Dip, dip, dip... something (type of worm) is building it's 'home' there every night for easy meal access. A dip might not kill the predator, but it sure will tick them off, ideally eventually causing predator to jump off the colony in the dip container which will be easy to remove. This could become really fun as many times they'll retreat to a different area once you start moving the victim [coral] around. The dendro should come back to full force in due time with proper feeding.

 

[Ian Eisenberg]

One thing to note. If the worm is indeed a eunicid then it probably does not live on the same rock as the dendro. Look for the tube you saw and try to follow it back to it's source.