What is eating my chaeto?

[artarmon42]

My tank (around 4 months old) has a built-in fuge.

When I set the tank up, I transferred all the rocks from my old tank into the display area. I bought a bunch of cure live rock (tongan branch mostly) to lay out the display rock work, and threw the rest into the fuge area.

When I setup the tank, I put a sandwich-bag size of chaeto into the fuge. In about 2 months, the chaeto had disappeared. I replenished it with another bunch of chaeto (from a different reefer), which again has since disappeared.

I'm pretty sure (because I checked) that it hasn't "floated off", "gone asexual" or "disintegrated". The fuge light is new (4 months old now) and that area is getting plenty of light.

My best guess is that there's something in the fuge eating it.
I have maybe 2-4 cerith and perhaps 1-2 astreas back there.
No hermits or other livestock (that I'm aware of).

Any thoughts on what could be doing it? huh.gif
Will snails go through that much chaeto?
Do I have any hitchhiker that might have come with the new batch of live rock?

[wds21921]

It's possible the snails could have been eating that much depending on there size.
I've seen my Nassarius snails devour a large piece of Nori inside of 20 minutes.

There may also be a few unknown hitchikers in your rock that might be helping the Chaeto to vanish as well though.

One solution would be (if you have one) set up a video camera for a couple hours to see what happens and then again the evenign do the same thing with a red light source. If the snails are the problem you might want to set up a seperate algae fuge which I've seen done, with good results.

[gussy]

On my fuge it's the hermits and mitrax.