Who ate my prata?

[Thexder]

Came back today and found that my prata has shrunk and 1/4 of it seems eaten away, left only the skeleton

Its been in my tank for 3 wks and doing well, feeding it occassionally with white bait and Henry food. Noticed yesterday that part of it seems shrivelled but still looks ok, then today saw this.

I did notice my cowrie crawling on it a couple nights ago, but do cowries eat corals? I have many other LPS and soft corals, but cowrie doesn't seem to do anything to them. I also have an abalone for algae control.

Recently bought 1 head of hammers which can be seen at the top of the picture. Any chance of chemical warfare? I made sure to place the hammer away from the prata.

Most important, based on the picture, can my prata recover or its a goner?

[sisreefer]

Same thing happened to mine last week.Now I'm feeding it with small piece of prawn everyday hoping it will grow back. So far so good.

[Victor007]

cowrie is the culprit...swear with my pratas...i have one bicolor prata gone with it and one red cynarina nearly gone with it too...lucky i noticed fast enough and put the cowrie in the sump. or else will have lost that cynarina too.

it think cowrie is not 100percent reef-safe. even that mine is a deer-cowrie which claims to be reef-safe.

it climb on to my bicolor prata which it retract and i tot it just eating some algae or passing by.

But to my surprise, it did that quite often and stay for sometime.

i dun really see it eating becos their mouth and eating is really hard to observe.

but the prata grow smaller and smaller and the meat becomes like urs.

lucky urs is like the condition of my cynarina.

I suggest u dump the cowrie into the sump and let the prata slowly grow back.

my cynarina grow back on it's own after sometime.

think it takes abt few months....depends on the injury

An "expensive" experience...for us.

CHEERS.

[Victor007]

cowrie is the culprit...swear with my pratas...i have one bicolor prata gone with it and one red cynarina nearly gone with it too...lucky i noticed fast enough and put the cowrie in the sump. or else will have lost that cynarina too.

it think cowrie is not 100percent reef-safe. even that mine is a deer-cowrie which claims to be reef-safe.

it climb on to my bicolor prata which it retract and i tot it just eating some algae or passing by.

But to my surprise, it did that quite often and stay for sometime.

i dun really see it eating becos their mouth and eating is really hard to observe.

but the prata grow smaller and smaller and the meat becomes like urs.

lucky urs is like the condition of my cynarina.

I suggest u dump the cowrie into the sump and let the prata slowly grow back.

my cynarina grow back on it's own after sometime.

think it takes abt few months....depends on the injury

An "expensive" experience...for us.

CHEERS.

[Thexder]

Thanks for the reply. I did some research on internet and found that its reported some cowries may resort to eating corals when they cannot find algae to eat.

Here is a reference from Reef Central: Cowrie Experiences

Ok, the cowrie goes into the sump tonite

[Thexder]

Dumped the cowrie into the sump just now

The prata seems to have inflated a bit, and fed a piece of prawn to it. But later my fishes snatched it while I was not looking...

At least it looks like can recover...

[Solo77]

Dont cry....feed your fishes first....until they cannot eat.....hehehe....lucky u dont have shrimp, if not, lagi worse.....they will hover ard .......All the best and hope your prata recovers. : )

Dumped the cowrie into the sump just now

The prata seems to have inflated a bit, and fed a piece of prawn to it. But later my fishes snatched it while I was not looking...

At least it looks like can recover...

[Thexder]

Dont cry....feed your fishes first....until they cannot eat.....hehehe....lucky u dont have shrimp, if not, lagi worse.....they will hover ard .......All the best and hope your prata recovers. : )

Yeah, I had 2 cleaner shrimps before and they would snatch food from my suns during target feeding. Even if chase them away with my hand they also not scared. Instead will start to 'clean' my hand

[Solo77]

hehe...i got 5...hehe....doing marine shrimp therapy everyday....wahahaha...why spend 49 for 30 minutes fish spa therapy....lol

Yeah, I had 2 cleaner shrimps before and they would snatch food from my suns during target feeding. Even if chase them away with my hand they also not scared. Instead will start to 'clean' my hand

[Victor007]

hahaha..all the best. think it's better not to feed ur prata now as it's very stress.

just leave it alone and let it slowly recover back then u feed it.

that's what i did becos when it's very stress, not only it doesn't eat but also causes more stress in the end.

and new prata or cynarina also find it hard to devour the food at first becos they are stress up and not used to this kinda feeding.

that's just my observation, maybe u can observe more for urs.

If urs is doing good with feeding, then guess it might be alright.

cheers.

[tiffanydunk]

use a small plastic container, poke some holes, cover the prata, use some small rocks to hold the container if u scare it might float. And den, no fishes, shrimps can Ka jiao.(disturb).

[Thexder]

Thankfully it has recovered. Here is it after feeding with some prawn meat

[Victor007]

that's great. :>