biggles
Premium Member
I discovered these guys last night whilst doing an after dark torch inspection. About 7-8 years ago i had them appear in a frag tank connected to the 4x2x2 display. Not knowing what i was looking at until they made their presence known by sheer numbers led to the loss of about ten big frags but after chucking out everything infected i did eradicate them.
It's only because i've had a previous battle with these little bastards that i spotted them so i wanted to do my best to give you a heads up on what they look like and their behavior from my personal experience.
The nudis are white and very frilly. The frills move in the water flow and they seem to follow a very set pattern from my experience with them. They will pick a single acro frag or colony and immediately begin eating the tissue at the edge. They never move up and attack branches etc, always working from the bottom edges upwards. They lay eggs repeatedly about every 3 days and the eggs hatch in about 14 days from memory.
I only have my phone camera so i've done the best i can to get the clearest shot i could given the equipment. The two nudis are less than 1/8" in length so they are very hard to spot unless you are specifically looking for them. Last night the pair were together laying eggs beside a corallite and looked exactly like a mesenterial filament bundle which is what caught my eye. Rather than have that glistening translucence that filaments exhibit these things are solid white. They don't let go even when hammered hard with a turkey baster at point blank range and this is the easiest way to confirm you're not panicking over a piece of detritus caught by a polyp.
Here they are on their chosen acro, a small SSC frag. They are lower left on the frag edge and even though you can't see it there are two egg batches laid, an older one and the one i saw them laying last night.
I zoomed in more and rotated the pic to give you the best look i could at what you want to watch for. The area circled in yellow is acro skeleton where the tissue has been consumed by the two nudis that you see in that circled area. Dead center of the right circle is that egg batch laid at the bast of the corallite last night. The second area on the left outlined in red is the first batch prob laid 3-4 days ago when they first settled in. The barnacle opening in the acro is no more than 1/16" wide for size reference.
I killed both the adults with boiling hot RO along with the entire side of the acro frag. I then used a chisel to manually pulverize the area i killed on the acro. I have thoroughly inspected everything i can and will start doing some big checks at night for a while because they stand out under a torch IF you know what you're looking at. To your naked eye they do not look like a nudi, they look like a tiny bit of crap caught by an acro polyp or detritus resting on the tissue. Remember, anything staying put on your acro that isn't being moved on by water flow is suspicious so use a turkey baster and you'll soon know what's up if that 'detritus' doesn't blow away or the 'filaments' don't unravel under moderate water flow.
I'm only speaking from personal experience and i'm not too worried about seeing them as they are much easier to deal with if you catch them early than the bugs and flatworms i see driving everyone nuts now days. I'll let you know if any further developments arise in regards to AEN (made that up)
It's only because i've had a previous battle with these little bastards that i spotted them so i wanted to do my best to give you a heads up on what they look like and their behavior from my personal experience.
The nudis are white and very frilly. The frills move in the water flow and they seem to follow a very set pattern from my experience with them. They will pick a single acro frag or colony and immediately begin eating the tissue at the edge. They never move up and attack branches etc, always working from the bottom edges upwards. They lay eggs repeatedly about every 3 days and the eggs hatch in about 14 days from memory.
I only have my phone camera so i've done the best i can to get the clearest shot i could given the equipment. The two nudis are less than 1/8" in length so they are very hard to spot unless you are specifically looking for them. Last night the pair were together laying eggs beside a corallite and looked exactly like a mesenterial filament bundle which is what caught my eye. Rather than have that glistening translucence that filaments exhibit these things are solid white. They don't let go even when hammered hard with a turkey baster at point blank range and this is the easiest way to confirm you're not panicking over a piece of detritus caught by a polyp.
Here they are on their chosen acro, a small SSC frag. They are lower left on the frag edge and even though you can't see it there are two egg batches laid, an older one and the one i saw them laying last night.
I zoomed in more and rotated the pic to give you the best look i could at what you want to watch for. The area circled in yellow is acro skeleton where the tissue has been consumed by the two nudis that you see in that circled area. Dead center of the right circle is that egg batch laid at the bast of the corallite last night. The second area on the left outlined in red is the first batch prob laid 3-4 days ago when they first settled in. The barnacle opening in the acro is no more than 1/16" wide for size reference.
I killed both the adults with boiling hot RO along with the entire side of the acro frag. I then used a chisel to manually pulverize the area i killed on the acro. I have thoroughly inspected everything i can and will start doing some big checks at night for a while because they stand out under a torch IF you know what you're looking at. To your naked eye they do not look like a nudi, they look like a tiny bit of crap caught by an acro polyp or detritus resting on the tissue. Remember, anything staying put on your acro that isn't being moved on by water flow is suspicious so use a turkey baster and you'll soon know what's up if that 'detritus' doesn't blow away or the 'filaments' don't unravel under moderate water flow.
I'm only speaking from personal experience and i'm not too worried about seeing them as they are much easier to deal with if you catch them early than the bugs and flatworms i see driving everyone nuts now days. I'll let you know if any further developments arise in regards to AEN (made that up)
