ARRRGGGHHH! Monti Eating Nudis!!!!

[NanoKat]

I noticed lately that my red monti cap has has some tissue recession, so I've had my eye on it. Well, I found the culprit today. I syphoned off about 10 monti eating nudis...knew what they were thanks to Jeff Brig briging some in to the last meeting.

Anyway, what was the treatment for them? I have several caps in my tank...a couple more red, a greeen, and a purple rim. One red and one green are mounted to a large rock, so I may have to break them off to treat.

Any helpful hints appreciated!

 

[NanoKat]

Okay, since I'm full of nervous energy now with these new nasty things in my tank, I had to take some pics. At least those of you that have montis can check yours for this. Note that they prefer the underside of the cap...I took out a red and a purple rim permanantly, but until I inspected closely, I didn't realize my green cap had been affected. I now have only the greeen which had them all underneath it....had to break it off to scrub it with a toothbrush, a large red frag that had broken a while back, but I never reglued, and a purple that doesn't look affected, but I took it out and scrubbed it too. I took them all and scrubbed them in saltwater (not sure if fresh is safe?) with a toothbrush, inspected closely, then rinsed in a seperate container of saltwater.

I shot the pics of the frags I'm not gonna keep...too bad, they were looking nice . Here ya go!

Keep in mind that I didn't shoot any of them twice...all of these are unique individuals! Who knows how many more there might be! Oh, and by the way, I shot the pics with my Pentax digital slr, 100mm macro lens with macro adapter, and a doubler.

 

[sufunk]

That sucks!

How big are those? Can you see them with the naked eye or only thru your lens?

 

[NanoKat]

I would say most of them are only 2-3mm in length. Not sure if they're completely mature yet...hopefully they just hatched out and haven't laid their own eggs yet.

Depending on your vision, sometimes you can see them with the naked eye. I have extremely good closeup vision without my glasses (I'm extremely near sighted) and could see them pretty well. If you have strong reading glasses or a magnifying glass, you could also see them pretty well.

As I said...please check underneath your caps if you can! I thought my green one was free and clear since it's across the tank from the red, but when I looked underneath, it was covered with about 12 nudis! Luckily all of my caps are smaller than 3" in diameter and not overlapping much, so they're pretty easy to inspect.

 

[NanoKat]

Came home tonight to inspect the montis before the lights went out. The green piece had several on it and the purple one looked like it had at least one and maybe some eggs! Egads! I figure if I have to fight them too long, they're going in the garbage and I'll start over with caps after a while.

So annoying!

 

[gasman059]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10071422#post10071422 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NanoKat
Came home tonight to inspect the montis before the lights went out. The green piece had several on it and the purple one looked like it had at least one and maybe some eggs! Egads! I figure if I have to fight them too long, they're going in the garbage and I'll start over with caps after a while.

So annoying!

My suggestion get rid of montis and start from scratch.
I know its painful

 

[A.T.T.R]

get any maricultued pieces lately

what i did was frag them and only keep the tips.. all frags are ok. sadly i lost most of my monties

and btw these things dont stay small. i foud one close to 1/2 inch!

 

[A.T.T.R]

btw

if this is the 'first life cycle' ( these just hatched from a new piece)
they would probobly only be on that one piece.. my bet is youll need to rid the tank of monties..
also get a yellow corris wrass they love em

 

[ek9vboi]

sucks, ima have to look at mine again.

 

[Rogger Castells]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10071528#post10071528 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by A.T.T.R
btw

if this is the 'first life cycle' ( these just hatched from a new piece)
they would probobly only be on that one piece.. my bet is youll need to rid the tank of monties..
also get a yellow corris wrass they love em

Have you actualy seen the yellow coris wrasses eating this type nudis, I tried some experiments and 5 of my coris will not touch them.

 

[ek9vboi]

just checked mine, nothing on them.

any montis i get, i will definitely check them.

 

[Juan-Carlos]

Kathy, the best way to get rid of them is to set up another tank pull out ALL the monti's and put them in this "quaranteen tank" Dip the corals once a week with Tropic marin coral dip for a month or two untill it's been a while since you see any 2 months is probably best. In the mean time the monti nudi's left in your main tank will have died with no food. When dipping you have the blow off the nudi's with a power head sinc ethye ussually don't fall off the coral on their own. Eggs should be scraped off as the dip has no effect on them.

Good luck!! If anything give me a call.

-Jc

 

[jeffbrig]

Nanokat, another suggestion I received was to remove any bare skeleton patches, since these are where you'll find the eggs, then cover the edges with superglue. That way, anything left behind will be killed.

It's been almost a month, and I haven't seen any signs that they spread from my confusa colony (knock on wood). I'm just hoping I caught them early, before they could multiply enough to spread.

 

[jeffbrig]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10068932#post10068932 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NanoKat
hopefully they just hatched out and haven't laid their own eggs yet.

BTW, I can see a few egg clusters in several of those shots, so frag those areas quickly!

 

[NanoKat]

Well, I took drastic measures last night. I took the remaining three caps (red, green, purple...I'm attempting to keep one of each) and put them in a freshwater dip. I also took a toothbrush to them in the fresh water. They did not enjoy it at all and slimed like crazy. Don't know if they're down for the count or what. Still slimy looking today. But the good news is that I don't see any critters! As I said before, if I continue seeing them after this (if they survive), they're going in the trash .

I'm glad I don't have any rare montis like a rainbow or superman...those I certainly wouldn't want to lose to this!

 

[NanoKat]

Oh, and thanx for all your info guys! I think this taught me that I definitely need a quarantine tank...I've come this far without one and now I'm truly learning what can be at stake. I have an idea where these came from and if I had the quarantine, I may have been able to spot it before putting it in my main tank. Guess this is why we need to learn by our mistakes....lesson learned!

Gonna go check out my retro-fitted eclipse 6 (I put an 18w pc in it) in the bedroom...see if it's feasable for a qt.

 

[ReefWreak]

Yea QT is sooo freakin important in this hobby. All the guys who I've met with to talk SPS and other stuff (Manny, Rogger, etc) have all made such a point to spread the word of treating for everything as you acclimate, so you don't even have to worry about it ever being an issue.

I've been doing a steady routine of treating every coral that comes into the tank with AWFW Fluke Tab dips, and RB interceptor dips, for 6 hours at something like 25x potency for interceptor and i don't know the dosage procedure for fluke tabs but I just use half a pill of each and let them soak with a powehead and heater for 6 hours. So far so good. Now I have to be careful with Montis because I have a bunch of really nice ones, and really don't want to infect my tank. But fortunatly I have no interest in adding new montis either, so I should be safe, but then again JeffBrig got ich from a coral, so who know how you can get diseases into your tank....

 

[A.T.T.R]

qt is number one. but make sure you leave them in there for months ( with out adding any new coral to the qt)

im setting up a qt right now and planning on getting another ( i lost alot of "le" monties last month and dont want that happening again

 

[NanoKat]

Actually, I read that these guys can also come in on things such as acros as eggs. The critters themselves aren't so bad to get rid of, it's the eggs that are friggin indestructible.

 

[NanoKat]

My eclipse 6 seems like it will be just fine as a quarantine. Went by Eco Reef tonite & picked up one piece of live rock to get it cycling. It also has a bio-wheel, so I assume that will also help with the cycle. Put a gallon of water from my 20 also. So I'll be quarantining as soon as my cycle is over!