Found my problem....

[Toyota Guy]

OK everyone...... For everybody who attended my meeting, you are all aware of my problem with tissue recession on my Montiporas. Well, after weeks of watching, reading and researching I found what is killing them.

I have an infestation of Montipora eating Nudibranchs. These are slick little critters......

I will post pictures of them soon but, in the meantime they are small......less than cm in length......white nudi's with frilly, leafy looking things on them. From what I have been reading the best way to remove them is to suck them out with a pipette of turkey baster.

I also dipped all of my montis' in a Lougols iodine dip. That seemed to kill hundreds of the little bastards. Since the dip, I have not noticed any on the corals.......

I also picked up a sixline wrass and a yellow wrass to help kill them off. I have read conflicting reports of both of these fish being natural predators of the nudi's. Lets hope that the will infact eat them.....

I will keep everyone posted on my progress. It is unfortunate that I have to deal with this but, I hope that we all can use this as a learning experience......

After all, we all learn from each other in this hobby

Chris

 

[Toyota Guy]

here are a couple of pictures from the web.....

 

[jaze36]

Chris, I don't have any experience with the problem so I am no help here, but I'm interested in how your solutions will work, please keep us updated. Thanks

 

[vmiller]

I've read about those nasty little suckers. At least you found the problem! Do you know where they might have come from?

If the two wrasses don't do the job, I think they are two pretty nice fish to have anyway.

 

[xian]

Related question:

Are yellow wrasses safe with shrimp?

 

[Linda C.]

I wrote to and got a response from Eric....I'll paste it so everyone can see it:



Hi Linda and Chris:

Linda, of course I remember you. So, the nudibrnanchs are a big problem. I'm about ready to write an article on them. You can try Mitch Carl's levamisole treatment (on google), but you won't get the eggs. I'm afraid that the best way to handle this is one of two equally painful and laborious ways followed by an easy way.


Cut the Montipora loose or remove the rock - chisel, wire snips, whatever....you know how fast it grows and reattaches, so no big deal here. These are obligate parasites so without a host they will die. Snip the healthy part of and remove any nudi's if present. Set up a quarantine tank..a ten gallon with a undercounter 18" flourescent and an airstone is fine. Use real forceps to remove the adults. Thing is, you have to scrape along the edge of the coral and dig in any nooks and crannies,. The eggs are small and attached to the skeleton where they have denuded tissue..usually a patch of area. Use a knife or the forceps to scrape/gouge of the eggs. Alternately, put a Maxijet in a five gallon bucket of tank water and blast the fragments along the margins and in the nooks and crannies hard to remove them and they fall ion the bucket, Or do both. Then, put them in the quarantine tank and observe nightly for a week, picking off any that you missed. After a couple weeks to allow the adults without Montipora hosts in the main tank to die, you can replace the corals. Other option...break off the healthy parts and quarantine them until the nudibrnachs kill and eat the remains of the colony and die after several weeks. Then replace the healthy parts.


The easy way is to quarantine EVERY coral you get and avoid having to ever go through this. Believe me, I know.

_______________________________
Eric Borneman
Department of Biology and Biochemistry
University of Houston
Science and Research Bldg. II

 

[Linda C.]

MY NEXT QUESTION TO ERIC AND HIS RESPONSE:


Will these Nudibranchs be found elsewhere in his tank like the refugium or hang out in other places? What will this mean for him in the way of trading frangs or macro algae in the future?

Thanks again for all your help.

Linda

FROM ERIC:
no - they hang out near or on their host only.

_______________________________
Eric Borneman
Department of Biology and Biochemistry
University of Houston
Science and Research Bldg. II

 

[Lakeside518]

Here's a link to a similar post in the Upstate forum w/ good pics!

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=858745

 

[Toyota Guy]

well, I am glad to say that so far I have not seen any more nudibranchs in my tank......

I know that alot came off with the Lugols dip....and I hope that my 2 new wrasses are doing there job. Tissue death has stopped and all look good.

I am going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

I just wanted to keep everyone up to date

Chris