dreaminmel
New member
To all those that grabbed the yellow blade gorgs recently... you may want to give your gorgs a close look.
I kept finding branches on mine that appeared to have disintegration issues. Didn't see anything picking at the gorg so that was my best guess. Heh. So I turned on the tank lights early today due to company coming over that wanted to see it. Saw something odd on the gorg but didn't get to study it closer until they left. Then I saw it... this "thing" was slowly working it's way up a branch with a clear path of destruction behind it. After munching away it leaves just a spongey texture of gorg behind that just barely covers the internal branch. Immediately took the gorg out of the tank. First guess was some odd nudibranch. Well unless those have shells... not it. Took tweezers to this thing to pull it off the gorg and almost crunched it's shell. :eek1: Got it off and put the gorg back in the tank. Closer look now had me seeing little clear fuzzy nudibranch things still crawling around on it so back out with the gorg to capture one of those for pics too.
Below are pics I got. My camera does not like macro shots too well so I did the best I could. Off to do a water change and then I need to get back on the net to find out A) What the heck are these things? aka Am I dealing with one species in adult and larvae form or two different problems?, B) Will a gorg survive Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure dip? and C) Would the dip even kill these things? God I love the challenge of this hobby... :hammer:
***Needless to say, those I was going to frag this gorg for will probably want to hold off until after I ID and eradicate these pests.
I kept finding branches on mine that appeared to have disintegration issues. Didn't see anything picking at the gorg so that was my best guess. Heh. So I turned on the tank lights early today due to company coming over that wanted to see it. Saw something odd on the gorg but didn't get to study it closer until they left. Then I saw it... this "thing" was slowly working it's way up a branch with a clear path of destruction behind it. After munching away it leaves just a spongey texture of gorg behind that just barely covers the internal branch. Immediately took the gorg out of the tank. First guess was some odd nudibranch. Well unless those have shells... not it. Took tweezers to this thing to pull it off the gorg and almost crunched it's shell. :eek1: Got it off and put the gorg back in the tank. Closer look now had me seeing little clear fuzzy nudibranch things still crawling around on it so back out with the gorg to capture one of those for pics too.
Below are pics I got. My camera does not like macro shots too well so I did the best I could. Off to do a water change and then I need to get back on the net to find out A) What the heck are these things? aka Am I dealing with one species in adult and larvae form or two different problems?, B) Will a gorg survive Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure dip? and C) Would the dip even kill these things? God I love the challenge of this hobby... :hammer:
***Needless to say, those I was going to frag this gorg for will probably want to hold off until after I ID and eradicate these pests.
It does look very much like the Flamingo Tongue cowrie but I didn't get a close enough look at where the eyes were located to know if it may possibly be an Ovulid snail (false cowrie). According to the Sea Slug forum, the way to tell the difference is that if the black swellings for the eyes are raised from the skin then they are a snail. If the eyes are embedded in the skin they are an opisthobranch.
