Monti bald spot and spawning snail?

Couple of notes:

They frags had an unequal distribution of nudis. May be coincidence, but it's an observation: the ones with high flow had the least, and the nudis were only on the sheltered side (away from high flow)

The base rock that I placed in quarantine with 3 peppermints shows no sign of nudis.
 
Karim - I feel for you. I am battling a similar infestation. I posted on another forum looking for advice beyond what I had already read, but the advice I got amounted to "get all the montis off the rocks, stay strong, and keep dipping every 5 days."

Here's some info from my original post if it helps...

**Disclaimer: I've read through all the threads that I could find on this topic. To summarize what I've found:
- They are persistent and hard to get rid of.
- Dips seem to kill hatched nudis, but not the eggs.
- General advice is to get montis off the rocks, closely monitor them, and dip / scrape eggs every few days (and pray that breaks the cycle).

Background:
I first noticed the problem about a month ago. They had infested the base of a spongodes colony. I took the rock that they were attached to out of the tank, completely broke the colony off the rock and threw most of the colony away. I did however cut a few frags from the tips that were far away from where the nudibranch activity was, and put those frags on a frag rack.

Since then, I found a few nudis on a pink polyp cap frag and one nudi on a Season's Greetings frag that were nearby. I dipped those frags in Tropic Marine Pro-Coral Cure, super glued any cracks between the coral and the frag plug, then moved the frags to a frag rack on the opposite end of the tank.

As a precautionary measure, I removed / dipped / glued the Undata and Stylo frags (opted to play it safe with the Stylo since their growth is similar to that of encrusting montis) that were on the same structure, but I found no evidence that the nudis had made it there yet. The only monti remaining on that rock structure is a Superman monti that the nudis seem to have been avoiding so far. I plan to break off what I can of that frag and epoxy putty over whatever I can't get off the rock.

Relevant Tank Info:
40 gal breeder, bare bottom (glass), w/ 2 MP40s for flow (so strong flow throughout the tank). The rock is landscaped into three separate structures. There are two "pillars" on opposite ends of the tank that are suspended above the tank bottom by 1-1 1/2" acrylic rods. In between the two pillars, there is a smaller "island".

There are ~12 different types of Montis in my tank. Most could still be considered frags or, at best, mini-colonies. I should also point out that I have a Six-Line Wrasse.

Currently, the only evidence I've found of nudibranch activity is on the left-side pillar. None of the rock structures touch the tank walls, so to get from one end of the tank to the other the nudis would need either 1) to crawl down the rods and scoot across the glass floor (I suspect the powerheads would blow them away) or 2) "surf" through the tank and hope they land somewhere on the other side.

On the other end of the tank, I have a few more montis, but the main one I am concerned about is a Leng Sy colony (~7 in across). I can see underneath the colony pretty well, and I haven't seen any evidence that the nudis have made it over there.
 
Thanks. These little beasts are resilient with their indestructible eggs and very rapid reproduction cycles.

My six line and melanurus look active.

I go on vacation in two weeks...
 
So 1oz Bayer + 12 oz saltwater for 15min seems to work.

But it's a 10 day process. Frag, dip, wash, rinse then put back into a treatment tank until the eggs hatch, then dip again... And back in the treatment tank for a few hours. Then return to DT.

The problem is in the reinfection rate. I have a lot of montis and they're mostly attached to my rockscape. Unless I do every monti at the same time and keep them in a dedicated tank for 90 days, any nudi or egg will reinfect everything. They're in all the rockwork.

My wrasses and shrimp eat them but only incidentally. They're fat on the massive pod population.. :(

This works but needs a dedicated secondary tank and a lot of work.
 
Google potasium permanganate to kill montipora eating nudi.
good article about it and it also kills the eggs.
 
Sure. Eric's article is a classic

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-09/eb/

It's still a dip so the procedure above is unchanged since the permanganate is just as lethal as Bayer at the doses required. Killing the eggs is a good improvement but the largest burden in the need to setup a monti only hospital tank to treat with the permanganate and keep them all out of the DT for a long enough period for all nudis to die (fallow).

All my live rock, sand and plumbing is now infected. Without a reef safe solution, there is no way to get clean outside of complete monti removal.
 
I was fighting these bugs my self. it took 2 dips and i have few pieces of montys my self.

Dipping the corals alone worked for me.

Quarantine is the key to not get those into the sys but i dont have the space for a quarantine tank. :(
 
Mine have infected other montis... Started in a fungia, spread to a cap, and now a digitata. The cap is still growing while they eat it!! It's huge so I can't remove it without breaking the rockwork. Unfortunately, it's acting like a nudi machine, generating multiple generations of nudis who can feed on it and then move on to the weaker smaller montis.

Worried about my undata and setosa...
 
Take em out or lose em is really the option you have right now.
I had those things in my Bali supermans but unlike yours mine were not yet stuck in the rocks so easy to remove.took em all out for a hr long bath with potasium.problem is i could not get the pure potasium but only a solution that only had 3% of the stuff in the liter...so i had to calculate and i did not get it right the first time when i od the first coral and it came black out of the bucket..
Fortunately it was a small piece that i had plenty of.

Best of luck and keep us posted.
 
Here's my dipping setup

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/C7138E36-6D56-4C94-B94A-49C1A7985F99_zps2zmz9mx4.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/C7138E36-6D56-4C94-B94A-49C1A7985F99_zps2zmz9mx4.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo C7138E36-6D56-4C94-B94A-49C1A7985F99_zps2zmz9mx4.jpg"/></a>

And here's my 50gal quarantine tub

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/3A14618D-959F-48F4-B467-DD308DA5FCA7_zpswahshbsi.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/3A14618D-959F-48F4-B467-DD308DA5FCA7_zpswahshbsi.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 3A14618D-959F-48F4-B467-DD308DA5FCA7_zpswahshbsi.jpg"/></a>

I can do this for a couple of weeks, but 90 days is harsh.

I have it set up to receive 5 gal of DT water every other day (with an auto flush out into a drain) as a water change. It doesn't have ATO, adequate lighting, flow, or Calcium/Alk/Mg supplementation.
 
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