Monti eating Nudibranchs- HELP

[stevedola]

I had these little buggers years back. I tried for months to kill them but they lay eggs in spots I couldnt cut away or get at to destroy. It seems like the life cylce is about a month or so. I would kill them and scrap then a month later Id have a small batch pop up...kill and then a month later pop up...it was a never ending cycle. The corals would just heal up and then get attacked. I was keeping them in check just enough to sustain their cycle and not kill the montis. Finally I said screw this! too much work. I tossed out a bucket of monti caps/digis/encrusting just to be rid of the nudis. I went fallow for a long time and never looked back. I was never very fond of montis anyhow...they grow too fast and arent very colorful in comparison to other species of SPS. The only one I really missed was the leng sy cap I had.

 

[Aegir]

I was having the same problem a year ago. Yellow Coris Wrasse (Halichoeres chrysus) cleared it up in a week or two.

 

[RichardinMa]

I got some of the Bayer product and just dipped two of my corals. It kills the nudis pretty quickly but now I am having a major problem in the tank. Even though I rinsed the corals in tank water before placing them back in the tank, within minutes of them being placed in there I started noticing amphipods, first a few, then dozens, skittering through the water uncontrollably. Then I noticed lots of mysid shrimp doing the same. Now I am in a panic as two of my emerald crabs flipped onto their backs. I just pulled them out and put them into another tank but I am pretty sure they are toast. I am really worried about what else will now crash. The amphipods are not actually dead yet but are frantically darting around the tank. Oddy, so far my peppermint shrimp seems unaffected as do my blue-leg hermits. I feel sick about this now.

I used 6ml in 2 cups of water, soaked for 5 mintues, then swished the pieces around in a container of tank water before returning them to the tank. The other thread about this product said that rinsing was not even that important. Has anyone else had this type of reaction?

 

[Buzzword]

Hope it goes ok for you and you don't loose to many inverts or other corals. Dude i would never use something like that on my tank/corals! Even if someone else has, no way. Coral RX IMHO is the best dip out there and have not had any problems in last 2 years of using it. good luck.

 

[RichardinMa]

Well, I did not take the decision lightly and really did not plan to use it at first. The other thread that talks about using the product had person after person sharing their experiences using it and there was nothing but good reports about it. I figured that if there was not a single person who had a negative experience with it then it would probably be pretty safe. Perhaps the Montis hold more of the pesticide in their slime than Acros? As far as killing the nudis goes, it does that job very well and I was very happy...at first.

I'm still not sure what will be dead and what won't. The amphipods and mysids have no coordination and body control but most are still alive. The blue leg hermits I can see also are still alive. My peppermint shrimp is stressed but still alive too. I am really bummed about my emeralds as they were doing a great job keeping the algae cleaned up. Oh yeah- it's been about two hours since they were dipped and still no PE on either Monti.

 

[eswgato]

Well, I did not take the decision lightly and really did not plan to use it at first. The other thread that talks about using the product had person after person sharing their experiences using it and there was nothing but good reports about it. I figured that if there was not a single person who had a negative experience with it then it would probably be pretty safe. Perhaps the Montis hold more of the pesticide in their slime than Acros? As far as killing the nudis goes, it does that job very well and I was very happy...at first.

I'm still not sure what will be dead and what won't. The amphipods and mysids have no coordination and body control but most are still alive. The blue leg hermits I can see also are still alive. My peppermint shrimp is stressed but still alive too. I am really bummed about my emeralds as they were doing a great job keeping the algae cleaned up. Oh yeah- it's been about two hours since they were dipped and still no PE on either Monti.

Your monties will be fine if you stuck to the dose and time as far as the crabs I would rather pay 10 bucks for each crab than lose your monties your pods will recover if you want next time you dip have your dip then 2 different batches of fresh saltwater hey it worked for me and I have a lot of very nice monties .

 

[RichardinMa]

7am Update: No PE on either piece and even the poor coloration on the green piece is gone. All emeralds dead, peppermint shrimp dead, lots of tiny crustaceans dead, yet there are two blue leg hermits walking around like nothing happened. The dose suggested was 10ml in 1/2 cup and I used 6ml in 2 cups. The small piece was dipped for 5 minutes and the larger piece was basted for less time than that. I have triple verified that this was the right product and cannot figure out why my experience would be so different than everyone else's. I can only assume that montis need a much weaker dose but I also don't know how to get enough of it off of them to not kill everything else in the tank when you put them back.

 

[Piper27]

Did you dip just the coral or was there a rock that the coral was on that sat in the dip? At least the dip worked I guess.

 

[HV1990]

Carbon change and 25% water change. Sorry to hear about the pest. I had them and I took out all my monties and the common ones I threw away. I have learned my lesson and have started to QT from now on.

The issues you will run into is that you have to kill keep dipping. The ones your found were of egg laying age and each one will lay about 100 eggs. After the adults are gone you have to kill the new spawn. Since the eggs were not laid at the same time you must keep doing this to ensure you get them all. Also if the egg mass was brushed off and landed on a rock else where you will get them again. Once again I understand your pain as I have been there before. I know it sucks but going monti free for a few months will help out the best.

Using a wrasse is a good idea to keep them in check but is not a full cure. But then again if you can't see them and your tank looks great then keep going.

 

[eswgato]

7am Update: No PE on either piece and even the poor coloration on the green piece is gone. All emeralds dead, peppermint shrimp dead, lots of tiny crustaceans dead, yet there are two blue leg hermits walking around like nothing happened. The dose suggested was 10ml in 1/2 cup and I used 6ml in 2 cups. The small piece was dipped for 5 minutes and the larger piece was basted for less time than that. I have triple verified that this was the right product and cannot figure out why my experience would be so different than everyone else's. I can only assume that montis need a much weaker dose but I also don't know how to get enough of it off of them to not kill everything else in the tank when you put them back.

Don't lose hope bud nudies are evil

 

[Reeferhead]

I feel your pain, I hate these lil buggers.

BTW, when they run out of montipora, MENs will resort to eating some varieties of Porities.

 

[RichardinMa]

By this evening the peppermint shrimp was back to normal. The amphipods had a good amount of die off but the mysids seemed to have bounced back too. The emerald crabs were all graveyard dead. More importantly, the biggest Monti started to show some PE this afternoon. The smaller one is a blue polyp brown that never did show much PE to begin with so it is hard to tell. There are two things that I am thinking caused the problems. First, the amount of surface area on a Montipora is much greater than an Acropora frag or even small colony. One of the pieces I dipped measures about 7" x 5", the other was a small one, about 4" x 4". This greater surface area can potentially carry a lot more chemical back into the tank, especially in the porous areas of exposed skelton. There are areas there that looked like sponge.

The second issue I am suspecting is the tremendous amount of slime these guys produce, again potentially soaking up the chemical carrying it back to the tank. There was one tiny nudi that was obviously trying to get off one of the montis after it was placed back in the tank so I think they were still carrying some nasty stuff on them. There is no rock or other material attached to these guys- just the coral itself.

I do plan to keep dipping but I will be making a couple changes. I am dropping the concentration and will watch to see if it is still toxic to the nudis. I will also be doing a double rinse with good flow to help minimize the amount of chemical brought back to the tank. Hopefully this will give me the benefits of killing the MENs while minimizing the collateral damage. I am curious about the sizes of the DTs that other people have had no problems in. What is the gallon capacity of your system compared to the number/size of the dipped pieces?

 

[RichardinMa]

After my latest dip I have to conclude that the Bayer product is not effective against MENs after all. I decided to dip a third Monti that I had found a few MENs on previously and use a lower dosage. 1cc in 2 cups of water disoriented the nudis somewhat enough to allow me to easily blow them off but that was the extent of the damage. They have been in the dip for about an hour and are still alive. Seeing this, I then checked one of the pieces I dipped in the 6ml/2 cups two days ago and found still more. This piece had been isolated so they had to be individuals remaining on the coral. This product seems to be very effective against crustaceans, hence the adverse reaction of my crabs/shrimp and the effectiveness against redbug, however it does nothing for molluscs, at least at a dosage I feel comfortable using. I should have figured as much considering that my snails were completely unaffected by the overdose the other day. At this point I am going to give Coral Rx a try. I don't mind doing repeated dips but really need to find a dip that will actually kill them.

 

[coralreefdoc]

Concluding that the aforementioned Imidacloprid dip is ineffective, after applying a weak/light dosage on a highly infested specimen, isnt much of a conclusion.

As for the residual crustacean die off you should look within, at your personal level of attention to detail, in regards to the cleansing of the specimen after dipping

 

[RichardinMa]

Concluding that the aforementioned Imidacloprid dip is ineffective, after applying a weak/light dosage on a highly infested specimen, isnt much of a conclusion.

As for the residual crustacean die off you should look within, at your personal level of attention to detail, in regards to the cleansing of the specimen after dipping

My conclusion of the product being ineffective was not based on a weak or light dosage on a heavily infested specimen.I am quite familiar with scientific method and don't simply throw assesments around arbitrarily. Perhaps more attention to reading the full thread would give you an accurate understanding of what had finally led me to this conclusion. The MENs survived even after the 6ml/2 cups of water original dip. Although I originally thought it had killed them there were still more discovered on those peices in isolation. At that higher concentration it took the treated Montiporas almost 24 hrs to show any level of PE again and severaly stressed them to where they are now almost colorless. There are still patches on one piece that have not fully recovered. There is relativity to "effectiveness" in my use of the word and if the dosage required to kill the pest (unsure of what that is yet) also results in the death of the coral, then how is that effective?

Regarding the residual die-off, yes it was most certainly due to excessive product being carried back into the DT. Longer term/multi stage rinsing would likely have reduced or possibly eliminated the collateral damage.

 

[RichardinMa]

I tried mixing a dose at 10ml per 1/2 cup and adding a few nudis to it to see what would happen. Within a few minutes they did finally die. I then decided to try dipping one montipora to see what would happen. There were so many baby nudis on this piece that I figured I had little to lose. The nudis were killed off within a few minutes but now I will have to see what happens with the coral. There is no sign of PE, and the tips of the ridges have totally bleached. We will see what happens in time.

 

[RichardinMa]

Well the dipped piece survived but I am still having a problem with all of the nudibranch offspring in the tank. The pieces I have isolated on a frag shelf have remained pretty much nudi free but there are two pieces that are too big to fit on that plus one digitata that is growing off a rock that still get them every day. The nudis just found the digitata the other day. I have been sucking them off twice a day and have only been finding small or tiny size ones so I am hoping that none are surviving to reach adult size to reproduce. Sometimes it is just 1 or 2, other times I will find 5 or 6. I have found no more eggs.

Sucking these things off so often gets tiring and I have been considering pulling them from the tank and let it be Monti-free for a while and let them starve. Does anyone have any real data on how long it takes them to die off without food? I have seen lots of suggestions varying from a few weeks to several months but all seem to be based on a "better safe than sorry" approach rather than hard data showing re-infection after a certain fallow period.

 

[kobelka]

These things are evil! I wish you luck.

 

[OneReef]

Sorry to hear about your ordeal. I just caught some zoanthid eating nudis. They are a nasty little pest.

 

[RichardinMa]

I think I may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I could not find any data that could say for certain the time the nudis could live without a meal so decided to leave all of them in the tank and just suck them off twice a day. I figured this would provide a 'bait' for any nudis in the tank and make it easier for me to eradicate them then to just pull them all and then wonder if it has been long enough. Every morning and every evening I would examine each piece, top and bottom and would typically find anywhere from 3-4 to maybe 7-8 each day. None are encrusted so I am able to lift them and flip/turn/rotate them as needed. As the weeks went on I was finding few and fewer and they were also smaller and smaller. Occasionally I would find one that was bigger that must have been hiding out on the rocks and finally came in for a meal. I wanted to be sure that none would survive to adulthood and be able to reproduce. It has now been almost a week since I found any and that was only on a single piece. All the rest have been nudi free for longer than that.

I have also noticed that the original piece that was totally infested has amazing PE now and even has some of the green color coming back. I am really hoping that this ordeal is over and I will not find any more. I am still checking twice a day just in case there are a few stragglers.