Monti-eating nudibranchs?

That is what I was thinking. The more I looked, the more I found a few hours ago. Argh. I saw a couple on the acrylic, under a coral. Using forceps, I tried to pluck them off and put them in the jar, and discovered little white eggs there too! Great, they are happily breeding.

The good news is this is just a frag tank and I could basically toss out everything and start anew, but I'd rather destroy these pests and keep the frags growing.

Another plus is I know what I'm looking for now, so I can inspect the corals closely before moving any to my reef.
 
I know you'll be glad when this nightmare is over. makes you wish you had redbugs instead, huh:lol:



Matt
 
Great pictures Marc! Thanks for sharing. Looks like you've got yourself a pretty nasty infestation of the buggers. IME, they are tough to get rid of because they are so easily overlooked, especially in a reef tank. You are lucky that yours are in a frag tank where you can easily take everything out and inspect daily until you get rid of them. Good luck!
 
Marc,

I am going through the same thing. Unfortunately, this is in my main display. My Purple Reef Chromis eat them when they are free floating, but donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t directly take them off the coral. I am siphoning them off, but I have a feeling I am not getting the majority of them. I have very large colonies of Plating Montipora (24" +), so removal is not an option. These things have to have a natural predator, so I am going to look into other ways of removing them. On a side note, I have not added a coral to my system in quite a while, so these guys have been in my system for a while, but I never noticed any damage until last week.... :(
 
Uh oh. Well, one thread told me to put a Yellow Coris Wrasse in the tank to eat the. I do have a hungry peppermint shrimp that may consume some.

I really think I'll have to end up dipping all the pieces.
 
Stupid, stupid nudies......DIE!!!
montis.JPG
 
I just went through this and I had not added anything in months prior to this.

I thought about trying to get a handle on 'em with the yellow wrasse but there where so many montis with so many places that a fish couldn't access that I just pulled all the montis out and dipped them. I'll leave 'em out indefinitely.
 
That sucks about the nudis. They do look like really interesting creatures. Too bad that wreak such havoc.
 
Has anyone tried and been successful at getting these nudibranchs under control by lowering the temp of their tank? In talking about treating acro flatworms, some believe that lowering the temp to 76-77 helps. Haven't tried it myself; just curious.

Bob
 
I siphoned out about 50 of them last night, and got a few more pictures. :D However, I saw lots of eggs and they don't siphon off.

And anywhere I saw two of them together, I found eggs. That's surprising, as I would have figured they'd lay eggs individually rather than needing a mate. Maybe it was coincidence, but that is what I observed.
 
One encouraging dip treatment being discussed is pharmacy bought providone iodine 1 ML to 100 ML H20 for three minutes. Most adults are affected, but the eggs are not. Thus repeated dips every couple days are required. It's a good idea t so soak the dipped coral in fresh saltwater to remove excess iondine before it is returned to the main system.

Unfortunately, this treatement is not a whole tank answer and only treats the removed coral. Clearly, the nudibranchs spread out on surfaces hunting for new corals and this makes multiple treatments necessary and short term unless you get lucky. That is, corals can be quickly invaded by free-traveling nudi's.
 
Thanks for your input. I have a peppermint shrimp in the frag tank, and don't feed the tank anything. All the eggs on one coral vanished. I don't know if they hatched and crawled away, or if they were consumed.

Tomorrow I'm getting a bottle of Oomed from a club member so I'l be treating the corals and hopefully erradicate these pests. I also have about 25 more pictures on my harddrive that I'll be looking at to see if any more need to be added to this thread.
 
fwiw, peppermints never made an impact during my infestation. Neither did six line wrasses added to my frag tank and left hungry. Eggs seem to hatch rapidly. If you don't remove the eggs right away, they seem to be gone next time you look. Good luck & please let us know how you do with Oomed. Maybe we can get somebody to produce/sell it again?
 
FWIW, I took Eric Borneman's advise and called the director of the Omaha zoo (Mitch Carl), who has battled and studied these horrid nudis in their tanks. He said the only thing that has been found effective in the eradication of them is a sheep dewormer called Levamisole (sp?) He said it doesn't kill them, but paralyzes
them and they can be easily blown off with a powerhead. The piece has to be isolated in a separate bucket, and soak for several hours. It has to be repeated as the new eggs hatch. Oomed is a quinine based medication that is no longer available in the US, but will work on these nasties if you can get ahold of some. I FINALLY got rid of them after they destroyed most of my montis. Good luck!
 
melev said:

Tomorrow I'm getting a bottle of Oomed from a club member so I'l be treating the corals and hopefully erradicate these pests.
Click to expand...

Marc, does this person have a US source for Oomed? Or do they just happen to have an old bottle laying around? Either way, consider yourself lucky for finding some.:)
 
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