karimwassef
Active member
If you've struggled with this, you've probably read Eric Borneman's classic Reefkeeping article or Dana Riddle's great Advanced Aquarist article.
I've been struggling for months with this thing - starting from a monti dominated SPS tank. Bayer dips and tweezers, wrasses and gorilla crabs, and even lasers... If you've seen my posts, I'm sure you've felt horror, and empathy - or humor if you're twisted like that.
But sometimes it takes an accident to learn something new.
I'll propose a new solution that "SEEMS" to be working for me (only about a month in = 2-3 reproductive cycles).
I have a huge female banded coral shrimp and I've been wanting to find her a mate.
<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg"/></a>
Naturally, this usually resulted in a dismemberment or beheading or some other grueseome ending.
So, in desperation, I decided to play the odds of nature. I got 10 small coral banded shrimp... I expected her to slaughter the first 9 and hopefully find one that she liked. This isn't cruel (IMO) - it's nature.
So, as hard as it was to acclimate these little guys (because each thought he was king of the bucket and needed to fight with everyone else), I finally got them in. She tore into the first one - ripping both claws off. Then she saw the second one and then the third and fourth.
She stopped her rampage and started exploring her domain (there is an SPS end to the story. Just bear with me). She set them all straight. They had all seen her and understood that in-fighting was futile. So they each took a quadrant of reef and just held his (and occasionally her) ground.
The large female stopped attacking, picked a mate and has been happily ruling her populated domain. All good?
So here is the surprise. One of the "stationed males" happened to be stationed on my big monti where the infestation is bad, but the monti constantly grows to fill the damage - making it a nudi pumping machine. As nighttime scavengers, the small coral banded shrimp would hunt at exactly the same time as the nudis (which the wrasse DO NOT). Within a day, almost all signs of the adult nudis were gone from this coral.
And then all the other corals.
So here's my theory...
1. Wrasses in a reef tank with a ton of pods just get fat on pods. They hunt by day and rarely see a nudi (melanarus, banana and six line).
2. A single coral banded has a massive territory and will not cover much over a reproductive cycle. The nudis will constantly outpace her.
3. The crabs were not very effective - maybe not enough of them.
So, these "stationed" coral banded shrimp seem to do the job. I don't know if I'm all clean, but the start of the recovery is visible after a month.
AND - other than an occasional dismemberment, the population of coral banded shrimp are actually co-existing without hostility - as long as they keep to their turf that seems to be about a square foot.
Just wanted to share my observation.
I've been struggling for months with this thing - starting from a monti dominated SPS tank. Bayer dips and tweezers, wrasses and gorilla crabs, and even lasers... If you've seen my posts, I'm sure you've felt horror, and empathy - or humor if you're twisted like that.
But sometimes it takes an accident to learn something new.
I'll propose a new solution that "SEEMS" to be working for me (only about a month in = 2-3 reproductive cycles).
I have a huge female banded coral shrimp and I've been wanting to find her a mate.
<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo D4309F18-6F3C-4EDB-84BC-08E62A0DF108_zps5z42gcep.jpg"/></a>
Naturally, this usually resulted in a dismemberment or beheading or some other grueseome ending.
So, in desperation, I decided to play the odds of nature. I got 10 small coral banded shrimp... I expected her to slaughter the first 9 and hopefully find one that she liked. This isn't cruel (IMO) - it's nature.
So, as hard as it was to acclimate these little guys (because each thought he was king of the bucket and needed to fight with everyone else), I finally got them in. She tore into the first one - ripping both claws off. Then she saw the second one and then the third and fourth.
She stopped her rampage and started exploring her domain (there is an SPS end to the story. Just bear with me). She set them all straight. They had all seen her and understood that in-fighting was futile. So they each took a quadrant of reef and just held his (and occasionally her) ground.
The large female stopped attacking, picked a mate and has been happily ruling her populated domain. All good?
So here is the surprise. One of the "stationed males" happened to be stationed on my big monti where the infestation is bad, but the monti constantly grows to fill the damage - making it a nudi pumping machine. As nighttime scavengers, the small coral banded shrimp would hunt at exactly the same time as the nudis (which the wrasse DO NOT). Within a day, almost all signs of the adult nudis were gone from this coral.
And then all the other corals.
So here's my theory...
1. Wrasses in a reef tank with a ton of pods just get fat on pods. They hunt by day and rarely see a nudi (melanarus, banana and six line).
2. A single coral banded has a massive territory and will not cover much over a reproductive cycle. The nudis will constantly outpace her.
3. The crabs were not very effective - maybe not enough of them.
So, these "stationed" coral banded shrimp seem to do the job. I don't know if I'm all clean, but the start of the recovery is visible after a month.
AND - other than an occasional dismemberment, the population of coral banded shrimp are actually co-existing without hostility - as long as they keep to their turf that seems to be about a square foot.
Just wanted to share my observation.
