OMG! Elegance Coral KILLER FOUND!!! CHECK THIS OUT!

Shawnts106

Shawnts106

New member
Ok, refer to my problem in my previous thread " Got an Elegance, got questions.." or something like that !.. anyway!


I have been having problems keeping my Aussie Elegance Coral and have noticed it expelling a lot of filaments and not opening... this was a sudden thing...


many people told me it was due to putting it in to much light at once, but three other Aussie's came in and are all doing GREAT in simular lighting conditions...

I think I have found what has been killing this coral!

Today I noticed while looking at this poor elegance a strange whiteish claw peering out of a mass of mucus and filaments... ... well, it was a leg...

It started moving so I decided to take the coral out and see if I could pick this thing out of the coral..
I DID!... and THEN FOUND ANOTHER!!!!!

These things look JUST LIKE! TICKS... EXACTLY like a tick!
They are White and Orange and were EATTING THE FILAMENTS of my coral!.. I watched them .. and As I tried to remove them they grabbed onto the flesh again with their mouths and I had to tear the coral a little to get them to let go.

I took a really bad picture of the first one, and the other is the same except has orange and black on it.

I am convinced these things were eatting the coral from the inside out! That would explain the blowing up, as it was trying to rid itself of this....


Tell me what you guys thing...

021408_11342.jpg


021408_11341.jpg
 
Great detective work!! Although it might not be the reason for the epidemic, God only knows how many deaths these 'ticks' may have caused!!

Try running experiments on a few, to find out if freshwater dips help, etc. THANKS!!

-Justin
 
Just dawned on me that your a student. Your best bet for us all, would be to get a few of those specimens to a professor so he can identify it, but more than likely have the contacts to forward it on to someone who can. Once identified, we will have a better understanding of how to eradicate it. Like how they figured out what would kill acropora's red bugs by identifying the genus and associated treatments for killing those types of parasites. Every bug out there has it's associated 'Black Flag', we just gotta find it!

Looking forward to hearing more about this.


-Justin
 
That's a poor picture, but I would think that is a gall crab.

Here's a gall crab I removed from my elegance coral:
crab.jpg
 
I had the something on my elegance and i tool out today after I reed your post.

hitchhiker.jpg

Looks familiar to you?
 
Shawn,

Can you tell how many legs it has? This has me baffled. I guess it could be a spider. While there may be many different species, the only one I have ever heard of in captivity are the Zoo eating spiders. Gal crabs seem to have a fondness for Elegance corals, but other than the obvious hole they produce, I have not seen any bad affects from them. In other words, Elegance corals usually seem to remain healthy, despite the fact that there is a crab living inside it. Does your school have the ability to get a better pic of this thing?
 
These are definatly Gall Crabs, and they are NOT symbiotic!
I do not have access to a biology lab, or know of a biology professor that specializes in this kind of thing, however... this isnt a big problem!

Im familiar with these crabs a little.. only to the extent that I have seen them boar holes in Lobo Brains before, ... few and far between, but they have... normally it kills the coral.. I have never seen one live there long term and it be ok.


I am going to try interceptor, a friend of mine has a tab, and Im going to dip both elegance corals in the Intereceptor for 8 hours on Saturday If I can....


They do have 6 legs, if I remember correctly.... Ill take a closer look later...

The other of the TWO I found in my Aussie is black, orange and white.... its smaller, but more active too...


Im going to do Iodine Dips on the aussie to try and help the healing, and to P*$$ off any other crabs living inside it...




Ill let you guys know what else goes...
Im 100% possitive this was what was killing the coral...
However, a friend of mine brought up a good point!
He suggested that, if they do live together symbolicly without any issues in the wild then you wouldn't see problems in the wild with these crabs... He suggested that, durring collection and import, the coral gets stressed, this causes the crab to take advantage of the stressed corals and seeing that its host may die, it may start to eat the filaments in order to save enough energy to find a new healthy host...

He suggested that the crabs would only consume the host in the event they sensed it was stressed.
 
I found one of thoose buggers on my Aussie acan last night just before lights out. He had dug himself right into the mouth of an acan polyp and it was very hard for me to pull him out with tweezers. They are very hard to the touch and yes they do look very much like a tick. The acan looks a little stressed today but he looks like he will recover no problem.

Colby
 
They are very tick-like, luckily they don't seem to reproduce in captivity or they reproduce very slowly. They will not attempt to evade you if you try to remove them and as stated above they attach to a spot and eat until there is nothing but skeleton under them.

I used a pair of hemostats to pull the couple I've found off, no need to dip/interceptor unless your tank is completely infested since it causes more stress to the coral than is necessary =)
 
JenDub...

What happens if the Elegance is already almost dead by the time you can actually see what you are trying to pull out?

Like I said, The Aussie was almost dead by the time I noticed them...

Now my Indo is doing the same thing... I suspect it has them too...

Why not do a Interceptor dip to kill them?

What about doing an Iodine dip to draw the crabs out.... this seemed to work for me.?
 
Oh BTW: I forgot to update everyone on the Aussie Elegance those two Gall Crabs came out of...

It has stopped producing Filaments and I am seeing tenticles again! Its actualy blooming out!

Keeping in mind that about 24hours ago before the removal of these two crabs, this elegance was Not bloomed out at all, I could see NO sign of tenticles, and it was completely sunk in and COVERED in a mucus and masses of filaments... I WAS SURE IT WAS ABOUT TO DIE..

Today it looks 100% better than yesterday!

Im hopeing it will completely recover!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11850690#post11850690 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shawnts106
However, a friend of mine brought up a good point!
He suggested that, if they do live together symbolicly without any issues in the wild then you wouldn't see problems in the wild with these crabs... He suggested that, durring collection and import, the coral gets stressed, this causes the crab to take advantage of the stressed corals and seeing that its host may die, it may start to eat the filaments in order to save enough energy to find a new healthy host...

He suggested that the crabs would only consume the host in the event they sensed it was stressed.
Click to expand...

I think your friend is right. Most parasites don't kill their host under normal circumstances. It's kinda counter productive. There hasn't been a great deal of research done on these crabs, but the evidence I have seen, leads me to believe these crabs simply use LPS corals for shelter while they are caring for their young. All of the crabs I have seen, both in person and pictures, have eggs. I have never seen a Gal crab removed from a LPS that didn't have eggs. They are crabs, so it only stands to reason that if the coral was sick or injured they would feed on it. The stress from shipping combined with the wound created by the crab may leave many of these corals open to secondary infections that lead to the corals death. I highly doubt that the death toll associated with these crabs in the wild is anywhere near what it is with newly imported corals. I have pulled these crabs from Elegance corals that were seemingly healthy and within a day or two of removal the coral opened back up to its normal self.
 
How did you find them in the healthy elegance... I pulled my INDO out yesterday and did a good 15-20 minute REEF DIP (seachem) dip on it... and then checked it all over to see if I found any... I see evidence of them, but I could not find them...


How are you finding them?
 
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