Sea Spiders and Marine Mites

[ThRoewer]

Marine Mites
I know that I have marine mites like these in my tanks:

Image source http://beyondthehumaneye.blogspot.com/2011/01/micro-rock-pooling.html

All the info I could find indicates they mostly feed on algae, but some might also feed on animals (= corals, shrimp, fish). I found several on substrates, of healthy, but also of dying coral. Dipping with Bayer or Coral Rx does nothing to them, at least not at the coral safe doses and dipping times.
So far I don't see any damage, so they might rather be harmless - at least to stony corals. Not sure about zoas though.

Sea Spiders are what I'm more worried about.
During the microscopic inspection of my last new coral I discovered a tiny sea spider (pycnogonid). It obviously had survived the dip with Coral Rx completely unharmed.
It looked like this one but was much smaller, not visible without a microscope:

Image source: http://www.melevsreef.com/node/1807

Unfortunately I skipped the microscopic inspection on a previous batch of corals from the same store and since dips have shown to be ineffective I'm now afraid that some of these little buggers have slipped into my new tank.
And it seems way too little is known about these guys: And Along Came a Spider...

So the burning questions are:
Can they reproduce in the tank?
Are they obligate or opportunistic coral parasites?
Can they survive just on rocks without corals?
And most importantly: are there any shrimp or fish that eat them? Maybe Stenopus shrimp? Wrasses? How about dragonets or pipefish?

 

[sahin]

I encountered a couple of those sea spiders on a frag from my LFS. I dipped and basted the frag quite hard.

I spoke to Steve Tyree on Facebook some months back about these. He suggested extensive dipping as well as QT. Steve told me he encountered them some 15 years ago.

The frag that was inflected with the spiders had thin tissue and some STN with loss of colour.

I QT't for 3 weeks before checking and putting into the display. Frag has since coloured up well and fully recovered.

 

[EvMiBo]

Sea Spiders It obviously had survived the dip with Coral Rx completely unharmed.

fwiw, I dipped a small encrusting monti frag that had sea spiders in pure (yes, 100%) coralrx with success, maybe overkill but the spiders died within 30 seconds.

 

[Tweaked]

I knew I shouldn't of even looked at this thread. :worried:

 

[ThRoewer]

fwiw, I dipped a small encrusting monti frag that had sea spiders in pure (yes, 100%) coralrx with success, maybe overkill but the spiders died within 30 seconds.

How did the coral handled that? Not that it matters much as dipping whole rocks in pure CoralRx is out of the question and small frags can easily be cleaned up with tweezers under the microscope.

My worry is that they could infest the rocks in my new tank (currently cycling).
The new corals were just the encrusted bases on rocks of maricultured corals. The store fraged the corals and gave me the leftovers for free. After dipping I put them into the new, otherwise coral free tank (will be mainly for percula clowns with a gigantea carpet and LPS and maybe also some monties and birdsnests).

I don't have currently any STN issues in my SPS tank and when I had it there where no spiders anywhere near the coral.

Also not all of these spiders are preying on corals. There are actually some that feed on hydroids and those spiders would be more than welcome in my tank.

 

[EvMiBo]

How did the coral handled that? Not that it matters much as dipping whole rocks in pure CoralRx is out of the question and small frags can easily be cleaned up with tweezers under the microscope.

The coral didn't like it, lost some color but slowly gained it back. I think it was worth it so get rid of the spiders though. Of course, that wouldn't work on whole rocks. Might not even work on acro's, monti's are tough.

 

[smtank]

Being that they are all Arthropods, I am inclined to think that Interceptor/Sentinel would be effective, both as a dip and treatment of the display.