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How does your heart skip three times? Mine usually does when it discovers that you have a monti nudi infestation! Today I was curiously wondering why my Tyree True Undata has been losing flesh on its top side. It has been amazingly resilient over the years and has lasted many mishaps. So why now? Why the skin loss? RTN?
So my first instinct is to inspect the underside of any montipora that looks stressed. And low and behold… a monti eating nudibrach infestation! Need proof? Look at these eggs..
Yes, the little specks of light are the egg sacs. I didn’t take pictures of the actual nudis, as by then I was frantically blowing them off the montipora. There must have been about 100′s of nudibranchs, and about 1,000′s of eggs. The dead area on that underside is all of the eaten flesh by the nudibranchs. No wonder the coral was extremely stressed.
Yes, those are the nudibranch in question. Swimming (dying) in some nice cool tap water. And no, I didn’t use tap water to dip the montipora… that would ultimately kill (or severely stress) your coral.
Now the followup on this situation would be to look for more eggs or hatchlings in the same area. If you find them, they would be easy to extract. You must do it as soon as possible to prevent them from growing and producing more eggs. The benefit of this is that they don’t produce eggs which float in the water column. They secrete them on the underside or dead parts of the montipora. It takes time, but you will win this with patience. Make sure you check EVERY montipoira in your tank if you do have monti eating nudis.
Now let my heart skip back into its normal rhytm. Maybe I need a shot of Jack Daniels with a beer as a chaser…
Trained by the thirteenth ring master of the Sian Xiuang Coral Temple. Currently is apprenticing the art of Acropora shaping in the ancient tradition of Ninja Fragging. Known as the SPS hero!
::yikes!::
A shot of JD? I’d need 1/5!
Can you dip in anything else? .. to ensure you got them all ?
What else eat it naturally?
I find alot of the frag places stuff have problems with this pest; my friend recently got hit with that buying frags from a fragshop.
Steve, I don’t think you can dip it in anything else as you are dealing with a delicate SPS colony. RO water is a no no. Other meds are hit and miss (mostly miss). SO iodine is a known disinfectant, and does irritate inverts a lot.
Hubert, sometime they say that wrasses may be your good bet.. but I haven’t personally seen any wrasse eat these type.
Most responsible frag shops should check their stock frequently for things like these. (See items regarding red bugs and people receiving them in the US).
What worries me about your excellent pics is I’m one of those reefers who likes to mount frags directly onto living rock, rather than have lots of loose colonies rattling about.
There’d be no taking the coral out of the tank for inspection/salvation for me!
Thats too bad. What I usually propose is to implement the pegging method to your corals. This way you can take them out when you need to (for inspection, for example). I will be writing up an article about frag mounting with pegs later on.