Montipora eating Nudibranch

[dgbnyc]

Hi Anthony,

I have sadly discovered my Monti corals seem to be affected by the increasingly infamous 'Monti eating nudi's'. This of course is quite distressing for me to say the least. If you would like a specimen for your review I located one today that is about 1/4 inch long and am happy to send it to you. It is tanish white with frilly protrusions along both sides going down its back. Is this Nudibranch the known porite eating Phestilla Minor? Here is a link I'm sure you have seen before
http://www.seaslugforum.net/phesmino.htm
What suggestions of treatment & eradication might you suggest.
I've read 30 second fresh water dips, Yellow Wrasse to eat the Nudi's, Sea Chem. reef dips. I'm very interested in your thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks very much, I know your opinion will be very helpfull!

[Anthony Calfo]

Cheers, my friend

hmmm... where to begin. I have been asked this question many times (as many of us have/have pondered it). My dilemma with the question is two-fold:

firstly, there is not clear biological control as of yet. Something surely exists... we just have not identified it yet. I have no strong preference for any of the currently popular treatments (although did hear something interesting about making a magnesium chloride solution at "seawater" strength/salinity and using it as a dip to purge unwanted motile organisms)

Secondly (and I say this to you with all due respect and kindness/empathy)... but it both peeves me and boggles my mind that aquarists will spend thousands of dollars on their system to take charge (big responsibility) of countless living creatures... and then play russian roulette with unquarantined animals. It staggers me and defies explanation.

If every aquarist would behave like a scientist or good animal husbandry professional in this one way only... countless lives and money would be saved along with much grief and heartache.

The rule is simple: everything wet (!) must be quarantined for 4 weeks in isolation. Practically no exceptions.

If we all do this with our corals, snails, fishes, macroalgae, live rock etc... the quality of our lives and our captives lives would be tremendously improved.

Even if the new acquisition has been sitting healthy for 4 weeks at your friends house or at the LFS... what of the other new/ unquarantined animals that may have been added days or minutes before yours was bagged. Or the movement of a hand scraping algae from an infected tank (tank of new imports without symptoms yet) to the system where your new piece was just pulled from?

The scenarios for possible points of contamination are remarkable and many are not obvious.

Hence the rule of strict 4 week QT at your house.

Your aquarium and livestock are worth the patience and investment in a cheap 10 QT tank :)

Whew! OK... sorry abou the rant. Truly not intended to slight you at all, mate... rather proferred here for the benefit of other/future readers of this unecessrily hot topic (pest nudis).

My present advice to you is to remove all infected pieces now to QT and manually remove them. As they appear to be free of the pest and eggs, remove them to another QT acting as a staging tank. If they live there withjout expressing any symptoms after 4 weeks... they are safe to retrun to the display.

with kind regards,

Anthony