Montipora Eating Nudibranch

[jrbiala]

I finally figured out why I haven't been able to keep montiporas for very long. I flushed out multiple nudibranchs from a previously healthy montipora that had begun receding. Now for the question. What is there to do about it? I will watch out for more, and try and blast and suck them out. Anything else that anyone has tried that has met with success? Does anything eat these things?

[jrbiala]

Bump. Anyone?

[JOSE CASAS]

Look in the SPS Keepers forum it has lots of info on monti eating nudis.

[c.rob]

Check Melev's site . I am pretty sure he recommends several types of wrasse.

[j.prostrata]

Jr get yourself some camel shrimps and a qt tank and put the monti in there. Seems thats anew breakthrough in germany for aefw and monti nuddies.


http://www.korallen-zucht.de/index.p..._id=52&clang=1

[HBtank]

I keep a yellow coris wrasse

My yellow cleaned out a zoanthid nudribranch problem I had... I have no doubt it would handle a monti nudi problem. They are easier to hunt..

Anyways, JME, I think wrasse are an awesome first line of defense in coral tanks.

[jrbiala]

Thanks for the replies. I did a search using montipora eating nudibranchs, and did not find much. But after perusing the threads manually, I did find some useful information. I searched Melev's site before posting here, and did not find anything on nudi's per se. I've read that the six-line wrasse and the yellow wrasse have helped control the population of nudi's. Would any member of the halichores genus work? I had been thinking about the halichores melanarus. The camel-back shrimps are a novel idea, as well.

[HBtank]

I believe all hali's have been reported as working.

Though I have seen many individual reports of yellow coris wrasse and the sea grass wrasse as confimed to have worked on nudibranch pests, and is the reason I went with the yellow.

[Telecaster]

I've had good success with six-line wrasses and leopard wrasses with monti nudis. For flatworms I've had success with scooter blennies.

[gasman059]

Originally posted by HBtank
I keep a yellow coris wrasse

My yellow cleaned out a zoanthid nudribranch problem I had... I have no doubt it would handle a monti nudi problem. They are easier to hunt..

Anyways, JME, I think wrasse are an awesome first line of defense in coral tanks.

true 100%
I keep 1 coris and 2 radiants as well as two leopards.

[jrbiala]

I do have a blue-sided fairy wrasse. I suppose these don't work. I'm looking into the halichores melanarus.

[kirstenk]

Radiant Wrasse works also. Wrasses will control your problem but will never get rid of them. Not totally.

Effective Dips that kill/stun nudi's but not the eggs:

TMPCC
Revive Coral Cleaner
coralrx
Levamisole

Potassium Permanganate will kill nudi's and eggs but is very rough on the corals.

HTH

[Sara B]

Originally posted by kirstenk

Potassium Permanganate will kill nudi's and eggs but is very rough on the corals.

HTH

I've used the Potassium Permanganate and the only downfall is that the monti's turn brown, which in my opinion is better than dead from the Nudi's. They also started to color back up within a week or two for me.

[drifty]

banana wrasse worked for me

[kirstenk]

Sara.....how long of dip and at what strenght? TIA

[Sara B]

2 hour treatment only with 325 mg (42.95 mg/L) of Potassium Permanganate and 2 gallons of water. Use a heater to keep the temperature stable through the treatment. Move the corals out of the treatment tank and into another bucket of saltwater to rinse the corals for 15 minutes and then move them to QT, etc. until you know the main tank is cleared of the pests. HTH.

Edit: I received my treatments from a very helpful friend and it came pre-measured. It is a pinkish-purple granules, not a liquid. When added to the saltwater, it's turns the water the same color. From what I understand, it's used in water treatments and can be found at the Home Improvement Stores (Home Depot) and Sears. If I were to get some myself, I would probably get it from here as it may be more "pure", but that's just me! Also, make sure you get a really good scale to measure this out as an overdoes will damage your Monti's!
http://www.chemistrystore.com/potass...rmanganate.htm

[KenStanley]

I recently read a thread that said that the monti eating nudis was very small and best viewed with a magnifying glass (http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...t=praziquantel). Perhaps there are many different species but the ones I’ve seen are nothing like the guy on the above thread described.
I've been helping a friend of mine with his monti eating nudi and acro eating flat worm problem. His nudis were not small at all and very, very aggressive. In fact they were able to kill an entire colony the size of the palm of your hand in less than 1 week. His nudi's were very visible ranging in size from 1/8" to maybe 3/16" long.
We are still in the process of dipping and quarantine and I will give a very detailed report once we have completed the process. I will quickly say we elected to use a stronger concentration with a shorter dip time than I read about in the above referenced thread and it appears to have been very successful. We mixed 2 ml of PraziPro per liter of water for the Acro eating flat worms and dipped them for only 15 minutes. Basically the flat worms began to fall off and die with in 5 minutes or so and within the 15 minute dip time there was almost no movement at all of any of the flat worms in the dip bowl. (As a side note we found it very helpful to use a clear glass bowl placed on a black background so you could see what was going on much easier) The acros handled the dip very well with minimal discoloration (unlike the iodine solutions we tried). Almost all of the acros showed good polyp extension with in a day of the dip. One week after the dip we dipped again and we were astounded to again find hundreds of flat worms. We have now gone to a dipping the corals ever other day for the past week. Last night we did our 3rd dipping and we saw NO flat worms. ZERO. Although we do see some of the corals are beginning to show signs of stress. I’m not sure if it is due to the flat worms or the treatment, however most pieces are doing well with very good polyp extension.
The nudis appear to be a much tougher kill. For them we worked our way up to a concentration of 5ml per liter of water. Again the montis appear to handle the dip very well with little discoloration, at least initially. Our first attempt we used the same concentration and duration on the nudis as we did the flat worms which in hindsight was not a good move. One week after the initial treatment we still had nudis. Lots of nudis. We adopted the same procedure for the montis as we did the acros and last night on the 3rd dip of the week we saw NO nudis. We are going to dip every thing one more time this Saturday.
I’ll provide a more depth discussion once we are 100% certain we have eliminated all of the problems. We suspect that perhaps the treatment did not kill the eggs and we waited too long in between dips thus allowing the eggs to hatch and reestablish themselves.
The most important thing I have learned in this entire process is............. DIP & Quarantine EVERYTHING. With way more than 100 acros and monti I never want to go through what he has gone through.

After reading this thread and other threads I have decide to set up a "cleaner" quarantine tank. There is a report out of Germany that camel shrimp will eat flat worms & their eggs (http://www.korallen-zucht.de/index....e_id=52&clang=1) With well over 100 acros and montis I'm not going to take a chance. In fact maybe it is a good idea to just periodically place pieces from your main tank into a "cleaner" tank for a few minutes just in case.

[sjfishguy]

Sixlines are reported to be a 50/50 shot when it comes to zoo nudis. I got one for my zoo nudi problem and I got lucky and he wiped them all out within a month. I would say the sixline is worth a shot on the monti nudis: its a nice, cheap, totally reef safe fish that gives a good chance at curing the problem.

[jrbiala]

KenStanley, let us know how the praziquentil works out. By the way, what is the scientific name for the radiant wrasse?

[KenStanley]

Jr, yeah I'm going to give a complete report. By the time I am finished I should be an almost expert at AEFWs.

I have a tale of whoa for everyone. I like a lot of people have a circle of friends that are into reef keeping. When one of us gets a nice piece, like lots of you probably do, we share it once it grows. About four or five months ago one guy came down with red bugs. No biggie really. There’s a relatively easy fix for that... Interceptor. Then someone else said they have red bugs. So as you can imagine I began to really check my tank. About 3 weeks ago I found redbugs. Which really sent me and my friends into overdrive in looking for AEFWs and Monti Eating Nudi’s. None of us have exchanged frags since April, although I have added several pieces from LFS. The thing is my tank looks AWESOME. It has never looked better. Unfortunately I found out Saturday I too have AEFWs. We were doing my friends last dip for the week and figured ***..... Let's dip a couple of my pieces. We took out a couple of pieces from my tank and dipped them. We found several dozen of them. Some pieces had alot more than others and some appeared not to have any. So far there are no nudis and my montis show absolutely no signs of being eaten. Hopefully, I’ll get lucky and not have the nudis to contend with.

Based on my experience guys............ visually checking your pieces may not be good enough. My tank is beautiful. It’s in the best shape ever. I'm thinking now that by the time you see them you are severely infested. I’m going to keep a journal as to what is being done and how successful it is. I’ll even post pictures if someone can tell me how to post a pic inside of the thread.

Saturday my friend and I ended up dipping most of my pieces in a 2ml/liter mixture of PraziPro for 15 minutes. Then rinsed everything in natural sea water and returned them to the tank. I took pictures Sunday morning and if anyone can tell me how to post a picture into the post I’ll be more than happy to show you how the coral looks after the dipping in PraziPro. My acros are beautiful. You can not even tell they were dipped. I will say one thing, based on my experience PraziPro is by far better than iodine dips. After dipping in the PraziPro for 15 minutes at the rate of 2ml per liter............ there were dozens upon dozens of dead flat worms and some of the acros even had good some polyp extension during the dip. Prazipro in my opinion just may be the way to go.

After ThanksGiving I'll be going into full combat mode and I'll keep everyone updated.

[yongsum]

great contributions everyone. i will be sure to experiment with prazipro myself. i've also used KMnO4 with success but it sure is strong. anyone else tried the camelback shrimps ?