Beat Red Bugs, now have monti eating nudis

[mr_alberta]

Alright, talk about bad luck. I just found a whole lot of Monti eating nudibranches in my tank. They're quickly decimating my mighty caps. Anyone have any clue how to get rid of them?

[muck]

:eek: :eek:

[mr_alberta]

They look like this for anyone who is concerned:

http://www.qrp.net/fish/nudi1.jpg

[Aquattro]

Evil looking things. How big?

[mr_alberta]

Some of the larger ones are nearly a cm long, most <cm big. They are really hard to see unless you use a flashlight. They seem to like the underside of the cap where it is shaded. If you shine your flashlight on them, the cap will look like its fuzzy underneath :eek:

[mr_alberta]

Also, thanks to Fastfish for the PM. I'll see what I can do!

[Delphinus]

Wow, tough break. :frown: Good luck. I have no idea what I'd do. FW dip the corals perhaps? :confused:

[Jack]

Dang, the nudis are worst than red bugs! Good luck.

[IslandReefer]

In the article I read, the author couldn't find a natural predator or treatment.
He beat them by physically harvesting them with a flashlight and tweezers... :eek:
Good luck.....I hope someone else has better news, the way Murphy works they should be showing up on my caps any day now :rolleyes:

[Beverly]

I found a couple of threads that discuss these nudis:

Dipping advice on page 2:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=448231&highlight=nudibranch+AND+eating+AND+corals

Near bottom of page:

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001063;p=1

[Willito]

Tought luck Harvey, I had those once on my Monti but ever sinse I treated the colony, I haven't seen any for months. They do like the shaded areas and will comsume your coral to the bone. They're not fast by any means but they do multiply. How I treated the affected colony was I took the piece out the tank and placed it under running water. Be careful to submerge only the affected areas. I then used a tweezer to pick and scrape them off. I did this once for about a minute and placed it back in the tank. The damaged area was about a 1x1" and took about 1.5 month to heal. I have not seen any Nudi's since and that was over 6 months ago.

[mr_alberta]

What I'm doing now is soaking the colony in some tank water and lugols for about 10 minutes or so. Then I go in with the flashlight and turkey baster and blast those guys off. I'll probably be doing this every 2 days for the next month or so.

Anyone know where I can get a couple litres of lugols? :rolleyes:

[Willito]

[quote="newguy"] I'll probably be doing this every 2 days for the next month or so.
quote]

That seems like a lot of work. How large of an area is affected? Are they all over the coral or just isolated to an area. If they are just in couple areas, try my method. I find that they don't scatter like red bugs but rather stay together in clumps. This is why manually excutting them is possible.

[mr_alberta]

Hi Will,

The area affected is very very large. I noticed the problem a few days ago, but I thought it was a reaction to my interceptor dosing or something other in my tank, so the nudi's have unfortunately been left uncheck for who knows how long.

My iodine dip yesterday yeilded about 50 nudibranches :eek:

[Willito]

I know what you mean, they can easily be mistaken for detritus and such. If you have success with the iodine, then just keep up with that. Hope you get them all.

[KrazyKuch]

Sorry to hear harvey....50 wow thats alot!!!

[Gools]

I've also heard yellow wrasses, can sometimes take care of them, but it's like a copperband eating aptasia, hit and miss.