Monti Eating Nudis..help

[Hairytank]

Arggg, one of my Montis suddenly had a bleached whitespot...so upon inspection, I found what I believe to be monti eating nudibrancs..here is the best photo I could get of one of the slightly mangled (removal was not a gentle) beasts..



All of the monti caps appear to have nudis on them at this point... but not exhibiting signs of colour loss/death. The adults were pulled/scaped off. There were none on the digitata or encrusting superman.

Have read about possible remidies such as: RO FW dips, iodine dips, tropic marin pro coral dip, Praziquantel (Prazipro by Hikari), poly ox, peroxide...
Anyone have experience with any/all of the above? Is there a natural preditor?

[OCDP]

Originally Posted by Hairytank

Arggg, one of my Montis suddenly had a bleached whitespot...so upon inspection, I found what I believe to be monti eating nudibrancs..here is the best photo I could get of one of the slightly mangled (removal was not a gentle) beasts..



All of the monti caps appear to have nudis on them at this point... but not exhibiting signs of colour loss/death. The adults were pulled/scaped off. There were none on the digitata or encrusting superman.

Have read about possible remidies such as: RO FW dips, iodine dips, tropic marin pro coral dip, Praziquantel (Prazipro by Hikari), poly ox, peroxide...
Anyone have experience with any/all of the above? Is there a natural preditor?

Sorry I can't help, but if you need any Tropic Marin Coral, I have some (I don't believe it's the pro stuff, though)

[christyf5]

So from what I have read, the Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure kills the adults but not the eggs. Potassium permanganate kills both the adults and the eggs but it can be difficult to get ahold of. However, you need to be able to remove all of the montipora from your tank in order for this to work as you can't treat the whole tank with these chemicals.

I had them a few months ago, I removed every M. capricornis I had. I had one crappy digitata growing in the back forty that I couldn't reach and appeared unaffected. I also had a prized M. undata out the front that appeared unaffected and as it was out front I kept an eagle eye on it. I ended up treating all of my caps with potassium permanganate which did a bang up job. I then couldn't get the darned things back into position and ended up fragging them (note: I didn't keep my tank monti free for x number of weeks as you're "supposed to", I just chucked them back in). I now have only a couple of chunks of cap in my tank which are unmounted and land in all sorts of weird unhealthy places. I keep making less room for them as I stuff other corals into my tank.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else you can use to treat the eggs as they are difficult to scrape off (if you do indeed have eggs).

Ok so on to natural predators. Well while I was trying to take a photo of my nudis I had carefully placed into photographing position, my tailspot wrasse swooped in and ate them. I think this contributed to not having an intense outbreak as there was plenty of capricornis' to go around. There have also been reports that yellow wrasses and other Halichoeres wrasses eating them. I have no doubt that a 6 line would likely eat them as well, but haven't read any information on this. One difficulty in keeping your tank nudi free with the wrasse would be the scrolling of the coral. I found most of my nudi infestation was within the scrolls where my lardbutt wrasse couldn't get into (his girth is rather substantial). A smaller/younger/less well fed wrasse might have been able to get in there and get them (a theory anyways).

Good luck!

[rocketlily]

I lost a monti due to these and have been afraid ever since to put another one in the tank. There are some very good articles on the internet about research done on these ( sorry I can't find the link to any right now). The only way I could try to control them before I gave up was to use Reef Glue on the egg masses and tweezer off the adults every day. For me it was a battle that I didn't win.

I hope you do better.

[Hairytank]

Thank you for the offer OCDP! I spoke with Kevin from RC tonight and they have some Tropic Marin Pro and so it is probably good idea just to have some on hand anyways.

Christy,
Thank you for the information, I have a contact that may be able to get some potassium permanganate. Fortunately/unfortunately, I do not have too many scrolls in the montis (yet ) so a wrasse may be a good bet. Besides, I was planning on picking a wrasse up anyways.

I suppose, with more and more of these "experiences" I am learning a great deal about reef keeping...all of course the hard way!

Thanks again for the info.

[Ian]

For potassium permaganate ..comtact a high school chem teacher....they should be able to get you some easy. It is a common chemical used in the lab. It is cheap also to get it that way....

[rocketlily]

Potassium permaganate is also used to backwash iron filters in homes. We used to buy it from Big Iron Drilling in Edmonton.