How do I remove Pinufius rebus on my yellow porites

Chin_Lee · #1 12-30-2004, 06:22 AM

I started seeing these guys on my yellow porites and I was wondering what they were

They camafloge very well with the porites because they are the same color and have the same polyp like bumps on their backs. Did a search on the internet and came across this article:
http://www.seaslugforum.net/factsheet.cfm?base=pinurebu

It doesn't say if its bad or good but my interpretation of

Quote:

As the digestive gland contains particles of the sponge colony, which the nudibranch is eating, and the zooxanthellae, it has obtained from its food, Pinufius exactly matches the colour of the part of the Porites colony on which it is presently feeding.

tells me its probably BAD

Now how do I get rid of these guys? Does anybody know or have a good suggestion?

[/img]

albert_dao · #2 12-30-2004, 07:41 AM

Rocket launchers are usually pretty efficient at fixing small critter problems.

EmilyB · #3 12-30-2004, 08:06 AM

Then put your head between your knees and kiss your %$s goodbye.

Delphinus · #4 12-30-2004, 02:04 PM

Chin, I'm not sure, but since Brad was having some luck with FW dips removing the flatworms on his acros, maybe start with a FW dip of the porites and see if they come off. I'm not sure what procedure he followed or for how long, hopefully he or Steve sees this and can fill in some of the details.

StirCrazy · #5 12-30-2004, 03:21 PM

hmmm not sure if a Nudi is going to be as susceptible to a fresh water dip as flatworms but worth a try. make some RO water in a bucket then match the temp and PH (if you have a buffer) I don't worry about PH myself but I do lose the odd chunk once and a while.

try swish it around for 10 seconds in the fresh water and put it back into a cup of the salt water. I do this 2 or 3 times. if I am brave like when we did the ones for the flat worms I swish for 30 seconds then back into salt water but that can be a little hard on the corals.

Steve

Chin_Lee · #6 12-31-2004, 08:16 AM

Well I decided to take the yellow porites out of the tank and put it into a white bowl with the regular tank water. With a pipette from one of my ex-hagen test kits, i started sucking out the ones i could see but some of them were good clingers and was kinda tough to suck them out so I reversed my technique and started blowing them off with the pipette. OMG ... the big ones blew off and small baby ones blew off and medium ones blew off the porites.

After about 45 minutes, I had blown off 40-60 of these nudibranches on my porites. Some of the baby ones were so small, the fit into the polyp hole of the coral and it was looking disgusting with the number of floating little yellow bugs in this bowl. I began playing around with these guys and added fresh water to the bowl (without the porites of course). they still held their shapes and didn't curl up. I swished them around and the ones that had gripped the bottom of the bowl didn't let go. So I suspect that a freshwater dip probably wouldn't have gotten them off like flatworms. I left them in the white bowl for about 20 minutes and I noticed that they were leaching out the yellow pigment that they had "stolen" from the porites to camofloage themselves. Very very neat.
There were so many of these suckers that I am suprprised my porites was still doing relatively well. Now I will check on it again next week and do the same thing to see if anymore of them showed up.
But for anybody who owns porites, look at them closely to see if they have any of these nudibraches. They WILL be the same color as your porites regardless what color it is because they eat and display the pigment of your coral.