About a month ago (couple weeks after MACNA XX)I woke up in the middle of the night for some reason and decided to go look at the 75 gallon. I really enjoy looking at our tanks in the middle of the night because I get to see the hustle and bustle of all the copepods, amphipods, mysis shrimp, my money cowrie, peanut worms, tons of bristle worms, montipora eatting nudibranches, and feed wait.... MONTIPORA EATING NUDIBRANCHES??!! WHAT?! Oh man... So it is about 1:30am and I flip the light on in the living room and start gathering my supplies. Now I have never dealt with these nudi's before, but have read extensively about them (I do fancy the Montipora genus). So I skim through my favorite threads about eradicating them. I pull out one of my bottles of Betadine solution and go to work. I rip every Monti out of my display, take a screw driver and pry every piece that had encrusted so nicely onto the rocks, destroyed what I could not pull off of the rocks (so the nudi's could only get to the pieces I could remove to treat later). I dipped them in a STRONG betadine dip of 1ml of betadine to 100ml of tank water. I soak every piece in the solution for 4 minutes. I then use a turkey baster to blast every nook and cranny to make sure I get all these things off. I then use a flashlight to check for egg clusters which are about the size of a straight pin head. I toothbrushed those off in the betadine solution. After it was all said and done I had removed 4 good sized colonies that had encrusted very well, one mini colony, four frags. The purple rim yellow cap was soaked a little longer that it should have and was close to death, but it has bounced back. So far after inspecting every week there after I have found no nudi's in the 75gal display. I determined that the nudi's must have hitchhiked in on a clam I purchased at MACNA XX this year, which was in a tank with many different types of coral frags. The only thing I put directly into the display of my system. There were no nudi's in the frag tank at the time. QUARANTINE!!! QUARANTINE!!! QUARANTINE!!!
Now for last night... dun dun dun! Yesterday morning after I was dressed for work, I checked on the frag tank. Everything was looking good, except..... awe man!!! NOT AGAIN!!! After work I came home and started to work on the frag tank. Montipora eating nudibranches on the monti's in the frag tank, including Chris's orange cap which had recovered quite nicely in there. Now, here is what I figured out last night. I brought in the nudi's on a new monti I purchased at the Memphis frag swap. BUT, it was from a coral that was probably maricultured which means it was fragged but grown out in the sea, not in a closed system. I know this because I found "petrified" nudi's in the superglue I used to cover up the sprigs of algae growing on the edges of the coral. I did not notice the nudi's while they were in the quarantine tank because I apparently glued them and they were dead, but I did not seal the entire bottom of the coral which was riddled with tiny holes where a few nudi's could hide. Anyhow, I found so many on Chris's now very well growing cap colony that I fragged off a couple of spots that were not infested and disposed of the rest (sorry Chris, I will get you a large piece again). I found several on the other frags I had in the system. I did the same procedure as before. I will post some pictures I took last night of my "decontamination station". I removed all the nudi's and threw out the frags that had egg masses. We will see how this round will go. I checked all the colonies in the display again and there were no nudi's or egg masses. I would never wish this on anyone, it is terrible!!!! If there is one piece of advice I can offer, ALWAYS quarantine your corals for at least 2 weeks before introducing them to your display!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!
Good Advice! I typically dip all of my corals and check them over real well before adding them to my display but for the most part i haven't been quarantining my corals. After reading this I will definitely have to start. Thanks for the warning.
Here is a thread with several pictures so you can get a since of how tiny these things are. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=6041320 I will post an update of what I find later.
Blake, thanks for sharing. I think sharing these kind of first hand experiences are one of the most valuable things about belonging to a great club like this. If we really listen to each other, and learn from our own and others mistakes, we can become that much better. Also, it can save us all headache as well as money. Thanks again Blake.
Thanks! I think things like this have been in the long run positive events due to the fact I become a more diligent in my procedures. I will from now on ALWAYS quarantine ALL corals for at least 2 weeks (probably more) regardless of their origin or species. As of this evening I have not spotted any more nudi's, but this means very little because the adults may be gone, but any egg masses I might have missed will take a few days to hatch. So for the next week I will be checking daily, and then weekly thereafter.
malachite green dip While brousing I found this concise article on dipping corals which recommends malachite green. http://www.bluezooaquatics.com/resources.asp?show=15 Lugol's doesn't kill the eggs, which hatch in about 4 days, according to the author.
