Montipora Eating Nudis

[Andy O]

Ok. As a follow up to my last post and after a closer look I think that these may be what is decimating my montis. I have been researching a little bit and have heard things any where from there is no treatment to reeffarmers web site that outlines some different attempts to erradicate them.

Any one have experience with these pests and successful treatment. My biggest problem is that I can't take some of the montis out because they are encrusting on huge pieces of LR (i.e. superman that is getting destroyed). I read also read that there are natural preditors such as the yellow coris wrasse - anyone have experience with this method. This was interesting b/c over the past few days, before I noticed the pests, my solorensis wrasse was picking at the effected montis and I had no idea why -- wonder if it is possible that he is eating them?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Greg Hiller]

I had them once about a year ago in a frag tank. They can be killed with the Levamisole (40 ppm for 5 hours as a dip, then turkey baster them off and scrape off any eggs) but there is no i-tank treatment. You have to repeat the dip every 3-5 days or so for probably a 2 week period until they all hatch out, and you get them all. They also seem to fall off with high concentration dips of iodine based stuff. I think you can dip at 4 ml / liter providone iodine from the drug store for maybe 20 minutes, then blast off any hangers on. Once you get them all, they DON'T come back unless you add another infected colony. FWIW, purple caps are their favorite food, but they will diversify even to the M. palawanensis.

I would think it might be quite difficult to treat large colonies. If there is encrusting section of the Montipora on your rock you might have to kill those sections. A paste of calcium oxide/hydroxide power applied for 10 minutes then siphoned off will work there.

Wrasses might control them, but you'd probably still have a low level of infection.