How To Rid of Montipora Nudibranches ~Updated~

A little background...

Based on my reading on few articles, these aeolids seem to reproduce asexually-- meaning one nudibranch can lay hundreds of eggs and does not need a female to do so. In my researching, they seem to like M. Confusa and M. Capricornis the best, but in no way are limited to those species of Montipora. These pests are very voracious!!

Monti eating nudis are very easy to spot.. but the eggs is a different story. You will have to stare at the coral closely (and maybe use a magnifying glass) to see the egg clusters. By the way, a regular nudibranch lays eggs in a spiral fashion - which is easy to see. Monti eating nudis lay eggs in a cluster formation. To make matters worse, their eggs are semi transparent!

Treatment

There are many treatments for this pest including Lugols dip, FW dip (not recommended), and Levamisole, but most of these can only eliminate the nudibranchs but not the actual eggs. Here's what I will be doing::

1. Break the infested part and throw it away. No matter how clean the coral looks, the eggs are usually hidden in deep crevices so you can't take a chance here. ONLY KEEP the top part of the coral and throw away the rest.

2. After you cut the coral, again you will have to visually inspect it carefully for eggs. Remember you are looking for CLUSTERS of eggs. If you see them, you need to scrape these with a soft toothbrush and clean it with tankwater.

3. After the coral has been cleaned, prepare two containers - one with three cups of tankwater + 20 drops of Lugols or 4 cap fulls of any coral dip (i will be using coral RX) and the other with just tank water. You will now dip the coral for about 10 mins while still inspecting for eggs.

4. If you see more eggs, scrape it again with your toothbrush. When you are done, dip the coral one last time. This time into the clean tankwater.. this is to finally rinse it off.

5. You're done.

Summary

If you find a nudibranch in your tank, you will have to do this procedure for EVERY Montipora that you have. An ideal solution is to transfer the "treated" colonies to a treatment tank and observe them for a week or two. If no nudis show up then you can put them back in the display. This procedure should also be used when acquiring NEW specimens - regardless of whether or not the nudis are visible. Look for areas that are white and no flesh - this is a dead giveaway that a nudi is present.

Some people have reported good results by keeping wrasses in their display tanks. While this is a good "natural" population control method, it is just a temporary band-aid solution and the original problem usually comes back after a while.

As always. a quarantine procedure on NEW specimens is highly recommended.

Please post any questions that you may have, and I'll try to answer them. :-/


Supply list::

2 - 1 gallon ice cream pails
1 - with my dip (Coral RX)
1 - with tank water

frag plugs
To glue the pieces i have to cut off

frag glue
To glue the frags onto the plugs

1 - unused toothbrush
Im going to be using the softest one i can buy (dont want to damage corals)

a pair of bone cutters

AND the most important is PATIENCE ive been reading that its easier to throw out the monti's and wait a year for the larvae to die, but! im up for the challenge!

 

good luck bro...thanks for the info

 

Thanks man, its a pretty long process and ive got about 6 monti's in my tank but only one shows the signs so im going to try and stop it before it hits my others people are just telling me to throw it out and not risk it but, id rather try and fight it then just give up!

 

sounds like a good plan of attack. when i had these on my zoas i did dips in iodine and fresh water. I ended up taking each frag out and using a tweezers and magnifying glass to pick at anything that didn't look normal. i ended up squishing some zoas but not any more then i do when i frag them. I cant wait to see how this works out for you.

 

Im a little nervous for the time period it can take, because its my understanding that the eggs detach and hatch away from the monti, so in reality they can hit some of my other monti's or might even be there and havent done anything to them yet tomorrow this starts and will be very photo packed as i want to document my progress with my fellow reefers just in case someone else runs into the situation i am in, i learned my lesson by not dipping (thought it was un needed if bought from a trusty source) but that is not the case as the store didnt even know what they were :-/

 

good luck on your treatment. In my experience I hate to say this but I have found it is best to just cut the loss of the infected monti and pull it out of your system. As you know, the eggs are what are impossible to kill. It takes only one nudibranch to lay hundreds of eggs (they do not need a partner) as you have said above

I have been burned a couple times with MEN. I bought a very large capicornis that was from a reputable store who bought the piece from a customer that they said had a pest free tank. I was just starting out in SPS and this was one of my bigger buys. I did do a dip and placed it in my tank. Did well for a couple weeks. As I later found out the eggs hatched and the infestation began again! I had a couple other small monti frags in my 135g tank and those were actually already infected. I pulled all of the monti out of my tank and had several QT tanks set up. I would dip them and place them in one tank. The second tank was set up and running and after a couple days I removed the pieces and dipped them again this time moving to second tank. I also had removed any piece of monti that appeared to have anything on it. I completely cleaned out the first tank and ran it again so that when it was time to dip again I could move them to that new, clean tank. (I fortunately had the big DT up and running so had a good source of clean, stable water). This kept on for a couple weeks. I ended up having about an inch of monti left when I finally gave up and called it quites. This piece actually looked ok but i left it out to dry out. Low and behold here were a bunch of tiny nudi on that piece (even though it was dipped probably 10 times)

It got to the point that I was dipping my corals in something that I will not mention on this site because the infestion was so bad (the reason I will not mention it is because it is VERY risky to the coral and I had someone helping me that knew exactly what he was doing and at what dose....he made me promise to never broadcast what it was) Even that did not help.

I got burned a second time a year or so later. The LFS had dipped all the corals when they got them in, so when I examined it I could not find anything on it. Well even with my dips, a couple months later I had the biggest nudibranchs I had ever seen. These guys were as big as my thumbnail. I was told later that the LFS had a MEN outbreak that they were not telling people and thought that by dipping them they would be ok

I kept my tank completely monti free for 8 months after each infestation. I have read you only need 3 months but I knew of some people who had reinfestation upto 6 months later. So I figured better safe then sorry.

How I treat now is I have 4 QT tanks set up. I QT all my monti for at least 3-4 months before mixing them with my other montis (I now have several types of high end monti). Fortunately I have only had 1 tank that must be monti free right now because of them but I am also at my max for adding new pieces.

Good luck and I will follow along to see how things go!

 

Looks like youve had the luck ive been having!! as soon as i get my frag plugs and such i will be starting this up tomorrow, i pulled about 30 off my purple monti and i will have to start fragging them up tomorrow, unfortunately i dont have the space or any extra tanks laying around to run a quarantine tank at all, i wish i did even in a 10g tank! i did keep one kessil so i really should go buy a 10g to quarantine my corals! im still doing some research on the best tactics to kill these buggers, so far i havent noticed them on any other monti's but there so small an eye can really miss them, the only reason i started to research was because i saw my coral starting to fade away in an odd spot and luckily my coral dip arrived today and low and behold a mess on my hands.. im hoping to stop this, from what i read just a few mins ago the adults lay eggs close to the spot where they are eating but they do it in the polyps so ill basically be cutting a bunch of mine up, and will only have 1" max pieces i also begin my red bug treatment tomorrow as well, so ive got a big day ahead of me and lots to do yet, i started my 30 gallons of new saltwater just a few mins ago getting ready for the battle!

 

I hope you get ride of them

 

good luck!

 

Alright, so i started the process today about 12:00AM CST and got done about a half hour ago! My findings are pretty interesting and i was able to get some pretty awesome pictures that i will be posting, all in all i had about a 4" piece and ended up with about 1 1/2" frag, but i do believe i got them all and the damage was worse then i had anticipated!! Here are some pics! in a few of them you can see the eggs, now they were VERY small and was lucky to get some shots of them, i was using a magnifying glass and they didnt even pick them up, but somehow technology was able to aid in the shots!! Here are some pics!