Say hello to my little friend

I recently had an outbreak of nudibraches in my tank. If you notice my signature that was my tank. Now 90% of the zoas are gone, and about half of those are in this 15 gal. I had so many baby nudis on my zoas, so bad, it looked like ants on food, BAD. I have been fighting these things for ever but there were too many to twizz off. I started reading some old posts and find a guy who promised that a 30sec hot water dip with ro and shaking the zoas after for one minute after in the hot water would rid them all. So I went for it. IT WORKS!!!! About 90 degrees and 30 seconds and swished them for 1 minute, and almost all are dead. I have tweezed a few medium ones. But its much easier to get them in a 15gal. All have opened or are starting to open. Some did die but was worth it.

 

Good to know... thanks for sharing.+1

 

How many egg clusters did you clean off? I also suspect you missed some egg clusters.

 

Does iodine kill nudi's and their eggs?

 

Iodine kills nudi's, but nothing kills the eggs without killing the zoa's too. Potassium Permanganate has come a long way for killing nudi's and their eggs on Montipora species, but little has been done for zoa's. I plan on changing that if I ever get zoa nudi's again.


The only to get rid of them to date, is to kill the nudi's and scrape the eggs off and quarantine the zoa's in different tank. Nudi's WILL cruise the tank looking for other colonies of zoa's which means just because you killed all you seen on the colony, you did NOT kill all of them in the tank. Larval nudi's are as small as fine grains of sands, so they are easily over looked.

 

Yeah I got a few egg clusters, carefully inspected all. Every single zoa, luckly I have really good eyes. Iodine does not kill nudis, not like a hot bath will. I have tried everything, I really won't ever buy zoas again. Between pox, some kind of fungus, and nudis zoas aare always coming down with something. Also once they are sick its very difficult to get them to come back.

 

If your iodine wasnt killing them, then you were not using enough, lol! Hot RO does the same thing as room temperture RO water. Freshwater kills nudi's, plain and simple, the temp doesnt matter.

Unless you're superman, you didnt see the eggs inside the rocks the zoa's are on, or the eggs on the rocks in the tank. They dont just lay eggs on the poylps. Im speaking from personal experience. I will get zoa nudi's again even if I have to buy them to try potassium permanganate on them. I have had them, but dipping with Lugol's and freshwater dips along with quarantining them I am nudi free.

 

Do all zoas come with these pests?

 

No they dont, but once you get a pest, its hard to get rid of them. The list of potential pests is a long one. Even Tangs and other "Herbivore" fish that are suppose to be reef safe will eat/nip at zoa's.

 

I see what you mean. I've been wanting to get some zoas and I didn't know if this was something that came on it, unless they are already on it in the store I guess.