Hard Lesson Learned the Hard Way

[ReeferPatt]

Been away for a while. Got married to a great woman. Started remodeling my home. Paint and floors ect.
Anyway tank had been doing great. Stopped feeding the blue coral method for a while due to being to busy. When the dust settled I noticed that All of my monti. caps or anything that had the name montipora in front of it was starting to bleach. Couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. They were going fast. Then I saw them. Little white pcs. of what looked like rice with little frilly things waving in the air. Montipora eating nudibranchs. I litterally broke all the caps apart and started dipping them in a iodine solution. To no avail. I dipped them several times. Finally I had to just let them run their course and die. At the end I lost 99% of my monti. caps and about 50% of my monti digitata.
I hadn't bought or added any new sps/acros for quite some time. A new lfs store opened and had some really nice corals. Everything seemed healthy. I bought a really nice encrusting montipora and added it to my collection. WITHOUT QUARANTINE OR DIPPING. Big mistake. About 6 weeks or so later I had a catasrophe on my hands.
Whats the lesson learned. ALWAYS, ALWAYS quarantine and or dip new Montipora anything before adding to your display. Otherwise you might pay the ultimate price and that is heartbreaking. I lost capricornis as big as dinner plates with multiple shelves. I have 2 pcs. I was able to save. One about 4 inches square and one about the size of a quarter. Oh and one pc. about the size of an eraser which came from the encrusting monti. that started it all. Up until this had started I had had no problems with bugs!

 

[Snowboarda42]

Bummer. I'm sorry to hear that. How has the BCM gone for you? I keep wanting to start it but IDK since my tank's so new...

 

[ReeferPatt]

Bummer. I'm sorry to hear that. How has the BCM gone for you? I keep wanting to start it but IDK since my tank's so new...

I had great results with it. Stopped for a while and just started back with it last week. Will feed again tonite. If your tank is fairly new I would hold off for a while and let it mature for a while.

 

[Planet Reef]

Even though it's sold for fish, dogs, cats, etc. Praziquantel/Droncit is a much better dip to kill the monti-eating nudi's than Iodine. In fact, if you get the Iodine to a high enough concentration to kill the nudi's, you're likely to kill your coral as well. My favorite brand to use is Prazipro....kill's them nudi's dead.

 

[Damsel13]

Sorry for your loss.

 

[Jan]

What a tragedy. I feel so bad for you!


PlanetReef, when you add a new monti-something to your tank, do you dip only in this Prazipro or do you do a double dip? Also assuming Prazipro is the brand name, is it readily available in petstores? Any more info. would be appreciated such as concentration in solution, etc.

 

[Planet Reef]

Jan,

This is Curtswearing....Planet Reef is my work account. At home, I do an Iodine dip and a Prazipro dip on all Monti's. At work, it depends on how large the shipment is. If time permits, I do both. If time doesn't permit, I strictly do Prazi.

Prazipro is a form of Praziquantel that is more water soluble than the prazi that you can get if you have connections with a veterinarian. It's made by Hikari (the fish food company). Planet Reef obviously carries Prazipro because I made sure that it did. It is not widely available everywhere but you have a number of excellent fish stores up in your neck of the woods and they could special order you some. If they don't have a supplier, I would be happy to provide them with help if they PM me.

I'm unwilling to put a dosage on the Internet because I'm still experimenting. I've never killed a coral yet but I don't want someone saying, "Curt said use XYZ dosage and my coral died". I will say only this, "The dosage on the instruction label will not kill your Monti. If you decide to experiment with higher doses as I have, that's your choice".

EDIT: Here's some additional info. http://www.uskoi.com/prazipro.htm

 

[Jan]

Thanks, Curt.

 

[jedimike]

I don't want to take this off topic... but what exactly is BCM. I've always wanted a monti and was even thinking about heading to the Shark Reef to get one this weekend.

BTW, sorry to hear about your loss... what a bummer.

 

[ReeferPatt]

I don't want to take this off topic... but what exactly is BCM. I've always wanted a monti and was even thinking about heading to the Shark Reef to get one this weekend.

BTW, sorry to hear about your loss... what a bummer.

Blue Coral Method. It's a feeding method used for feeding sps/lps corals.