Help with Nudibranchs

[preons]

I have little white feathery Nudibranchs eating an encrusting montipora. Ive dipped it with Lugols and flatworm exit as I thought they were Flatworms. Nothing died off and they came back two days later. After searching the internet Im pretty sure its Nudis.

Also after not finding any treatments either and seeing horrible stories about them Im thinking I just need to quickly frag and dump the coral.

But I thought I would run it buy you guys, especially if im missing something. Ill get pictures up tonight.

-josh

 

[Reefrooky]

Preons
I had the exact same problem about a month ago. The solution i used was to dip the effected coral in a mixture of betadine and tank water. I added 5ml's of betadine per quart of tank water in a container and dipped/scrubed the coral to loosen up the nudi's and the eggs. They will lay there eggs in the area that they have already consumed so that is were i concentrated the scrubbing with a soft bristled tooth brush. a couple of the corals needed to be dipped twice because the betadine will not kill the eggs. I think that i have gotten them under control, but i am very vigilant to watch for any signs of new nudibranch.

i left the coral in the solution for about10/15 minutes, swishing it around and rinsing in another container of tank water before placing it back in my display tank.

you can get betadine at any drug store to include wall mart for $10/13 dollars for a bottle. i did not trust the nock off brands just the straight betadine.

I dipped about 6 colonies and suffered zero losses.

i hope this info helps you, i know how frustrated i felt watching my corals being devoured.

good luck
Adam

 

[Reefrooky]

Also i wanted to add that i did not invent this proceedure. I owe the credit to a friend of mine who has a 300gal sps tank dedicated to rare varieties of sps. He swears by this dip for all new colonies before he places them in his tank. this will not kill red bugs.

also i rigged up a piece of rigid airline tubbing with a surringe and a very small tip that comes w/ salifert calcium test kits for titrating. I used this at night to suck up the nudibranchs that i could see. (this was before i started dipping)

 

[preons]

Im thinking that the betadine is going to be comparable to the loguls solution i tried. Both are an Iodine dipp. I did a normal iodine dipp and then a long and concentrated one a week later when they returned. I also use the flatworm exit both normal and long and concentrated. I was pretty sure the coral would die from it but it actually looked better for a while. They are back and the stuff I read on RC pretty much said Iodine isnt going to help. And neither is any of the worm or snail killers. They did say that mechanical scrubbing helps but its hard/impossible to eliminate them from coming back.

 

[Reefrooky]

Well it worked for me. All the areas that were eaten have regrown and i have had no subsequent outbreaks since. I will tell you that i was very agressive with this. Call me OCD but whenever i saw a nudi i pulled the coral out and dipped and scrubbed plus mechanically removed I,E sucked them out with the suringe. Remember that the Iodine will not kill the unhatched nudibrachs. You will have to dip muliple times to get them under control. I have looked for info regarding their hatching cylcle and found no info.

Well good luck

Adam

 

[preons]

Thanks Adam. I agree it looks like Ill have to be very diligent. Its definately worth a try. The nudis are rather visable as adults but I cant see the eggs and they have about a one week bounce back period. Im just thinking that I need to get that coral out of there and quarentined before it spreads. Any one else want to chime in before i contemplate coralcide or should I say fragicide?

 

[Reefrooky]

I dont know if you have seen this yet? The Potasium Permanganate looks to be lethal to adults and eggs.

Adam


http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-09/eb/index.php

 

[Reefrooky]

Here is the thread that the link above came from. People are begining to perform trial runs to determine effects and pro vs con.

what part of Seattle do you live? I was up at Mcord AFB/Ft Lewis a couple of years ago. Very nice area.


http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1348056

 

[krisfal]

I fought these for a while and the frag and dump method is what finally worked for me. I did the lugols dip and scrubbing for several weeks, only making limited headway and the corals did not respond well. In the end I took frags from the center of the montis (well away from the areas the nudis had consumed) and dumped the rest. It has been a little over a year with no return of the montis. The one that was in the worst shape I was able to save 3 dime size frags. They grew rapidly, I gave one away but the two I have are now larger than the original colony 5"+

After fragging, I did follow up with weekly lugols dips for about a month.

 

[Curtswearing]

Google Praziquantel

My preference is Prazi Pro by Hikari, that's just my preference.

Trust me on this one.