Zoa eating nudi's and flatworm exit

davejep · Dec 7, 2013

I have an outbreak of zoa eating nudibanch's.
Luckly its in my frag tank and not main display wich so far is nudi free.
Tank is a 34 gallon RSM130. I removed the carbon and dosed with flatworm exit.
I started with 68 drops. @ 2 drops per gallon, as suggested in my reading on different forums.
I manged to remove 4 adult sized nudi's and put them in a Tupperware container as control.
I wanted to see how long they would survive. After an hour they were still alive. i added another 20 drops to the tank, that emptied the bottle.
I changed the water in the tupperware with tank water so concentration would be the same. Now another hour later the nudi's in the container are still alive.
What the heck?
I though they were supposed to start dieing within minutes.
Does flatworm exit go bad?
I got it from a buddy who bought it new a couple of months ago so should still be good.
Not sure what the next plan of attack should be.
Have read a yellow coris wrasse might be a good plan.
Any suggestions?

NanaReefer · Dec 8, 2013

Flatworm Exit is not used to kill zoa eating nudi's sorry! Nor is a Yellow Corris Wrasse. Both are Flatworm killer's!
Your going to have to manually remove the visible adult nudi's and then dip your corals in something like CoralRX. Even then your going to have to closely inspect each & every frag for nudi eggs.

Reef Fever · Dec 8, 2013

i think sea grass wrasses eat nudis

mnat · Dec 8, 2013

http://www.practicalcoralfarming.com/zoonudis.html

Use it as a dip so you can concentrate it more.

pirutgrrrl · Dec 8, 2013

Melanorus wrasse

If you're in so cal come and get this fish from me! He's removed a huge zoa eating nudibranch population from my tank in no time. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen one since I put him in the tank. He's docile and beautiful to boot.

Ninjapotamus · Dec 8, 2013

It will 100% kill them. I have put a few drops in a red solo cup with a zoa nudi and it exploded immediately. Yours might have gone bad.

joshporksandwich · Dec 8, 2013

A friend of mine had a frag tank full of nudis I put half a bottle of flatworm exit and half a bottle of coral rx and it killed all the nudis. I have a yellow coris and a mellaneris wrasse and the hunt anything that moves. On my main tank my six line kills anything. I out aphasia eating nudis in my tank and the six line had a feast :eek:

mfinn · Dec 8, 2013

I have used FWE both as a dip and as a whole tank treatment and it worked great for me.
The first time I tried it, I used 4-5 drops in 2 cups of water as a dip. There were 2 nudibranchs on the frag and both fell off the frag within seconds and within 20-30 seconds the nudibranchs were falling apart, just dissolving.

I also used it as a whole tank treatment.
The only problem was the mini brittle stars didn't do so well.
Had a ton of them and most died.

NanaReefer · Dec 8, 2013

Well heck!! First time in 4yrs hearing/reading that FWE will kill Nudi's!
Sorry for the wrong info :(

mfinn · Dec 8, 2013

NanaReefer said:
Well heck!! First time in 4yrs hearing/reading that FWE will kill Nudi's!
Sorry for the wrong info :(

I'm not sure if it will do it at regular strength. You have to do a dose at 4-5 times what is normally used.
At the strength it may kill anything. But it does not seem to harm corals.

Diamond Jack · Dec 8, 2013

Reef Pest Solutions. Kills nudis and eggs and flatworms. Can treat a frag tank, but if you have any shrimps they are gonna melt as well :)

mfinn · Dec 8, 2013

Diamond Jack said:
Reef Pest Solutions. Kills nudis and eggs and flatworms. Can treat a frag tank, but if you have any shrimps they are gonna melt as well :)

That is also suppose to be a excellent product.
www.reefpestsolutions.com berghia

Not sure if I would use it as a whole tank treatment.
I do have some, but haven't had the opportunity to test it on a actual nudi or egg mass.
I know several reefers in my area that swear by it.

davejep · Feb 1, 2014

Just thought I'd follow up.
I can say that at double the recommended dose, so 2 drops per gallon Flatworm exit does not wipe out adult sized Nudi's.
I have twice dosed my tank at 2 drops per gallon and was not successful at wiping them out.
Just before the second time I dosed I noticed some tiny and I mean TINY florescent spots on some closed Zoa's.
To the naked eye it looked like a tiny spec that glowed under the blue lights, couldn't tell if it was a nudi or not.
I managed to suck one out and place it in a container, only after looking at it under a strong magnifying glass could I tell it was a newly hatched nudi.
There were dozens of them on quite a few closed zoas so I decided to try the flatworm exit again.
Dosed in the evening before lights out, and let sit overnight, Then ran a phosban reactor with a bunch of carbon to filter medication out.
I am pretty sure it wiped out the newborn nudi's because all the closed zoas were happy and open again and I could find no sigh of the tiny glowing specks that were the baby nudi's.
But checking a couple of days later after lights out I was able to find a couple of adult sized ones that were not killed off by the treatment.
I have now resorted to checking each night after lights out for the telltale glowing frills in amongst the closed zoas.
Just a heads up I ended up buying a blue flashlight from the local Lordco (automotive supplies) for about $15. It is made to make the florescent dye used for refrigerant leak detection glow. Works awesome for finding the little buggers.
I then use one of the "Julian sprung things" to suck out any that I find.
Hope this helps.

82engineer · Feb 1, 2014

Fresh water dip all zoas or use Bayer insect dip on them.

mfinn · Feb 1, 2014

davejep said:
Just thought I'd follow up.
I can say that at double the recommended dose, so 2 drops per gallon Flatworm exit does not wipe out adult sized Nudi's.
I have twice dosed my tank at 2 drops per gallon and was not successful at wiping them out.
.

Not strong enough.
Need to do atleast 4x the recommended dose.
It worked for me twice.

TheReefKeeper · Feb 10, 2014

mfinn said:
Not strong enough.
Need to do atleast 4x the recommended dose.
It worked for me twice.

No harm to SPS or anything at that dose that scares me I just pulled one and finally figured out why all my Zoas are dying.

CodyRVA · Apr 4, 2017

Does anyone have any updated info on this? I found a monster zoa eating nudi in my system two days ago, removed him, but found another large one last night and this morning i'm finding smaller ones EVERYWHERE. Thoughts?

wattson · Apr 4, 2017

coris wrasses are your best bet with the best results.. how big is your tank ? any sand in it ?

CodyRVA · Apr 4, 2017

wattson said:
coris wrasses are your best bet with the best results.. how big is your tank ? any sand in it ?

I'll add a fish if i must, but yea sand; I have a leaopard wrasse who seemingly has no interest in these things what so ever. I have been pulling out baby nudi's all night, totally invested at this point.

Fragzilla · Apr 6, 2017

FW exit has a very short shelflife. If its coming to the end it'll get weaker. Check the use by date.

Also once its opened it degrades quicker. It does Kill zoa eating Nudi's, it'll also give any asterinas a kicking (kinda like knocks them out for a while) but they come back eventually. Adding it to coral RX / Dettol dips prior to introducing new corals kills pretty much everything apart from the scurge that is Vermatid Snails (how do we kill these???? urrggghhhh!!!).

I think in any case you'll need a wrasse to help out as you'll always get a stubborn one sitting in a low flow zone or you'll have eggs laid between dosages. Yellow Coris are great fish for zoas, so is a melanurus, just unfortunately the mellanurus will turn on your snails eventually.