Added Berghia nudis, but are these monti eating nudis?

[Jose A Venereo]

Not berghia. Pic shows berghia.

 

[Jeffcb]

Yep, that's the thing I guess.

 

[Dan Ponchak]

Had those about 1 1/2 ago. Look like monti eating nudi. You can tell best by inspecting underside of a cap ( they love caps). Monti’s start to turn white, crumble under touch. Egg sacs. You can get rid of them. Lot’s of work.Watch out for unintended consequence. Imbalances in nutrients pho’s etc. I was lazy. Ripped all monti out. Went fallow. Some encrusted survived. Have nice variety now.

 

[Dan Ponchak]

1 1/2 YEARS AGO

 

[Mickeyt1reef]

All monti’s currently being decimated by them now. All corals dipped and quarantined with wrasse. Just popped up in display. Thought maybe vibrant irritated some of them. This am checking with flashlight and they are everywhere! Devouring my montiporas. So sad!

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I have battled these numerous times over the years. Typically the nudis win. Your experience of suddenly realizing you have them is typical of this problem. They are not too hard to control, but extremely difficult to eradicate. Having decent growth and nudi predators (wrasses/peppermint shrimp) in a tank will often obscure the nudi's presence as they are kept in check. Once the balance shifts to the nudi's, they will quickly grow to plague proportions and consume all monti's in short order.

One method to give the monti's a fighting chance, is to dose KZ Flat Worm Stop and Coral Booster daily. It does not kill the nudi's, but speeds up the monti's growth and gives you breathing room for predators to have an impact and to take isolation frags for a quarantine tank.

The nudis are only found on dead skeleton typically, so any frags you take need to only be of live tissue. For monticaps, I like to use a diamond wheel to cut a .5-1" square out of the live portion of the cap. Just be careful to scrub the bottom of the cap very well before taking the cutting.

Eventually they starve themselves out by consuming all or most of the monti's. Best to not add any more monti's for about 6 months after you think they are gone. It is not unusual to see encrusting monti's and sometimes even caps, start to grow back months after the nudi's have eaten their way through the bulk of the monti's in a tank with only tiny islands of monti left too sparsely distributed for the nudi's to find them and they starve. Just be patient and do not add more monti's (food) too soon until you are certain that the nudi's are all deceased.

Dennis

 

[Bleigh]

@Dan Ponchak @Dennis Cartier these things sound terrible. Since they can reproduce with just one, they are essentially impossible to irradiate without crazy means. I’m hopi g I’m being aggressive enough. Since both of you were able to get rid of it, it gives me hope.

@Mickeyt1reef ugh!!!! Hopefully we can both pull through this.


Well all the montis are out of the tank and in a smaller tank for qt with my 6 line. none of them look terrible. So hopefully I can save them. They were all dipped and scrubbed. I didn’t see any eggs, but I imagine they blend in really well. There is also now a melanarus wrasse in the bigger tank. I’m sure the 6 line was keeping things in check before he got kicked out.

 

[SHNICI]

Questions here about the nudis.
Do someone know for how long they can survive if there isn't any monti left in the tank.
Is it another food source they can get and to keep them self in the tank, or only Montis they are feeding on?
Do they have dormant stage if there isn't presence of food or other condition become bad for them?

Answering that question will know for sure after how long (depending on the conditions) we'll be nudis free the tank. The same like with the Berghia nudis, which are feeding on aiptasia: Once all the aiptasias are eaten (they eat the entire anemone), they can survive maximum to 8 days without food source (which is ONLY AIPTASIA).
Thx for the answers.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Questions here about the nudis.
Do someone know for how long they can survive if there isn't any monti left in the tank.
Is it another food source they can get and to keep them self in the tank, or only Montis they are feeding on?
Do they have dormant stage if there isn't presence of food or other condition become bad for them?

Answering that question will know for sure after how long (depending on the conditions) we'll be nudis free the tank. The same like with the Berghia nudis, which are feeding on aiptasia: Once all the aiptasias are eaten (they eat the entire anemone), they can survive maximum to 8 days without food source (which is ONLY AIPTASIA).
Thx for the answers.

I have no definite answer on how long they can go without monti's to feed on. My best guess is a few weeks.

Monti's are their only food source. Once the monti's are gone they will be as well shortly thereafter.

As far as I know, no dormant stage. The life cycle is maintained by adults laying eggs which eventually hatch and need to start feeding on montipora in order to survive/grow.

The challenge is that it is very hard to know if there are colonies of nudis somewhere in the tank feeding on the remnants of your montipora collection.

Dennis