Killer Amphipods???

[Hypertek99]

Ok you know i hate these little critters. They eat my palys and now they are eating my chalices!!! No kidding the ones in my tank have an appetite for corals. I kid you not. I have noticed one or 2 on my watermelon chalice and thought hmm maybe they are just crawling around. Then i noticed my watermelon losing flesh. So i moved it a few days ago on to a frag rack. Ever since then i have not seen a amphipod on it and the lost flesh with skeleton has since healed and look happy again. Well now i'm noticing another chalice on the sandbed that was real happy and last night i found the same evil amphipod all over it. The chalice looks mad and i can start to see skeleon too. I'm going to move him too tonight and we can see if it is the evil amphipods munching on my chalices. I hate those things!!! For my new tank i'm going to dip majorly before i add anything in it.

 

[paintballer768]

Mine do too. Second a zoanthid looks bad, I catch them munching on it a few hours later. I bought my sixline thinking he would hunt them, but I havent seen a difference yet.

 

[Saltysteele]

have you tried a mandarin?

 

[FaviaFreak]

zap em with interceptor, problem all gone!

 

[Saltysteele]

yeah, that'd definitely cure the problem :D

 

[ConcreteReefer]

Are you sure they are not just eating dead tissue..
Amphipods are opportunistic scavengers, not predacious at all..


Reminds me of the "Bristleworm Freakout" a few years ago.

 

[ahayes13]

okay im not to knowledgable on the chems and stuff. i know it will kill the amphipods and nudis. but is it something you dose in the tank and will it harm other inhabitants in the tank? just curious cause i dont know much about it. just incase i ever have an issue with any of these things.

 

[paintballer768]

The problem Ive had with them, is the zoanthids that are hurt/in a bad state get killed before they have a chance to recover. The amphipods finish em off so quickly, theyre just a pain. I cant dose interceptor because it will kill my cleaner shrimp too, which Ive had for almost a year since a baby

 

[Azurel]

I have had the same issue with them and palys before as well.....Since I set up my new tank I don't see hardly any amphipods in the new set up.....I haven't however seen them bothering my LPS in the old system or this system....

 

[bkv1997]

Get a couple wrasses :)

 

[Hypertek99]

Are you sure they are not just eating dead tissue..
Amphipods are opportunistic scavengers, not predacious at all..


Reminds me of the "Bristleworm Freakout" a few years ago.

Definitely not dead tissue. The healthyist lookin chalice. I think when the amphipods get bigger they do get an appetite for corals. I would zap them all with interceptor (have a pack right here) but i have shrimps and snails. It will kill all my inverts. So i'm trying to hold out till i get my new tank up and running. Then i'm going to dip then put in a quarantine tank then dip again before i put it in the display.

 

[fly guy]

Are you sure they are not just eating dead tissue..
Amphipods are opportunistic scavengers, not predacious at all..

.

many of us have said the same thing in the past........then you witness it for yourslef and you realize the people who claim they do are not full of it and/or just dont know any better

Personally,I think they predatorial ones are different. While I cant visually tell the predatorial ones apart from the ones that do just do their part at cleanign up dead tissue, I do have a hard time believing that they could be harmless for many years and then just go rogue on us and start munching healthy corals.

One more reaosn to make sure you kill all hitchhikers dead before introducing anything to your system.

Regardless of that theory, the pod in this pic is no doubt a RPE eating machine. and im not talking about the spider.

I once hit a tank with interceptor with no other purpose than to knock a population of these things down. I have never seen them hurting any LPS. thats a new one on me but I certainly believe it :)

 

[Hypertek99]

It's funny you said RPE's cuz i had a HUGE colony of it and the amphipods demolished it in like a week or 2. Yeah i have seen it first hand. The are eating machines. I'm going to move the chalice and see how it does with the amphipods out of reach. The watermelon is doing very good now. No more skeleton showing and all healed up

 

[fly guy]

:)

they do seem to love PE polyps. I said specifically RPE's as that was my worst experience with them as well. They took down a healthy colony of nearly 200 polyps down to 50 before I finally had it and nuked them enough that my wrasses could handle the rest

 

[Hypertek99]

Yeah i want to get a mystery wrasse. But i want a small one. My mandarin didn't eat the amphipods.

 

[roshi719]

Yeah i want to get a mystery wrasse. But i want a small one. My mandarin didn't eat the amphipods.

Got one I've had for over a year. LMK

 

[paintballer768]

I got some PEs from my LFS, like no name brown ones with a light green area around the genuine PE mouth. They demolished it to about 20 to 5 polyps, then they just stopped....and now the polyps that I thought were dead are opening again. Now theyve moved to my Blinks/Mason palys.

My acan got one the other night, but I think my sixline wrasse may be too small to go for em, I dont know.