What is the WORST pest in the hobby?

sean151

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Years ago I got colonial hydroids and bryopsis from local reefers... which I gave up on my tank because of. So those, although we now have drugs we can add to our tanks to eradicate them.
 

Ghost25

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Another vote for Montipora eating nudibranchs. Dinos suck and can last a long time but Montipora eating nudibranchs will survive in crevices and eggs will survive dips. Ended up losing all my Montipora between the stress of multiple dips, removals, and non ideal coral hospital tank.
 

PBar

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I’m quite surprised with the answers... I thought that AEFW would win by far!

Either we don’t have too many sps keepers in the topic or am I missing something?
 

brahm

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Bristle worms, and asternia stars aren’t even pests. The trick for monti nudis is super glue the underside around anywhere you see eggs/ bites after scraping off what you can. Aefw are annoying and if you don’t keep a close eye will kill things but once aware you can keep a tank healthy and thriving with regular blasting of corals/wrasses that eat them, or dips if your corals are easily removed. They also tend to have favorite acros which can act as a canary.

hmm so with that said if You take unchecked aefw off the table, I’m going with vermetid snails... but even those tend flair and the sorta exhaust whatever they consume and die back..
 

elysics

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Bristle worms, and asternia stars aren’t even pests. The trick for monti nudis is super glue the underside around anywhere you see eggs/ bites after scraping off what you can. Aefw are annoying and if you don’t keep a close eye will kill things but once aware you can keep a tank healthy and thriving with regular blasting of corals/wrasses that eat them, or dips if your corals are easily removed. They also tend to have favorite acros which can act as a canary.

hmm so with that said if You take unchecked aefw off the table, I’m going with vermetid snails... but even those tend flair and the sorta exhaust whatever they consume and die back..
Disagree on the stars. While managable, they can definitely destroy nice zoa colonies if left unchecked.
 

sam.veilleux30

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Monti eating Nudi's.
I will never put a monti in another sps dominant tank again.
I have 7 montis in my 120.
3 are large colonies.
I had monti's about a year ago and nothing since.
I outbreaks on 2 different monti's that I can see.
My tank is too grown in to take anything out.
My working upgrade will be 95% sps zero monti's, as much as I like them.
20210403_105908.jpg
Not too hard to deal with.
-1 scrap all montis colonies, keeping only fresh cut frags.
-2 scrap the remaining pieces of corals on your scape to starve the monti eating nudibranchs.
-3 place the healthy frags on new plugs then on a frag holder that you will be able to inspect daily.
-4 check closely these frags for the next month, dipping once a week.

I had to deal with them a few years back, since then i control all montis in the system, not allowing them to spread on my aquascape.
That way if some treatment is needed i can do it easily.
Present collection: sunset, aquaman, graffiti, rainbow, mystic and frankenberry

Good luck, it's worth the shot.

254224B1-DFC5-4395-9EB2-0EBE47CC1A97.jpeg
 

Zionas

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Governments and the anti-science crowd, I tell ya.

Other than that? Aiptasia, Domino Damsels and worms that are the spawn of Satan.

Three Spots should not be sold in the hobby IMO. If someone wanted a couple little fish in a predator tank and needed something from that genus, there’s the Three and Four Stripe, and Golden Domino. At least they look a little more appealing.
 

DED65

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I have dealt with Aiptasia (Matted Filefish work), Bubble algae (Vibrant took this out), these are easily noticed and not too hard to deal with from my experience.

For me, it was the large Eunicid worm, maybe a Bobbit, who knows? They hide for a long time causing little damage and only noticed after a lot of damage occurs. Breaking down the whole tank to get them out is pretty extreme as they have no predators.
 

Macdaddynick1

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For anyone who has acros, I think the absolute worst pest is black bugs, they’re nearly indestructible and mow down colonies like no ones business. I’ve dealt with AEFW personally and I would pick flatworms over black bugs any day.
 

jkr

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I don’t know what half of these pests are, will have to check them out, for me the worst is red turf algae!
 

Reefs and Geeks

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dinos for me for sure. The only problem I've ever had that had me seriously consider throwing in the towel. Seems like getting dinos is inevitable, and once they get bad they're impossible to get rid of and hard to control. Spent 6 months battling them before they weren't really an ongoing issue. I havne't had any others though that eat coral, so those could be worse
 

Fuppets

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Aiptasia are barely a problem nowadays, you only ever hear about people putting in work or predators to get rid of them, never really about people restarting their tank or giving up entirely because of them anymore.

All the things you listed just vary in how annoying it is to deal with them, but you can deal with them, so they hardly qualify as the worst.

I'd say a good contender are fish attacking blood sucking isopods, nothing you can really do besides going fallow for a year or more, trying to catch them every night basically forever, or restarting the tank

Maybe coral diseases leading to stunted growth forever

I'm restarting/upgrading right now because of them. Trying to find a way to keep my LPS without bringing aphasia to the new tank with them.
 

elysics

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I'm restarting/upgrading right now because of them. Trying to find a way to keep my LPS without bringing aphasia to the new tank with them.
Because you tried everything and nothing worked and you had a real problem with them killing your corals, or as a convenient excuse for the upgrade? Im in quite a few local whatsapp groups and you are the first time i hear about someone doing this pretty much since i started a couple years ago, only ever as horror stories of the past and in old books
 

Zeal

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Aiptasia, I hate them. Even when I use nudies they still come back.

Speaking of which, this weekend I have to put some epoxy on some of them,.
 

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