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- Jul 26, 2018
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Sorry if this isn't the right forum section, but these Pycnogonids (AKA Sea Spiders) seem to eat any type of coral that looks delicious.
If anyone has dealt with these, please chime in!
After 1+ month thinking I had AEFW (because the acro bites from these Sea Spiders look just like AEFW bites) and treating the tank with Purge, I finally caught these reef terrorists in the act on my PC Rainbow and Red Planet.
For your viewing pleasure:
The damage: (notice it looks very similar to AEFW bites)
There is very little information and discussion about these guys on reef forums. Melev believes these are SPS eaters. So at this point I hoped they would be only "acro eating sea spiders" that I might beat with consistent dips or total removal of acros.
But after 3 days of rigorous magnifying glass searching (these guys are very hard to see) their expanded diet was unveiled when I caught them sucking down my Acans. And I haven't proved it yet but I'm almost certain they'll happily munch on Zoanthids.
You can see how bothered they look (not plumped up like normal), but they're handling it much better than the SPS, as you would expect.
Despite only seeing a couple on the Acans I managed to knock off and kill 5-10 with a Coral RX dip. Which is somehow comforting and terrifying at once...
So at this point I'm very worried that my only option to be rid of them is to reboot the entire tank and start over entirely
The only other mention I can find on the forums about Sea Spiders is this guy who apparently had success with Interceptor but I'm skeptical jump on a treatment from one person's post. Plus there seems to be a lot of negativity towards Interceptor.
I'm hoping others can offer any experience they've had with Pycnogonids (Sea Spiders).
If interested here at two videos. One alive in regular salt water and one moving around finding the juiciest part of my Acan.
If anyone has dealt with these, please chime in!
After 1+ month thinking I had AEFW (because the acro bites from these Sea Spiders look just like AEFW bites) and treating the tank with Purge, I finally caught these reef terrorists in the act on my PC Rainbow and Red Planet.
For your viewing pleasure:
The damage: (notice it looks very similar to AEFW bites)
There is very little information and discussion about these guys on reef forums. Melev believes these are SPS eaters. So at this point I hoped they would be only "acro eating sea spiders" that I might beat with consistent dips or total removal of acros.
But after 3 days of rigorous magnifying glass searching (these guys are very hard to see) their expanded diet was unveiled when I caught them sucking down my Acans. And I haven't proved it yet but I'm almost certain they'll happily munch on Zoanthids.
You can see how bothered they look (not plumped up like normal), but they're handling it much better than the SPS, as you would expect.
Despite only seeing a couple on the Acans I managed to knock off and kill 5-10 with a Coral RX dip. Which is somehow comforting and terrifying at once...
So at this point I'm very worried that my only option to be rid of them is to reboot the entire tank and start over entirely
The only other mention I can find on the forums about Sea Spiders is this guy who apparently had success with Interceptor but I'm skeptical jump on a treatment from one person's post. Plus there seems to be a lot of negativity towards Interceptor.
I'm hoping others can offer any experience they've had with Pycnogonids (Sea Spiders).
If interested here at two videos. One alive in regular salt water and one moving around finding the juiciest part of my Acan.