Help my montipora!

[KMench]

I've had this montipora for a few months, and it has lost a lot of color since I got the frag from a reef club member. Recently I've seen these snails crawling all over it and don't know what they are! What is killing my monti cap????

 

[KMench]

.

 

[reeferfoxx]

High phosphates might be the culprit. But the little white things are spirorbis. Little filter feeders. They are growing there because the coral is dead. In fact you have vermited snails and forams growing there. All good filter feeders. Test your phosphates.

Here is a good critter ID site https://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhikers-guide/

 

[Coralfuture]

Honestly it kind of looks like it’s already dead unfortunately and the snails all over it are eating the growth growing on the skeleton. Under blues does it fluoresce at all?

 

[Salty1962]

Check your levels before you try any new frags

 

[KMench]

My phosphates were at 0 last time I checked.. I have been fallow for 8 week now and I initially thought it was happening because it wasn't getting enough flow. I did spot one nudibranch that looked like a montipora eating nudibranch on the glass earlier. I killed it. And just added my first fish back which is a leopard wrasse, so I'm hoping if there's any more of the nudibranchs she will take care of it. I pulled that piece of coral out today and inspected it. Didn't see any other nudis. I can check the phosphates again later tonight.

 

[KMench]

All my other corals look great, LPS, SPS... some of my zoas have been closed for a while now while others have been open. Don't know what their problem is. I can tell you my temp is 77 and my salinity is 1.026. I'll double check all the others for you when I get back from dinner, but I can't imagine them going up when I've been fishless and only doing water changes with RODI water.

 

[reeferfoxx]

This is what my Monti eating nudis looked like. Most likely why the coral died.


What are you using to test phosphates?

 

[KMench]

API test kit for my measurements. I saw one who looked kinda like that on the glass. It was white, small, and a nudi. Enough of a reason to be concerned and kill it? I have only noticed the bleaching on that one coral. I also have an orange setosa, and orange monti cap. I think that's all the montipora type corals I have. Will the nudis affect other SPS, or just monti? Never really had a coral pest issue before....

 

[savetheocean]

Keep it in there anyways, sometimes corals can bounce back. Put it in the back somewhere, why not?

 

[KMench]

In the picture above there’s actually a snail in the middle of the photo just below the halfway mark going up in the picture. Can anyone id them? I did move it to the back where it can get some more flow

 

[reeferfoxx]

API test kit for my measurements. I saw one who looked kinda like that on the glass. It was white, small, and a nudi. Enough of a reason to be concerned and kill it? I have only noticed the bleaching on that one coral. I also have an orange setosa, and orange monti cap. I think that's all the montipora type corals I have. Will the nudis affect other SPS, or just monti? Never really had a coral pest issue before....

From my experience, yes. They only eat montis. Now i'm not sure if they go for other monti species or just the caps but removing caps. What I did was make sure all the nudis were on the caps happily eating away and then I ripped all the caps to the base.

Before

After


I didn't see anymore after that.

 

[tdileo]

The snails look like whelks. Not sure of exact species.

 

[Newb73]

Do you have a par meter? You might be over lighting2

Most keep their temp 79 tp 80

 

[KMench]

I don't think I'm over lighting. If anything I would guess under lighting. I have a Current USA Orbit IC LED as well as a Aquatic Life Reef Edge LED. I would guess it gets about 150 PAR during the day. The parts that are purple fluoresce still, otherwise the white portions do not. Phosphates are 0 on API test. Are those whelks ok? I never noticed them until recently.

 

[KMench]

From my experience, yes. They only eat montis. Now i'm not sure if they go for other monti species or just the caps but removing caps. What I did was make sure all the nudis were on the caps happily eating away and then I ripped all the caps to the base.

Before

After


I didn't see anymore after that.

Your tank looked beautiful before the nudibranch problem! I pulled my cap out and scrubbed it with a toothbrush today while looking for nudis, but didn't see any honestly.

 

[KMench]

Ok, I racked my brain and the only change I can think of is that I got a sample bag of the LA brand salt and did my last two water changes with 50/50 LA brand salt/ RC. The RC have a dKa of ~11 while the LA salt is 8-8.5 would two water changes make enough of a swing in alk to irritate the monti?

 

[KMench]

Checked some parameters tonight. Calcium is 500, dKa is 8, nitrates are still ~0, 0 on the phosphates. Temp remains 78, SG 1.026. Calcium is a little high, but I don't dose anything so it's either the RC or my API test kit is off. The large montipora above is basically toast now, and my smaller one is starting to bleach now. I tried dipping it in bayer to see if there were any nudibranchs after I found the one on the glass the other day. Got no nudis off of it. Not quite sure what else the problem could be....

 

[KMench]

Here's some pictures. You can see the green slimer, blue milliepora, and orange monti cap don't look too happy. I added the other picture just for comparison to show how happy some other tankmates are.

 

[KMench]

Here's the orange monti cap today, forgot to add the picture