Help with a Sunfire Monti

[CDMini]

Hi Reefers,

I am sure this has been asked a 1,000 times but I need some help with a new addition.

I bought this Sunfire monti from the LFS brought it home dipped it blasted it off with a Turkey blaster and then added it to the tank.

It was fine for a few days then woke up this morning and looks like something has been munching on it. Fingers crossed it is not the dreaded monti eating nudibranch but thought I would get you opinion.

Pretty sure it’s not the snail though looks like the culprit from the pic. All the damage happened last night.

 

[blaxsun]

Any (fish) nibblers?

 

[CDMini]

Any (fish) nibblers?

Not that I have seen 2 clarkii clowns, 2 tangs, 1 cleaner shrimp.

I am starting to think that limpet is the cause. When I got home from work this was the seen. Pulled him off and banished him to the sump.

I never knew limpets could possibly go after coral. Thought most snails were pretty safe. If that is the case not sure what to do there are 1,000’s in there.

 

[blaxsun]

Bad limpet, bad.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I never knew limpets could possibly go after coral. Thought most snails were pretty safe. If that is the case not sure what to do there are 1,000’s in there.

It’s rare, but there are two taxonomic subfamilies of keyhole limpets (Diodorinae and Emarginulinae) that I have found research on showing that they have a handful of species in them that are either known to or thought to occasionally eat corals (I’d need to go digging through the papers again, but, IIRC, they only ate SPS , and they had pretty specific tastes/preferences). One example:

As mentioned, it's unlikely.

Currently, I have only found one confirmed case of a keyhole limpet (Diodora galeata) eating SPS flesh, so it is possible, but - by all accounts that I can find - you'd be quite unlucky to get a true, SPS-eating limpet.

"Recent observations were made in the field of D. galeata occurring on and apparently consum-ing the tissue of three pocilloporid corals: Pocillopora damicornis, P. verrucosa (Fig. 1b, c) and Stylophora pistillata."*

*Source:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230604777_Evidence_of_corallivory_by_the_keyhole_limpet_Diodora_galeata

Edit: just to reinforce, regular limpets are fine, and most keyhole limpets (including most from the subfamilies listed above) are reef safe; to the best of current scientific knowledge, only a very small number of them are not.