I Hate Montipora Eating Nudibranches!

2Wheelsonly · Feb 20, 2018

Wrasse are hit and miss for nudis because they mostly come out at night when the wrasse are sleeping. Your best bet is to find a wrasse that decided to skip college and smoke alot of pot staying up all night playing video games. They are for sure going to catch dem nudis in their prime time hours!

chipmunkofdoom2 · Feb 20, 2018

I've only ever used Bayer for all my dips. Always at least knocks the nudis off, if it doesn't kill them.

How much Bayer did you use? My Bayer dip water is NEVER clear. It's so cloudy that it's usually difficult to see if anything even fell off the corals. I add 30ml of Bayer to 750mL of saltwater.

tankstudy · Feb 20, 2018

hart24601 said:
I have been fighting these guys myself. I have found that bayer does work for me, however it works by them detaching from the coral, not by killing them outright, so I dip in heavy bayer, enough I can't see the coral, then agitate the coral in bayer, then wash and brush. This ime has been effective.

I have been using the wormer levamisole, as I have it for worming my FW fish. It sure does kill the buggers, but also kills a lot of other things. It doesn't directly kill coral that I have found, but too much will make them bleach out, but you can see the nudis peel of the coral. I read about using it off quality marine's site. It might even be effective against eggs, however the dosage that high my impact the coral. More experimentation is needed there, but I got so frustrated I just said f'it on my pico and started pouring levamisole in at crazy high dose until I saw them fall off the coral instantly.... My sps bleached badly but are recovering. Note I don't recommend doing that!!!

The LFS by me had an outbreak of zoa eatting nudis and decided to go with levamisole as the treatment plan. It's a relatively large system with many corals but definitely alot of zoas. After the first treatment, most of them perished and the zoas were actually open again. I'm pretty sure it's going to take a few treatments to get all of them but from what I have seen levamisole works.

n4s · Feb 20, 2018

What do you consider double dosage of Bayer?

I use 8oz of bayer to gallon of water for around 5-10 minutes.
That ratio worked for me when I had them on my new monti frags. Not sure if it actually killed them but at least enough to stun them and turkey baster them off. I did that every 5 days for the first 3 weeks and 3 more times 7 days apart. Total 6 week treatment.

hart24601 · Feb 20, 2018

Here are the results of a Bayer dip, no brushing. No idea how much Bayer, but very cloudy. I rinsed with clean water for the video.

indoaqua · Feb 20, 2018

Copperband Butterfly finally knocked mine out. Have to keep him alive for multiple nudi life cycles. Supplemental feeding was by a piece of vexar rubber banded to a rock with chopped clam sandwiched in. MMMmmm Good Luck! Save the MONTIS!!!

VbReefer · Feb 20, 2018

Not enough Bayer
Many others say the same thing and only a few rare corals don't take it well. Just use enough Bayer to make the water like skim milk. Literally cloudy white. I accidentally left some frags in overnight and they all lived with zero issues .
I got MEN last year and thought they were gone after dipping and blowing and scrubbing. Had one Monti left in the tank that was doing well no evidence of them .must have been 2 to 3 months. Guess they were still there. I lost about a dozen frags only 2 survived.
I cannot dip these as they are on huge rocks. I'll just keep blowing it off and hope for the best .won't be adding anymore for a long while.

Bayer will work at skim milk level .Won't kill eggs but definitely kills adults .

Reef Jeff · Feb 20, 2018

Thanks all. Clearly I was not using enough Bayer. It was cloudy but not to the point I couldn't see to the bottom and definitely not skim milk cloudy.

I followed up at that time with another dip called SR Aquaristik Coral Defense and that killed the adults within a few minutes. Of course the eggs are always the big problem. But still nudibranch free today. It's been 5 days since I saw the last one. Still way to early to call this a success, but my leaf plate monti has colored back up where the nudibranch was eating last and no new areas have appeared. My melanuras wrasse is hanging around on watch and we'll see what happens.

Balz3352 · Feb 20, 2018

Coralrx.... Killed the ones iIhad /battling

Renoreefer · Feb 20, 2018

I have to agree with the use of iodine based dip for these little buggers . My montis get 10 minute in a strong solution of seachem reef disinfectant
It seems to dull their color a little and lots of slime but in a week they look happy again. kills the bugs dead!
Just my two cents

Az reefer · Feb 20, 2018

Reef Jeff said:
I will get some and give it a try. That Nudibranch is still sitting in the double dose Bayer dip (almost 3 1/2 hours now) and is still alive! And it is fresh Bayer dip, so that does NOT work.

I was researching which Wrasse to try...I'll be on the hunt for one of these this weekend.

Agreed...I have pulled the Monti off the rock a few times and dipped with different dips and scrubbed the underside with a toothbrush in the dip. At one point the Monti slimed so bad I could hardly get him rinsed off. He turned white for several days and now the color is back red as ever, and then I found the next nudibranch. I knew this would be the case.

Yep...very cool looking pest...but...

Melanarus wrasse will eradicate them.

Fercho · Feb 20, 2018

I’ve had them before.
They’re easy to remove.
But do it before it becomes an infestation.

Suck them out with a turkey baster.

Coronus · Feb 21, 2018

So flatworm stop works wonders on zoa eating nudies. 5 drops, 1-2 cups tank water and zoa nudies disintegrated completely.
Might work for monti nudies.

HB AL · Feb 21, 2018

3mm3 said:
Use a dip with iodine. Kills them fast.

This worked for me, in only one dip although it was double or triple dose.

dragonfish · Feb 24, 2018

on the main display u used levamisole ?

Reef Jeff · Mar 29, 2018

Thought I'd post an update with my battle with the Montipora eating nudibranches: I am happy to report that my melanurus wrasse has kept them under excellent control. I have not lost any of my three Montipora corals and in fact the leaf plate has grown another 3/4''s without any damage. I occasionally see a nudibrach, but they never seem to make any progress at causing damage and are gone the next time I search. I haven't had to suction off any in the last month and I have not had to dip my coral again. The melanurus wrasse is a great fish. Nice temperament, gets along with everyone and loves to eat pods and nudi's. He also eats nori, flake and frozen food. Definitely glad I got him...he's handling things to keep my Monti's alive.