Well, I have noticed for quite some time that my monti cap and a couple of my encrusting monti's have just not been doing well. I didn't really care much because the rest of my acros and other corals have been doing really well. I had also noticed a long time ago that there were little black specks all over them.
Today I decided to look more closely at it out of curiousity and noticed that the little black specks were actually bugs and they were crawling around. I have them on 3 colonies (a cap, a rainbow monti, and a digitata frag that has done nothing since I bought it). Interestingly, there is no sign of them on my JF Brainfreeze colony, my Tyree Sunset Colony, or my JF Slowburn monti?
Now the question is, what to do about them. I assume they are easily treatable with interceptor like red bugs, but I'm not sure I want to subject my tank to a systemic treatment when everything else is doing so well. But, I'm not sure I'd be able to do it any other way. The cap is encrusted onto my rockwork and the rainbow is fixed to my barebottom. I could scrape it off, but the cap is there to stay unless I break off what I can and try to kill the rest with putty.
Has anyone else dealt with these montipora specific black bugs? I checked all my other acros and see no sign of anything else (and like I said my acros are doing great at the moment).
I thought about adding a 6 line or a dragon faced pipefish to try to control them naturally, but I doubt they would eliminate them.
What would you do? 1. Treat the whole tank 2. Try to remove all monti's and treat them with dips (keeping in mine I would have to scrape my cap off the rocks somehow). or 3. Let them be and get a 6 line and a pipe fish??
Today I decided to look more closely at it out of curiousity and noticed that the little black specks were actually bugs and they were crawling around. I have them on 3 colonies (a cap, a rainbow monti, and a digitata frag that has done nothing since I bought it). Interestingly, there is no sign of them on my JF Brainfreeze colony, my Tyree Sunset Colony, or my JF Slowburn monti?
Now the question is, what to do about them. I assume they are easily treatable with interceptor like red bugs, but I'm not sure I want to subject my tank to a systemic treatment when everything else is doing so well. But, I'm not sure I'd be able to do it any other way. The cap is encrusted onto my rockwork and the rainbow is fixed to my barebottom. I could scrape it off, but the cap is there to stay unless I break off what I can and try to kill the rest with putty.
Has anyone else dealt with these montipora specific black bugs? I checked all my other acros and see no sign of anything else (and like I said my acros are doing great at the moment).
I thought about adding a 6 line or a dragon faced pipefish to try to control them naturally, but I doubt they would eliminate them.
What would you do? 1. Treat the whole tank 2. Try to remove all monti's and treat them with dips (keeping in mine I would have to scrape my cap off the rocks somehow). or 3. Let them be and get a 6 line and a pipe fish??
