I get to try the new nudi treatment

[dsoz]

Well the dice have rolled, and I lost(scary). Somewhere along the line I picked up some monti eating nudis. (sad) I do not know where they came from, and I really don't care. I also don't want to blame anyone for passing them on if they didn't know that they had them. I also want to apologize to anyone that received a frag from me, you may have them in your tank as well. (Jay, Cuda, Sol, J&Jr, wegotjs, ronJr, and probably others that I am not remembering right now.)

 

So I found the eggs on Tusday right before going to bed. I didn't sleep well Tuesday night (nightmares of giant slugs eating my house in one bite). On Wednesday I started taking ALL my montipora frags off the rocks to inspect and dip. I found another frag that had damage, and a third frag that had both adults and eggs on the bottom side. ARGH!!! The good news is that I did not find any on the "lillypad montipora" that cost me so much at the CFM. It is still getting treatment, but is is not damaged at this point.

 

I have potassium permanganate (KMnO4) that I got from work. I measured out 50 mg (0.050 grams), and put it in a little bottle to take home. I put it in 0.5 L of water to make 100 mg/L solution. In the Borneman article he tried both 50mg/L and 200 mg/L. Mine is twice as strong as his minimum, but half the concentration of his maximum. All my montipora were dipped for 30 minutes, placed in a bowl of tank water to rince for 30 minutes, then returned to the tank (I don't have a QT/hospital tank set up yet... Make note, do that soon).

 

My purple monti cap was really slimey coming out of the KMnO4, as was my orange Monti cap. The other montipora were a little bit brown color (stained by the KMnO4), but otherwise just looking a little disturbed (polyps not extended, etc.).

 

I did manage to kill a stomatella that was hiding on the bottom of a frag plug, and a bristle worm crawled out of a small rock and died as well. I got as many of the adults off as I can see, and the egg masses turned brown (I removed as much as I could). I am going to borrow a dissectin microscope from work this weekend so I can do a better inspection of the frags.

 

I am thinking that I may even dip my other corals. I have a couple acropora, two torts (california and oregon), and a lot of LPS, and a few softies (mushrooms, zoas, and kenya tree). I don't know how the LPS will respond, so I will test one before I do mass dipping.

 

I emailed Eric Borneman with some questions and asking advice on how to procede with treatment. I also offered the results of my tests for him to report. I am keeping a list of the corals that I am treating, and the effects of the KMnO4 on them.

 

If anyone else has this problem, let us combine resources and take care of these buggers once and for all. I am already starting to work with Wegotjs to help him, after I reinfected his tank. :(

 

dsoz

[impur]

I would put the montis into a QT tank, a simple 10gal would work, and avoid dipping corals that these nudis do not harm. After you remove their food source, they will die off in the display after a couple weeks. I'd imagine you'll see some browning out of the montis, but thats better than white!

[civicsit]

Do you know of any other place than chemistry teachers that you can get the potassium permanganate from? I have some of these on one of my frags and have been trying to rid them by hand with no luck yet.

[dsoz]

I would put the montis into a QT tank' date=' a simple 10gal would work, and avoid dipping corals that these nudis do not harm. After you remove their food source, they will die off in the display after a couple weeks. I'd imagine you'll see some browning out of the montis, but thats better than white![/quote']

 

I know I am bad, but I don't have a QT/hospital tank set up with ANY light, let alone light enough for SPS. I have a 10g with a powerhead for fish. I am going to have to break down and get a used light set-up. Maybe I can do a DIY MH fixture like I have seen on NR.com. Until I can get a ballast (payday is the end of the month), the montis must stay in my display.

 

Do you know of any other place than chemistry teachers that you can get the potassium permanganate from? I have some of these on one of my frags and have been trying to rid them by hand with no luck yet.

 

Eric Borneman, in his article, talked about a fish product that contained KMnO4. I don't remember, and have not had the time to look it up. Read the article in the post by Wegotjs. Send me a PM if you are coming to Portland anytime soon, and I may be able to hook you up with some solution. Or make friends with a local high school/college science teacher. KMnO4 is a common chemical for both chemistry and biology.

[jptrson]

Do you know of any other place than chemistry teachers that you can get the potassium permanganate from? I have some of these on one of my frags and have been trying to rid them by hand with no luck yet.

 

You can get upto 1# of PP from Fancykoioutlet.com for about $16 plus shipping.

http://www.fancykoioutlet.com/supply/chem.htm

[dsoz]

You can get upto 1# of PP from Fancykoioutlet.com for about $16 plus shipping.

http://www.fancykoioutlet.com/supply/chem.htm

 

This is good to know. Thanks!

[wegotjs]

I disagree with Impur on the Q.tank. Once you have killed the ones on the monti's I think you should put them back in the tank they came from to draw more or hopefully all the remaining nudi's on to the monti's. In bornemans paper it stated that we really don't know how long these can live for with out monti's in the tanks . Maybe months .

 

" Upon reintroduction to the culture system, the various fragments grew rapidly and showed no evidence of nudibranchs for five months. In May, 2007, however, I noticed a few fragments with white patches of denuded skeleton and found them to have reacquired the predatory nudibranchs."

 

And that was after aggressive quarantine.

[Ronjunior]

DOH DOH! I've got some white bugs to look for/identify. At least I have healthy fish this go round. Are these sized like the back end of a stick pin, or smaller like lice?

[dsoz]

DOH DOH! I've got some white bugs to look for/identify. At least I have healthy fish this go round. Are these sized like the back end of a stick pin' date=' or smaller like lice?[/quote']

 

smaller. The adults are tiny. I could barely see them with my eye. I only noticed them because of the egg clusters. If you don't have any montipora, you should be ok. You were telling me about your tank, and I don't remember you mentioning any montipora, and I did not give you any montipora when you came over. So you should be fine.

 

The white dots about the size of a pin head are probably copepods. They tend to climb all over the glass so are easy to see.

 

dsoz

[wegotjs]

Dennis, Mine really varied in size. I had 2 that were almost size of a small grain of rice and others

that I could barely see with a 4x mag glass. You can see in the pic the large one & one about a quarter the size of the big one on the upper left in the crease. Those were needle nose tweezers,

and that big one is as long as those are wide.Hopefully that will give you an idea of how big they can get.

[impur]

I disagree with Impur on the Q.tank. Once you have killed the ones on the monti's I think you should put them back in the tank they came from to draw more or hopefully all the remaining nudi's on to the monti's. In bornemans paper it stated that we really don't know how long these can live for with out monti's in the tanks . Maybe months .

 

" Upon reintroduction to the culture system, the various fragments grew rapidly and showed no evidence of nudibranchs for five months. In May, 2007, however, I noticed a few fragments with white patches of denuded skeleton and found them to have reacquired the predatory nudibranchs."

 

And that was after aggressive quarantine.

 

The only way to utimately get rid of them is to remove their food source. If you can rid the colonies of the nudis and leave them out of the display there is nothing for them to eat. So it takes 4 months. At least you got rid of them and still have your corals. If you are putting them back into the tank, you might as well skip the treatment and get some sort of predator and just live with your montis getting munched a little.

 

I think putting stressed out corals back into an infested tank would be like rolling out the welcome mat for them to decimate your montis.

[dsoz]

Dennis, Mine really varied in size. I had 2 that were almost size of a small grain of rice and others

that I could barely see with a 4x mag glass. You can see in the pic the large one & one about a quarter the size of the big one on the upper left in the crease. Those were needle nose tweezers,

and that big one is as long as those are wide.Hopefully that will give you an idea of how big they can get.

 

Thanks for the picture Jon. How did your treatment go? Did you watch the little buggers squirm, or did you just dip and let it sit for some time?

 

The only way to utimately get rid of them is to remove their food source. If you can rid the colonies of the nudis and leave them out of the display there is nothing for them to eat. So it takes 4 months. At least you got rid of them and still have your corals. If you are putting them back into the tank, you might as well skip the treatment and get some sort of predator and just live with your montis getting munched a little.

 

I think putting stressed out corals back into an infested tank would be like rolling out the welcome mat for them to decimate your montis.

 

I agree, I should NOT put them back in the tank. However, if the choice is put back in the tank, or in a hospital tank with no light whatsoever, I am going to put back in the display for now. I am working on getting a light set up for a small tank, but I need to wait until payday (end of the month) so I can afford to get a ballast, reflector, socket, bulb... Then I can set up a 10g as a freestanding monti tank for a few months. Then I can keep watching them, and dip as needed.

 

It has been two days, and I have not had a response from Borneman about his suggestions on further treatment. I would like to get the oppinion of the "expert" that discovered that potassium permanganate works on nudis without killing corals. I would also like to know his reasons for putting the treated corals back in the "infected" tank that he got them from. I wonder if he is confident that the nudis only live on montipora, or is he hoping that they get reinfected so he can further his research in this area?

 

dsoz

[impur]

I agree with ya on the decision due to the light Dennis

[dsoz]

Update. I do not have pics because I am so upset.

 

At least 4 of my corals look like they are dying/dead from the treatment . I chose to use 100 mg/L for 30 minutes because it was twice as great as Borneman's minimum (no coral loss), but half the concentration of his maximum (some coral loss). The corals that I think I lost include a green monti cap (small frag that I got from J&Jr that came from the colony at SWFS), a purple/lavender encrusting monti (don't know the species) from Waves, and two stylopora/pocillipora (cat's paw) one was pink and one was orange. I decided to dip the cat's paw because the orange one had some unexplained tissue death in various areas, and my eyes were playing tricks on me to make me see slugs everywhere I looked. I knew that they were probably not on there, but I figured that it would be better safe than sorry. Now they seem like they are gonners. I have not given up hope, and believe that they may recover. (fingers)

 

dsoz

[wegotjs]

My cats paw Really took it hard when I was dipping with Lugols & YMPCC. It burnt all the polyps

off but after about 8 weeks I can see them slowly growing back, so don't give up on it.

[dsoz]

Thanks Jon, that is good to know. However, the flesh seems to be falling off, and there is bare white skeleton showing on most of it. :( I think it is a gonner. I will probably get a new pink one because it is my daughter's favorite coral (besides the lavender monti that she bought me for father's day, which is also on the ICU list).

 

If I had it to do over, I probably would not dip the pink cats paw, or used a much lower concentration. 100 mg/L seems a little high. When I re-dip next weekend I am only going to use 25-50 mg/L and see if that works. I also want to bring home a dissecting microscope to visually inspect the pieces for eggs and adults. My eyes are not good enough to clearly make out adults (I am starting to get old... ).

 

dsoz

[dsoz]

good and bad news

 

The bad news first. I was checking my montis that I treated a week ago, and there are more nudi eggs on them :(. I did not see any adults, but there is evidence of damage and new eggs. Either I didn't get them all, or there were some in my tank that crawled back on. I still don't have a QT tank set up, and I won't have the cash to get anything to set one up until the end of the month (it sucks getting paid only once a month). So I re-dipped all my montipora. This time I decreased the concentration to 50 mg/L (like the minimum in Borneman's article) for 30 minutes. Then in a bowl of tank water to rinse for 30 minutes, then back into the tank. I am going to inspect on Wednesday, and probably re-dip just to be pro-active.

 

The good news is that some of the corals that I thought were gonners are starting to show polyps again. My pink stylopora/pocillapora (cat's paw) looks like it will 85-90% recover. There are a few white spots left, but most of it is starting to turn pink again, and some of it is getting fuzzy again. The orange cat's paw is all white and the flesh keeps falling off. The green monti that I thought was dead was showing polyps this morning, but it also had white patches of nudi damage where there were none before. My lillypad montipora had good polyp extension. That makes me happy. My other favorite montipora, the purple one is the one that I found the most eggs on (both at first, and now). I am going to give it a special dip session every other day for the next week or so. There are so many crevices and bumps that I am thinking that the nudis can hide, and not get killed by the KMnO4.

 

I am still so sad that I can't take pictures.

 

I did get a response to the email that I sent to Borneman a week ago. He was out of town when I sent my message. He did have some advice and encouragement, but most of it was the response "I don't know, you can try it." He also seemed interested in the results that I found.

 

I am starting to think that if I still have these things in a week I will throw out my montipora, and just stick to LPS and the few SPS that I already have in my tank.

 

dsoz

[wegotjs]

Dennis, have you been making a fresh batch of dip every time or useing the premixed one. Maybe it is lossing it strength over time.

[dsoz]

This was only the second time that I dipped, so that is not the issue. I should have been dipping a couple of times during the week to keep ahead of them.

[dsoz]

Update: Anyone that wants to try some potassium permanganate, I have 10 lbs that I got from a friend. I am giving it to anyone that wants to use it for their corals. See my post in the classifieds.

 

Nearly all my corals are recovering. All the montipora are starting to show polyps again, and most are starting to regain color. I keep looking for the nudibranchs, and there is no sign of them. I am doing close inspections with a dissecting microsope that has 20x and 40x magnification.

 

I am probably going to let the montipora get more healthy for another month, then just dip them again as a preventative measure. Even if they turn brown again, it is only a couple of weeks for them to color back up.

 

The only corals that I have lost lately are a zoa colony that I dropped too close to a torch coral when I was moving tanks, my California tort, and my Oregon tort. I don't know why they just bleached out and died. :( One bleached out before I moved tanks, and the other bleached out after moving tanks.

 

dsoz

[impur]

Thats great news!. Glad to hear things are looking up.