Reef nutrition

MENB, now what?

BleepBloopMunchMunch

BleepBloopMunchMunch

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So I was cruising through the garage the other night and decided I would peak at the frag tank in the garage since its been getting so cold at night I have been worrying about the temperature dropping too much and I found what I am 99.99% certain are montipora eating nudibranchs, while not great I am not super worried about since that's exactly what a coral QT frag tank is for! That being said, now that I've identified them, I sort of don't know what to do next. I dipped all the coral that had them, and you can see which ones they have gone after and which ones they have left alone. But now what? I assume there are eggs and the numbers will only increase, and from some preliminary research eradication is very difficult. Does this mean get rid of all the montis and starve them out? Is there any way to still safely transfer any of the frags to another tank or do I need to assume that all the frags are riddled with eggs and no amount of dipping will make them safe for another tank.
There aren't any frags I am super attached to, but its more I hate to see the coral just go to waste so trying to figure out what my next steps should be if any.
Also what I can't find a solid answer for is do I worry about non monti coral in there? There are some zoas, couple of acros, stylophora and maybe a couple others I can't remember right now. If I dip those and inspect would the MENB still hitchhike on them?
 
So identification, do you see damage on your montipora coral? That's the confirmation of your identification, you will literally see white areas where the nudibranchs are eating the coral, and it will be quite obvious as they leave white patches where the coral flesh is consumed.

If you dip, you need to keep dipping, because often the eggs are not killed in a dip unless it's very aggressive. So you could keep on top of things with daily dips of everything and keep that up for ... crap I dunno however long the life cycle is plus a week (need to do that research yourself).

Now the upside, is if you get rid of the corals, or you try to stay on top of it if you fail the result is the same, so it's really up to you which direction you go.
 
I did see damage on some montis, I will take some pictures later when the lights turn on. Definitely will try my best to stay on top of it, since like @sfsuphysics mentions, either way the failure results will be the same. From reading up on it just now there seems to be no well agreed upon lifecycle, but most people just dip regularly until they stop seeing them. I will probably just hold off on adding any more montis and do my best to eradicate the pests I have now, and if I can't save the coral then just go no montis for a while. Any recommendations on dips to use? I always use revive but I also don't have experience with many others
 
BleepBloopMunchMunch said:
I did see damage on some montis, I will take some pictures later when the lights turn on. Definitely will try my best to stay on top of it, since like @sfsuphysics mentions, either way the failure results will be the same. From reading up on it just now there seems to be no well agreed upon lifecycle, but most people just dip regularly until they stop seeing them. I will probably just hold off on adding any more montis and do my best to eradicate the pests I have now, and if I can't save the coral then just go no montis for a while. Any recommendations on dips to use? I always use revive but I also don't have experience with many others
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With flatworm exit they say you can put a flatworm in a small container of tank water and add drops until you see a reaction. If you can find one of the MENB then you may be able to do something similar with your revive to see if it will be affective. Place an impacted monti in a container and add revive until you see the nudis come off?

I don’t think a dip would be able to get the eggs so I suppose you will just want to do frequent dips to try and catch them before they lay more eggs?
 
There are rumors that dipping in potassium permanganate will dissolve eggs, but I would take that with a grain of salt. Plus potassium permanganate is pretty harsh on corals though.

If you're committed to saving your Montis, the only way to deal with them really is to interrupt their lifecycle.

MENB egg hatch between 36-96 hours after being laid and become full adults in about a week. So you'll need to dip your coral in your favorite coral dip (I use Bayer and Melafix, but coralrx/revive should work fine) probably every 4-7 days for at least a few cycles (a month), but if you want to feel more confident 2-3 months.
 
I read about the potassium permanganate, seems a little overkill for what I've got going on, but if it gets real bad I might give it a try just for experimentations sake. Thanks for all the tips and recommendations, I think for now I will just dip regularly and see how things evolve, its bare bottom but there is a decent amount of rock in it so I know I'll eventually have to deal with the potential for eggs or nudibranchs hiding out there
 
I did go and dip all the montis and removed tiles and frag plugs where possible and scrubbed with a toothbrush best I could, managed to snag a pic of what came off the coral and it definitely looks like a MENB to me
MENB.jpg
 
Yeah the coral under the one with the nudibranch definitely shows sign of chomping... would call that M.E.N. for certain.

I tried a manual siphon process decades ago, before all these "new fangled" dips were a thing, it was ultimately an act of futility all though going in at night with a red light did allow me to get quite a few, I just think it's a cockroach type problem, if you see one, it means there are tens (hundreds) more you don't see. But if you did catch it early it is possible to remove that coral and corals around it and be ok as they're not like prolific swimmers... but only time will tell.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah the coral under the one with the nudibranch definitely shows sign of chomping... would call that M.E.N. for certain.

I tried a manual siphon process decades ago, before all these "new fangled" dips were a thing, it was ultimately an act of futility all though going in at night with a red light did allow me to get quite a few, I just think it's a cockroach type problem, if you see one, it means there are tens (hundreds) more you don't see. But if you did catch it early it is possible to remove that coral and corals around it and be ok as they're not like prolific swimmers... but only time will tell.
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Definitely shows the sign, I'm going to siphon a bit since I gotta do a water change anyway, theres maybe one or two others that have the same signs of chomping as that one as will probably be the first to go, I might try to do a little tank transfer for the ones I like more just to see if it does anything. Will update here when anything changes
 
1. Yep, that definitely looks like a MENB, and a big one at that. I’m used to them being smaller, but they look just like that.
2. Not the munched trails I’m used to, but that definitely looks munched on, and seeing as there is a known munched right above it I think we have a culprit.
3. Is this the same tank as this?https://bareefers.org/forum/threads/white-spots-on-montis.27328/#post-400251. The ones you brought over were clean at the time, but I’m wondering if it was an issue of the samples just being from clean areas, or of you just happened to pull a clean sample.
4. I don’t personally know anyone who has eradicated them in a tank and saved the colonies. I know one person who dipped and inspected their corals every day for over a month until well after they stopped seeing them. At least 6 months later they had their tank break in the middle of the night, swore to me their system was clean, and got me to house some freshly snipped frags in my tank. That’s how I got them, and I wasn’t able to kill them off until I tore the tank down and simply dried out all of the montipora. A few months after moving here (without montipora) I added some months as a test and they’ve stayed clean.
5. They don’t just sit on the montipora. Most of them do, but a few wander around looking for new food. This means even cleaning the colonies daily you may still miss a couple.
6. If I had to do this again I’d put fresh inspected clean frags of each colony in a QT, dump the rest, and let the display go monti free for however long it takes. If you go a while with no signs of infection in the QT tank, add a small piece back to the display. You want it to be small so an infestation is obvious. Healthy coral will grow faster than it is eaten and mask the damage. If it goes a couple months with no issues then you’re clear.
 
I should add, there are stories of people online successfully eradicating them, but also others who went without for a few months and then still had issues when re-introducing montipora. In my case they never touched my digis or encrusting ones, just the caps, although I removed all the caps they may well have adjusted their palette.
 
So luckily this is my frag tank and not the display, and the samples I brought you were from the display, in addition, nothing has been moved from the frag to the display since the montis went into the frag tank. I have been checking my display every night just in case, but so far I haven't seen any so I think it is only happening in the frag tank.
And thank you for the detailed write up, I think that I might set up a second QT tank and put a few inspected frags in there and if I bring the pests over I will then just clean the whole tank since nothing else will be in it. When you say go for a while with no signs of infection, how would you do that if all the montis have been pulled out?
 
It sounds like you're just going to sanitize this frag tank once this is over (good decision), but I would want to go at least a few months with no montipora.

From the perspective of the (yet to be set up) QT tank, at a minimum I'd want a couple months with no signs of montipora on those frags. This clock starts after you end any active dipping, turkey baster cleaning, etc. The thinking being that if you're actively inhibiting them (dips, wrasse in the tank, etc.) then you don't really know if they are gone vs. being well managed as they are manageable (if you must). On the other hand, if they are left to roam free, after a few months you should be able to find signs of their presence. If you do a good detailed inspection of every montipora in the system and find no MENBs or bite marks they are probably gone. Find one sign and you need continued observation. This includes breaking up caps to the point where there are no hidden areas inside whorls, so you might as well do that at the start.

If you were going to keep the current frag tank live I would want to test it after the fallow (from montipora) period. I would do that by putting in a piece of cap on a frag plug with putty sealing the edges. This makes the only available surface to eat the top visible surface. As the only montipora in the tank, any existing MENB would find it, and you would start seeing bite marks eventually. If none appear after whatever time you consider safe, then that tank is now ok and things can be moved back. This step isn't relevant if you are drying out and restarting the frag tank, although it's easy enough to do.
 
I was more thinking that a separate QT tank for them would be easy to rinse and set back up if they show up again, this tank is a little harder to do that since it has some other non monti frags that I would like to keep and rinsing the tank I would need some place to put them. There are also a few fish in there so they would have to be moved in the interim. Are any of the non-monti frags in the tank safe to move to another tank, or do I need to consider anything in that tank to potentially be carrying eggs or something? I figured any acro or zoa in there, if dipped and inspected should be able to go into the DT
 
I've never personally seen one on something else, but I have read at least one person online saying the babies liked to hang out on (but not eat) nearby acro frags, and suspected acro frags as the path of introduction to their system. The odds are certainly much lower that they would move on another coral than a montipora, but they are non-zero and you really don't want these in your display. Logically (IE I'm theorizing this with no evidence whatsoever), they need to get from one montipora to another (or they wouldn't spread) somehow, and not wanting to be eaten they probably take a path with cover to do so. In a frag tank the only real cover is other frags, so they're good rest stops. If you don't want to tear down the frag tank I'd consider treating it as the display in my example above.
 
That makes sense, I figured if they're in there then no matter what there are chances I could infect the display. Too bad cause there are a couple acros in there I wanted to hang on to so not too sure what I'm going to do about that. But I will probably start with getting the montis out and just going no montis in there and test it out from there.
 
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