Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Thanks allot folks for the help! I am sorry but I can't post pictures of this thing because my camera charger is still MIA... My superman monti was on the road to recovery for the overheating fiasco that was a frag swap where I got it and all of a sudden it looked like it was suffering from RTN. So I fragged it. It seemed ok again. Fast forward 3 days to today. RTN is back with a twist. Tonight I find 4 things that seem to be eating it. They look like some kind of worm or shrimp. They are about 1/8" to 1/4" in size have two antenna and propel themselves the same way a lobster does with tail flicks as well as by crawling. They are clear to clear brown. They appear to have 6-8 legs. They are picking at the healthy flesh of the coral. They are light averse and are very fast. They are not red bugs. No other coral is affected. There is a another monti that is very healthy right above the one being eaten and they hide under it when I try to scoop them out via syphon or with tweezers. What are they and what treatment other than adding a six line or yellow wrasse or iodine dips (they do not stay on the coral for me to dip it) should I use to get them OUT of the tank? The coral is dead and gone so treating the coral is not the issue. Killing them and making sure they don't come back is. Thanks for the assist. UH Link to comment
Smurf Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Wow, sorry I can't help you UH. Best of luck for you and this problem though. PS - YGPM. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 Wow, sorry I can't help you UH. Best of luck for you and this problem though. PS - YGPM. Thanks mate! Going through a major SUCK period with my tank. Link to comment
fierceseaman Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 hopefully not nudis, doesn't quite sound like nudis. Link to comment
supernip Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 sorry i kind of skimmed. sounds like isopods. I know what you're talking about, I have had them on my montis before as well. I have to think back to what i did to get rid of them. Mostly, I think it was an uphill battle for me Link to comment
lakshwadeep Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 maybe sea spiders http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-01/rs/index.htm or amphipods? Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 After allot of wailing and gnashing of teeth I found my power plug for the camera. I also was able to syphon out five of the seven or eight of the little ######es. Here are two photos of them. I was stupid because I was trying to suction them with a turkey baster instead of a actual hose. Hose worked. Thank you all for the help. They are not spiders or nudis. Thanks! UH Link to comment
lakshwadeep Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Amphipods. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rs/index.php Link to comment
smarsh Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 They are probably only eating it because it is dying. These little guys are usually in all tanks as soon as you put live rock in there. They are just doing their CUC job. Did you dip the monti at all before or after the RTN? Link to comment
Phixion Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 They look like just your average pods... I have tons in my tanks, they don't eat anything and eventually my fish eat most of them till more breed out of the fuge. But if they are eating coral, they could be isopods, or maybe like said they are just standard pods and eating what's on it's way out. Good luck UH! Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 Amphipods.http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rs/index.php Aye. That's them. Thank you. Any thoughts on how to kill the bloody gob######es? They are probably only eating it because it is dying. These little guys are usually in all tanks as soon as you put live rock in there. They are just doing their CUC job. Did you dip the monti at all before or after the RTN? Interesting. I never had them before. I did add some live rock recently and didn't do an iodine dip on it (like I should have!) so perhaps they came in that way... I did dip the monti both before and after. Looking back what strikes me as odd was that they were eating the healthy flesh from the monti not the dead/dying and I could see the progression of what looked like RTN over time and it corresponded to the 'eating' pattern they were engaging in. As in the monti would be fine then they would eat some of it and that area would look like RTN... Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 I had the same thing happen with a frag of german orange digi. It was on its way out for sure due to the tank it was in. Trust me, they only eat dead or dying stuff. The ones you will see on it even more are the longer, smaller type pods, if you have them in your system. They know things we dont, I assume the coral emmit an odor when they are dying. Are you params still good....no3 and alk in particular? Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 I had the same thing happen with a frag of german orange digi. It was on its way out for sure due to the tank it was in. Trust me, they only eat dead or dying stuff. The ones you will see on it even more are the longer, smaller type pods, if you have them in your system. They know things we dont, I assume the coral emmit an odor when they are dying. Are you params still good....no3 and alk in particular? Cheers love. Thats good to know. I am really Anal when it comes to stuff going into my tank that *I* didn't put in there so its been bugging me (no pun intended) no end. I will dial back the plans for search and destroy. Was going to grab a set of tiger stripe BDU's, NVG's, and a vacuum syphon and lie in wait for the little ######es! But from what you and others say I may be off base. Tank param's are ok on the NO3 side. Turns out my bloody NO3 problem was a bloody expired test kit. *EVERYTHING* I was doing to export the stuff out wasn't working and I couldn't get a reading below 5-10. Change out the test kit and whammo problem all gone. Verified this via use of a LFS Salifert test kit for control. So that was a good weeks worth of water changes for no reason! Bloody Alk is still a problem though. Can't seem to keep it above 7. It never goes below 7 and I can get it up to 8 or 9 for a day then right back down to 7. pH is stable though. Sits at between 8.1 and 8.2. This is an odd one to me. Its not something that I would expect to leach out of the water from one day to the next. Ca depletes on a relatively stable curve and I am on top of that but the alk just goes gonzo with no rhyme or reason. I don't want to overwhelm the tank or for that matter do the parameter chase dance by just willy nilly dumping massive amounts of b-ionic part A in there but I am following the directions from the calculator you put me on to with no luck. Next step is to pony up to the bar and spend the $$$ on a kalc stirrer. That is the plan for this week. Any thoughts? Link to comment
Phixion Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 I had the same thing happen with a frag of german orange digi. It was on its way out for sure due to the tank it was in. Trust me, they only eat dead or dying stuff. The ones you will see on it even more are the longer, smaller type pods, if you have them in your system. They know things we dont, I assume the coral emmit an odor when they are dying. Are you params still good....no3 and alk in particular? Ever smelled dead/dying coral, especially mushrooms/rics? Yeah, not pretty at all, the pods could probably smell them OUTISDE of the tank! Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 I don't want to overwhelm the tank or for that matter do the parameter chase dance by just willy nilly dumping massive amounts of b-ionic part A in there but I am following the directions from the calculator you put me on to with no luck. Next step is to pony up to the bar and spend the $$$ on a kalc stirrer. That is the plan for this week. Any thoughts? I ran out of b-ionic a few months ago, I will never do that again! I almost crashed the tank. My alk dropped to 5.4dkh and It took me three weeks of heavy dosing to get back to normal. It was one of the hardest things I have had to do with the tank because I constantly needed more but I couldnt dose it fast enough with the corals in the tank. It just took a long time and consitant dosing. I wasnt making progress or so I thought for the first week or so, and then finally it started to climb. I have it at around 9dkh now and it is pretty steady. Even better phixion, big tank full of dead giant leathers after the hurricanes knocked out power for 2 weeks. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 Ewww! Anything dead and in an advanced decay stage coming out of a tank is BAD! Not as bad as some things I have smelled but damn close. Hope you aren't getting too badly hit by the storms there now, SDT. I was thinking about you and your husband when I saw the news last night and hoping you were ok. Aye. I am shooting for 9. Right now its 10 ml every day of b-ionic part 1 but it sounds like I need to go to about 15 or even 20... Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Yeah, dont be afraid to bump it up, just watch your ph. Storms arent bothering us too much in Daytona. Link to comment
MitchReef Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 First thing you want to do is get your Magnesium up around 1350 to 1450 and that can take a few days. Until Alk, Ca AND Mg are all up they will always have instability. After that use this Calculator (remember to deduct for rock, corals, etc. There's a good water volume calculator attached). This is the link: http://jdieck1.home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chemcalc.html You can enter in what ever supplement you are using and it will guide you right where you want to be. Still check every 2 days at first to see how much you are depleting after you get dosed up to like Ca = 430 and dKH = 8.7 like mine. I made a DIY two part dosing system with amazingly precise stepping motor controlled peristaltic pumps and mine has been those EXACT values for two weeks now. I was at dKH = 8.3 but bumped my Alk pump up a tad. This is the greatest DIY I've done yet.... Sorry about the Hijack, but you have to get all three up and they will be more stable. Link to comment
Fraggle Reef Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Dripping kalk will let you keep the alkalinity up for sure, and there's really no need for one of those expensive kalk stirrers. I use a 30 gallon trash can for one of my systems, but for a smaller thank you can use a 5 gallon bucket with a few tablespoons of kalk dissolved in there. Just stir it a few times a day and you're good to go, make sure you get a good ATO with a backup float switch though! Link to comment
dtfleming Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 +1 I add kalk to my topoff to help maintain lvls and dose 2-part daily. Your alk being low prob caused the RTN on the base. Then the pods started to eat the dying tissue. Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Low alk is a huge cause of RTN. Link to comment
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