Help! Zoo eating nudi's.

[stoney waters]

Are there alternate methods to get rid of zoo eating nudi's? If I do a fresh water dip I would have to break down the entire tank, because I have colonies on almost every rock.

 

Thanks

Stone.

[icenine]

If you can't dip them be ready to sit in front of your tank for a very long time holding a good pair of tweezers and a turkey baster at the ready.

You need to examine the polyps for egg swirls too, thats hard to do without taking colonies out of the tank. If you don't find the eggs it may be a never ending battle.

 

Good Luck!

[stoney waters]

I sit in front of my tank for a long time anyway, lol. I just noticed them yesterday. I have been sucking them out with a syringe, but they are everywhere. What do the egg sacks look like? What kind of damage will they ultimately cause?

[icenine]

There will be a swirl pattern of tiny white eggs at the base of a polyp, most likely.

[Caesar777]

Ick...It'll be hard since they're in the whole tank. They don't really have commercially-available predators or chemicals to take care of them. You'll really have to do every rock individually, and make sure they don't hop onto the freshly-cleaned rocks once placed back.

 

All the more reason to QT.... I couldn't imagine ripping my tank apart because of nudis. Grr! It'd bug the heck out of me.

[stoney waters]

Will FW dip get rid of the eggs also?

[Caesar777]

NO. (Sucks, eh?) Not sure what to do about those, though. I'd recommend that you do a LOT of reading. This will not be a simple endeavor. :/

[deacon hemp]

i used a mini pipette to suck them out one by one,but it was a 5.5 and didnt take me long.i had eggs aswell but once i killed off all of the nudi's it seemed like they just stopped coming,i guess that the eggs never hatched or something?This was prolly no use to you but for encouragment,just keep at it!kill kill kill!i lost a good bunch of reds to them!

[NEVER SATISFIED REFFER]

i didn't know when i set my reef up that i would become a professional

exterminator!!! LOL

[levon15]

are nudi eggs soft or hard.

 

I see white swirls on my zoo rocks but some of them are the homes of featherdusters. All of my white swirls are hard and i have not seen any nudi's but i want to take no chances in this problem.

[Caesar777]

[Caesar777]

Copy-and-pasted from RF, where it was copy-and-pasted from RC ...

 

Zoo Dip

I take no credit for this, it's really no big deal to do. All of the items used are most likely underneath your cabinet already. I have performed this for years on hundreds, yes, hundreds of zoos and it has worked every single time. No I'm not being cocky or anything like that, this really and truly works as many RC members have PM'd me directly saying so. No I'm not looking for a that-a-boy or anything, I just see that a lot of reefers have ask about it so I thought I would post it in its own thread.

 

Each and every zoo that goes into my tank, healthy or not, gets a dip. This dip has worked for most every ailments my zoos have had. Some will require a bit of surgery and in some rare cases where I have received a colony with a very nasty fungus, I have deviated slighlty and placed several drops of Lugols Iodine directly onto the infected colony after a bit of surgery. I see that a lot of people are dealing with the whitish, opaque to yellowish fungus or some sort on your colonies. For some reason this happens alot during shipment and I'm sure a lot of you will concur. The key to saving a colony with this issue is to act immediately. You must remove all of the fungus with tweezers outside of your tank. Now using a very sharp razor blade, cut down and around the entire area that was affected. If you have a large rock and you want to be sure that you have irradicated the problem, remove 2 or 3 rows of good zoos around the area that was infected. Rinse the colony well with tank water using a turkey baster or the like, still outside of your reef, now perform the dip with the dipping brew below. I sent it to someone last week so i just copied and pasted it below.

 

"Here's the dipping brew that I have used and most people on RC are using it now as well. If it is performed as soon as you see the signs in the proper manner, success is always attained.

 

1. Using a 5 gallon white bucket, add 3 gallons of RO water.

2. Now add 1 or 2 drops of Lugol's Iodine per gallon of RO water. ( I read that using 3-4 drops works better)

3. Set your PH to 8.2

4. Set your water temp. at 78 degrees

5. If you have some Flatworm exit made my Saliferts, add

2 drops per gallon to the RO water to kill any Flatworms

 

Place the colony in the white bucket right side up. Leaving it there for about 5 minutes. Then grab the rock and invert it and place it in the water 3 inches below the water surface. Now twist the rock as fast as you can in a clockwise and counterclockwise motion for at least a minute. While the rock was sitting still in the RO water, it was killing off all bristle worms, Nudibranchs, flatworms and parasites. It will not kill off any Nudibranch eggs so you will have to inspect the rock for what looks like a tiny white 1/8 of and inch curly white piece of thread. They won't detach from the rock as the sack is very sticky. Inside this egg sack is up to 40 or so eggs just waiting to hatch. If you see one, just remove it with tweezers before placing the rock back into your reef. By the way, once you have finished twisting the rock in the water for a full minute, pull it out the water and dunk it back into the water a few times, splashing and swooshing is good, it dislodges anything that didn't fall off in the twisting motion. You are going to kill off a few copepds as well, but this is ok, as you have tons more already in your reef tank and your sump/fug. The dip will not kill your zoos, trust me, if you do exactly as stated above, you will be fine. If your colony is in declined and has been for some time, it may be too late to save them, but if you always do a dip on the first or second day of the problem, I have had a 99 % success rate at saving my own. I don't care what anyone else says, I know what has and will always work for the above issues. Zoos are all I know and I truly like to help out if and when I can.

 

Oh, I forgot, once you place the colony back into your reef, make sure they receive some current as they will be a little stressed and might slim a little, but that's ok, they will be fine. Your zoos will open in minutes.Always, ....always run your actinics only for the rest of that day. Actinics will encourage them to open. Try not to introduce any food into the system as well until the following day. On the following day, go back to your normal photoperiod. As I said, the zoos will be a little stressed and your 10 or 12k lighting will only try to encourage them to fully expand when they really don't want to right now because of what they have just experienced. I believe the bright lighting after a dip has and will discourage them from opening as soon. Trust me, you will not kill them my friend."

 

 

It would be great if any of you who have tried this would post your results below. I know of several who have emailed or Pm'd me, but I prefer that you mention your experience with the above dip.

 

Safe reefing everyone

 

Mucho

 

PS, I chose Lugols for its medicinal/antiseptic properties. Please remember to wear reef safe gloves. The white bucket will allow you to see everything that you have just killed off. Two drops of Lugols will not hurt or harm the zoos. I use two drops most of the time myself. Best of luck to all of you.

 

Hobby Experience: 12 years, and one lucky August 2003 TOTM winner, http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/totm/index.htm

Current Tanks: 70 gallon zoo and ricordea reef

 

 

Last edited by MUCHO REEF on 10/13/2004 at 11:16 AM

[renichms]

I had some in my 20H for a while. Less than a week of watching after moonlights came on, picking them out with tweezers and dipping corals I found them on and they were gone. It has been many months since then, corals have recovered and nothing has been munching on them since. After dipping corals, I made sure to watch a while later since I could not pick some of the eggs off without damaging the corals.

 

RN

[shaggydoo541]

I ran into the same problem you had with having colonies on big rocks making it practically impossible to do dips. I am still fighting off the nudis but after a week or so of close inspection and sucking them out with a turkey baster I haven't seen one for about 5 days now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but another thing I found helpful was when I did my weekly water changes I syphoned off each colony. I noticed tons of nudis in the dirty water and my zoas closed up for a half day or so then opened no worse off than before. It seemed to help a lot especially with getting rid of some of the smaller nudis that were hard to locate.