Micro Nudibranch?

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Originally Posted by Floyd R Turbo

Don't people buy nudibranches to eat aptasia? Are those a different kind? Berghia sounds familiar...

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Yup, the only 2 "aquarium safe" nudibranchs are berghia (super tiny, smaller than a pencil eraser) or lettuce nudibranchs, but even though both are aquarium safe, I have never seen either of them do much of anything in regards to helping out a tank due to their size and fragility. Lettuce nudibranchs eat hair algae but they have big fin type things on them making them not so good in tanks with a sufficient amount of flow and berghia are so small it would take dozens just to kill a few aiptasia, which is just way to costly when they cost about $10ea.

Freshwater dips work to release the adults from zoa colonies but again, does nothing for the eggs, which is why I recommend dipping, then placing in a temporary tank for a week and then dip again to make sure if there are any eggs, they hatch and you get them as well. Never dip a zoa colony for more than 10 minutes in FW (5-7 minutes is how long I dip them, usually around the 5 minute mark the most stubborn nudibranchs start releasing), also shake the coral frag/rock vigorously after a couple minutes in the FW dip to really shake everything off that you can.

If you go along the quarantine route, be sure to leave at least some of their favoured zoa's in your display. This will act as a magnet to any stray nudi's in your display and you can just keep freshwater dipping this (every few days), until your sure they are gone.

Clearly I am going to have to get some coral revive or something. I did a freshwater dip on the Zoas, I used a 5 gallon bucket with tank temp RO water and about .5 tsp of kalk, which brought it to the right PH and let it sit for an hour. I then swished the Zoa rock around in the water for slightly less than a minute pretty hard. After this my mushroom coral seems to be dead, none of the tubeworms have come back out, and the zoas took 2 days before any of them opened back up... Even now more than 3 days later less than half of them are open.

So not sure what I did wrong... but clearly they were not ok with it.

I think it is the Kalk used to dip them in that caused the problems, that is a huge no no from what I have been told numerous times. Usually that is instant death for a coral, you're lucky to have anything live after that. You want to use something like pH Up or just baking soda to raise pH, not kalkwasser. I have used baking soda in the past without issues for dipping zoas and fish and the zoas always open back up within 30 minutes.

By using R.O.,water you inadvertantly gave the rock a weak kalkwasser bath. i would use tap water because the hardness helps stabalise the ph when you add the kalk to increase ph. also i would not leave it so long. Start with maybe 20 or 30 seconds. As soon as you see things dropping off the rock, nudi,s worms, pods etc then you know its done its business.

I am not sure if its acceptable or not but here it goes. This is what I have done in the past when I get corals. My African cichlid tank is maintained to about 8.0/8.2pH by means of magnesium sulfate, sodium bicarbonate, and Kalk top off-maybe 1-2 Qts per week between weekly water changes of 75%. I have keep Africans this way for years. So I have always dipped my corals into the FW tank for about 30 seconds before I acclimate them. A few times I have forgot and dipped them after acclimation and this seems fine as well. This seems to have worked ok in the past for me, is it best to dip before or after acclimation?

It is best to dip before acclimation because the corals are already peeved and closed up, which protects the coral. It doesn't matter to much though, other than the fact you really want to drip first to ensure nothing bad gets into your tank or even QT system if you can help it.

If it has worked for you, then it is acceptable. :) I would be a little concerned about "unknowns" coming from the FW tank, but I have no idea what would even be bad about the FW in order to look out for it. It is all about sharing experiences in order to give the OP the most information and options for him to chose from.

I figured it was best to dip first but sometimes I have forgot. I figured if the African tank is not experiencing anything bad that it should be OK, the pH is also the same so its not a shock in that aspect. Been doing this for the last couple years+ and have not had any flat worms or other in my SW tank nor anything go bad with the FW tank either.

Have things improved?

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Originally Posted by Garf

Have things improved?

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Yea, they are doing better, many of them died, but the rest look ok now. Almost the whole center section of the rock is gone, but I think the parasites are too.

Here is what it looks like now:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...0233Medium.jpg

This is what it looked like when I first got it (under T8 lighting and like 1.040 specific gravity)
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...a/PICT0149.jpg

Tank is still cloudy, but is clearling up slowly. I have everything organized now:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...36Medium-1.jpg