Discovering coral eating pests and parasites is never fun and every major group of coral hassomethingthat eats them. Dealing with them can be challenging depending on the group but one guiding principle of dealing with them is that the pest is very host-specific, and we don’t expect to see Acro red bugs on shrooms.
This is especially true when trying to eradicateMontiporaeating nudibranch of which we experienced a small outbreak later last year. A weekly inspection of the Montipora colonies, sometime followed up byremoval using a Waterpikreally helped to get rid of this unwelcome pest, or so we认为.
This past weekend while performing a deep clean of theXmas Tree worm colonyaquarium we discovered an unpleasant but enlightening surprise – we found Monti eating Nudis on the worm-hostingPorites! Only two of the fourPoritescolonies had any of theMontipora裸鳃亚目动物,但即便如此,他们没有消费thePoritesthe same way we’d expect them to devourMontipora.
Several young adult Nudibranch were found on the Porites, as well as one fresh mass of eggs. If we had to guess at what’s going on here, it’s possible that in desperation that larger Nudiscanlive from grazing the massive Porites but we don’t think the Nudis were able to close the life cycle on this different host.
Interestingly, after checking all theMontiporastill in the aquarium system we didn’t find a single nudibranch so thePoriteswas more of a desperate bid to survive. The take home message is that if you’re dealing withMontiporaeating nudibranch, you might want to check similar corals likePoritesand evenAnacroporafor any lingering specimens of this undesirable coral pest.
