Coming In At #5 Pyramid Snails
Pyramid Snails are very small, about the size of a grain of rice, and white in color, with a slender swirly body that comes to a point, much like a very tiny, white cerith snail. Pyramid Snails use their probaoscis, a tubed mouth used to suck out the fluids and zooxanthalle of their prey, such as snails, clams and starfish.
Remove infected clam, snails or starfish and pick off any that you see. Scrub the shells to remove any eggs, Sixline, eightline, and green wrasse will eat pyramid snails!
Coming In At #4 Parasitic Isopods
With Well over 5,000 different species of isopods, it can sometimes be difficult to determine if you have a parasitic isopod or the good isopod. But there are a few ways to determine if your isopods are parasitic blood sucking demons or sweet little rollie pollie scavengers.
If its a good isopod, Sphaeromatids, it will have the ability to roll up in a ball just like a rollie pollie, they are less than a cm in length.
The Bad parasitic isopods, cirolanids and aegids, can not roll into a ball, they also have very large eyes that cover most of its head.
You can try to manually remove these from your tank, but they are usually way to quick to catch, Usually you will have to remove all your fish for about 3 months or until your absolutely sure the parasitic isopods have starved out. Or you can remove all of your live rock and sand from your system, sense isopods are much like copepods and burrow and hide in the sand and rock.
Coming In At #3 Acropora Red Bug
Tiny Red bugs, about 1/2 a mm in length, or more like a yellow color with a rid dot. They are so tiny they are often missed unless a magnifying glass is used, or sometimes even mistaken for polyps on your acropora. there are theries that acropora red bugs are a type of copepod, but they act like a flea or a mite, infecting your acroporas, feeding off of the slime and waste, causing discoloration, affecting its growth and even causing the acropora to die, if the bug infestation is not treated and cleared up.
If your Acros are showing very poor or no polyp extention and loss of color you may want to check for acropora red bugs
There are a few methods to rid your acropora red bug infestation.
1. You can get a sixline wrasse, yellow clown goby or a dragonface pipefish, but as many reefers come to find , you could go and buy these fish and add them to your system and they, being that they all have their own personalities, may not even touch them. For instance, we have a emerald crab we bought to help with bubble algae, he wont touch the stuff, and that what they are supposed to be good for! So its usually a "hit or miss" when depending on fish or inverts to eat a critter infestation.
2. Remove the acropora from your system and dip them in a iodine based solution for about 10-15 minutes, repeating if bugs are still on the acro. We recommend always dipping your corals before adding them to your tanks as a rule of thumb.
3. Interceptor
Interceptor is actually a dog de-worming medication that is highly effective, it contains an ingredient called Milbemycin oxime, which will kill any crustation. That being said, remove all your infested acros and place them in quarantine tank so you don't loose your copepods, crabs, shrimps and amphipods.
We recommend crushing the pill and adding it to the quarantine water. Use about 1/4 of the pill per gallon of water, let sit in medicated water for about 2 hours. Inspect and if you still see bugs then dump the old water and repeat in a new medicated batch for another hour. They should be gone with the first session.
You can also treat your entire tank, but remember interseptor will kill all crustations.
Coming In At #2 Coral Eating Nudibranch
Are you seeing spots or discoloration on your corals, especially your montiporas? Or are you Zoas or leathers looking a little rough? You might have a coral eating nudibranch hanging around. What makes these guys hard to spot is the fact that they will take on the color of whatever coral they have claimed as their menu for the evening. Many times they stay on the underside of the coral, making it even more difficult to spot.
A nudibranch can be anywhere from 1/2 cm to 2 cm in length and can range in color, with many branch like appendages. They reproduce very quickly and can wipe out an entire colony in a matter of days.
You can manually remove nudibranchs with tweezers or you can get a butterfly fish such as a thread twin or red sea butterfly fish.
Coming In At #1 The Flat Worm
If your noticing rapid tissue loss on your acros with golden brown eggs on the skeletons then chances are you have acropora flatworms. If your seeing little rust brown bugs on the tops of your corals then you might want to check and see if they are rust brown flatworms.
There are two types of flatworms, The rust brown flatworm, the most common of the two. Rust brown flatworms are tan, with a red dot and get up to 1/4 inches in size. They are oval with two tail like appendages.
They populate at a very rapid rate, and will sit around on your corals keeping them from getting the light they need to survive. The flatworm feeds on the zooxanthellae from the coral cousing major damage to your corals.
The Second flatworm, which is much more aggressive than the rust brown flatworm. The Acropora flatworm. The acropora flatworm will devoir the acros tissue extremely fast. The acro flatworm is extremely invasive, oval shaped and opaque, almost see through which makes them very hard to spot.
Keeping a good protein skimmer along with the use of carbon and good flow in your system is a great way to prevent from getting flatworms. Always dip new frags before adding them to your main display.
There are many different fish that will eat flatworms. Sixline wrasse, yellow wrasse, leopard wrasse, spotted manderan dragonette and the blue velvet nudibranch.
you can also remove flatworms by siphoning your tank sense flatworms don't keep a good grip on corals they will suck right up the tube. Flatworms are ectrememly sensitive to salinity changes, so you can also dip the corals in fresh RODI water for about 15 seconds and repeat in fresh batches.
Well, That is Our Top 10 Reef aquarium pest. We really hope you found the post informative. Please comment below, we are always happy to answer any questions you may have and we are always happy to hear from you!!
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