Our Top 10 Reef Tank ID list... Causes, Prevention and Treatment!
As a Reef Aquarium Hobbyist, We do all the research we can to find out "what the heck that is??" That we just saw chewing on our beautiful corals we work so hard to grow. Well We dicided to come up with Our top 10 Reef tank Pest Id list.
Coming in at #10 The Bristle Worm
The Bristle worm, although many reefers are ok in small quantities, if not kept undercontrol, population can explode at a rapid rate. If you allow bristle worms to get a good size to them they can eat your fish and have been know to munch on corals. As long as they are small they are great scavengers and will help get rid of unwanted detritus and uneaten food that cause your parameters to get out of whack.
Never grab a bristle worm without gloves on, the tiny bristles will sting you, causing irritation and a possible allergic reaction.
The best way we have found to keep your bristle worm population under control is to use our trap method, you can watch the video below to see how to make and use this simple DIY Trap.
Coming In At #9 The Fire Worm
Much like the Bristle worm, the Fire worm has many bristles, but the fire worms bristles are poisonous and the fire worm can eject their bristles. Unlike Bristle worms that can only crawl, fire worms make excellent swimmers and are a known predator of coral.
The Best way we have found to keep your fire worm population under control is to use the same trap method as the bristle worm, please see the video below.
Coming In At #8 The Sundial Snail
Never grab a bristle worm without gloves on, the tiny bristles will sting you, causing irritation and a possible allergic reaction.
The best way we have found to keep your bristle worm population under control is to use our trap method, you can watch the video below to see how to make and use this simple DIY Trap.
Coming In At #9 The Fire Worm
Much like the Bristle worm, the Fire worm has many bristles, but the fire worms bristles are poisonous and the fire worm can eject their bristles. Unlike Bristle worms that can only crawl, fire worms make excellent swimmers and are a known predator of coral.
The Best way we have found to keep your fire worm population under control is to use the same trap method as the bristle worm, please see the video below.
Coming In At #8 The Sundial Snail
These are Zoa Eating monsters, they look more like a flat spiral with black and white colors, a little smaller than your everyday reef snails, and should be removed as quickly as you see them!! Its best to inspect Zoas at night, that is when you will see these guys inbetween the closed polyps.
The Best way to remove Sundial Snails is to manually remove them as you see them, and be sure to remove their eggs as well, if you see any, they don't reproduce very quickly so once you have removed them from your system you should be ok.
Coming In At #7 The Zoa Spider
These are actually Marine Arthropods not real spiders or arachnids. There are more than 1300 specie of these guys, and not a one is good for your reef tank. They will devoir your corals, anenomes and sponges, Especially Zoanthids!! The Spider will crawl inside of a zoa polyps mouth making them extremely hard to spot, then they lay their eggs and the polyp turns to a grey melted mess. Get rid of these guys the second you spot them!!
They can stay hidden in the polyp mat so be sure to always dip your corals before placing them in to your display tank. Its really best to quarantine all your corals for a few weeks before adding them to your system so that you don't become plagued with marine pests!!
There are other treatments you can buy that will help get rid of Zoa spiders, such as Coral RX, Removing by hand of course and quarantining your corals for a few weeks to several months.
Coming In At #6 Asteria Star Fish
Sure these guys are pretty on the glass and floating around in your tank, but don't be fooled. These little coral munchers are a pain in the butt to get rid of. They repopulate and reproduce extremely fast. Just by scraping the glass and acceditanly cutting off a leg or two will cause one or two more. Get rid of these guys as quickly as you can.
Its best to manually remove Asteria Star Fish very carefully so that you don't break off a leg causing them to reproduce. Or buy a Harlequin shrimp, but be sure to keep buying the shrimp chocolate chip star fish or any star fish to keep them feed, because that is all these guys like to eat.
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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