Something eating my monti …. I think.

[echinatl]

So over the past 2 weeks my reverse sunrise monti and orange digitata have been heading south. Lost their PE in certain areas, started losing more color, and now appears that “chunks” are being eaten from them. The orange digitata is much larger, so it’s handling it better, but the reverse sunrise is still just a frag so it’s being hit harder. They are on opposite sides of the tanks, and surrounded by other monti’s which show no damage. For the past week I’ve been looking for monti eating nudi’s but haven’t been able to see any (or their eggs) and from the few examples I’ve seen online the damage doesn’t look like what I’ve seen. I haven’t added any other corals to the tank in at least 2 months and the last few that have gone in are fine. I did add a yellow coris wrasse a little over a month ago. I also added some scarlet hermits, blue leg hermits, and some nassarius vibex snails to boost the cuc a few weeks ago. The new CUC additions are the only things added that match up with the dates where I started to notice issues but I can’t find any posts where CUC’s were eating corals. Below is a pic of the reverse sunset, it should have a green base with orange polyps. I left the flash on as it accented the damage better.

So what do you guys think?

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[jhutto]

check your calcium and mg levels.

 

[ralph atl]

nudi's.?

 

[echinatl]

Would low or high calc or mag levels cause this? I change 5 gallons of water every 5 days in a 29G biocube and I thought that would keep my levels high enough.

Yep nudi's is what I thought but I've been checking for them at all hours and I've picked up the rock looking for eggs or the nudi's and I haven't found a thing. Also I haven't added any corals in a very long time and the ones that were added consisted of a few small monti frags that have been growing very well and show no signs of damage. The only new additions were a yellow coris wrasse (1 month ago) and 5 scarlet hermits, 2 blue hermits, and some nassarius vibex snails (around the same time the issues started). I forgot to mention that I did catch a blue leg hermit on this frag and pulled the guy but when I searched around I couldn't find anything relating to hermits eating sps.

 

[ralph atl]

if it's not nudi's........you'll need to post some parems from test kits. there is no way looking at a picture from my house, that I'll be able to identify what's going on with your tank. even with posted parems, it's still difficult at best. Need ph, alk, calcium, mag, nitrates, temp, salinity, phosphates, etc. please.

 

[jhutto]

Had a similar problem as I had been dosing two part but my tank's montis and other sps were growing and the two part was not catching up to the growth. Did not check the calcium nor mg for awhile as I thought I was fine. When I did check, the CA was way low. I ramped it up with more calcium and the white spots covered back over with grow. Not saying that is what the issue is but at least something to check.

 

[geegee3]

I had the same problem a while ago my purple monti was half eaten in about 4 days and my green monti was completely white in about a week. These were frags so they were between 1-1.5" across. Sitting and just watching the tank trying to figure out what was going on I saw my tang periodically eating the monti. He eat it evenly across, a little bit everyday mostly in the morning. They love to graze so I just keep more seaweed in there, he hasn't touched the orange monti, yet! Hope this helps.

 

[radha]

Looks exactly like my cabbage leather when it was being eaten.... the culprit was a gorilla crab....