SeaDawg
03-18-2008, 11:45 AM
Can anyone ID these hitchhikers and let me know if they are harmful?
One very large zooanthid colony has thinned out severly over several days and I caught these guys dancing around all over them. One of them I presume is a nudibranch, but after visiting several ID sights with LOTS of photos, was unable to ID it. The body is black and the little branches are neon green. The quantity of them has increased and the only place I see them is on the coral. I have picked them off on a couple of occasions and they seem to disintegrate. The other guy looks like it has a hard shell with pincers or barbs on the back end.
There were a couple of another type critter crawling around the colony that moved so fast it was impossible to photo and it looked like some sort of spider, crab, beetle, shrimp thingy that scurries about. That bug is slightly larger than the photographed invaders.
My water parameters are all within the normal published ranges. Only recent change is I started adding PhytoFeast-Live thinking it would help to propogate some of the smaller frags since they are also taking a beating and a few have died. A also have a few palys that seem unaffected. No fish in the tank at the moment. Inverts include a couple astrea snails, couple emerald mithrax crabs, and scarlet reef hermit, all which seem to be happy and content with cleaning up rocks and glass. Bristle stars and worms seem to be everywhere, to the point of alarm. Thinking I may add a six line wrasse to keep the popluation outbreak under control.
Help?! Thanks!
One very large zooanthid colony has thinned out severly over several days and I caught these guys dancing around all over them. One of them I presume is a nudibranch, but after visiting several ID sights with LOTS of photos, was unable to ID it. The body is black and the little branches are neon green. The quantity of them has increased and the only place I see them is on the coral. I have picked them off on a couple of occasions and they seem to disintegrate. The other guy looks like it has a hard shell with pincers or barbs on the back end.
There were a couple of another type critter crawling around the colony that moved so fast it was impossible to photo and it looked like some sort of spider, crab, beetle, shrimp thingy that scurries about. That bug is slightly larger than the photographed invaders.
My water parameters are all within the normal published ranges. Only recent change is I started adding PhytoFeast-Live thinking it would help to propogate some of the smaller frags since they are also taking a beating and a few have died. A also have a few palys that seem unaffected. No fish in the tank at the moment. Inverts include a couple astrea snails, couple emerald mithrax crabs, and scarlet reef hermit, all which seem to be happy and content with cleaning up rocks and glass. Bristle stars and worms seem to be everywhere, to the point of alarm. Thinking I may add a six line wrasse to keep the popluation outbreak under control.
Help?! Thanks!