Acro infestation

[Anonymous]

Is there a name for these little sob's yet?

http://216.130.145.21/pics/july-2003/ju ... bugs5.html

Quite a few of my corals have the little buggers

 

[investigator1]

I don't know a name. Is there a way you can do a freshwater dip on those corals?

 

[Anonymous]

I didnt think that would help, the posts I found on the subject, sugested dips did nothing

 

[investigator1]

I agree. Freshwater dips are mostly for getting rid of flatworms anyways. I don't think it would hurt though.

 

[John_Brandt]

They are amphipods. I've seen photos of those exact same animals at a MACNA. I'm pretty sure the shots were taken by Delbeek or Sprung.

 

[investigator1]

I looked all over the world and here's the best information I could find for you. Relax. They don't seem bad! =======>

Coral Fleas

Small amphipods in the family Stenothoidae are common commensal animals living on cnidarians in all seas. Recently they have been seen on corals in aquaria, and some were sent to me for identification. These very small amphipods likely live by eating coral mucus and maybe any adherent material in it. They do not appear to harm the corals.

This photo shows two small, but fully mature amphipods near a single Acropora polyp. The red portion is the abdomen. A bright eye is also visible.

 

[Anonymous]

They are absolutly positivly harming my corals

same coral, 2 different frags, one is horrible and infested, the other is perfect, with none of the littel buggers.

I dipped a few this morning, the ones I dipped look MUCH better, polyps are actually out on one that have not been out in ages.

It kinda snuck up on me, I kept wondering why some didnt look good, and repositioning them.

Only by chance, did I look at one for a while, and notice something running across it..

500ml water to .5ml of iodine did the trick on the first few dipped, but lost strenght and didnt work on the last few. On the first few they instantly bailed and would swim hyper fast and die within 5 seconds, even some large amphiopods on the rocks (1cm + ) quickly died.

The last few frags dipped didnt work so well, I'll redip them a few times over the next week.

The only problem left, what to do with the colonies with acro crabs, some have multiple crabs in them. I think what I may do is setup another tank, frag those corals, and dip them, and in the new tank will be a genetic bank just in case I loose the parent colonies, hopefully the littel buggers will run thier course and die off

 

[Manofathousandpolyps]

They are absolutly positivly harming my corals

same coral, 2 different frags, one is horrible and infested, the other is perfect, with none of the littel buggers.

Almost sounds like that frag was on its way out and they might have been cleaning it up and eating any necrotic tissue. I would think if they were actually harming it the other frags would be in the same condition. Just my opinion though.

 

[Anonymous]

I dont think that's the case, I havent lost a frag in many years

The frag is still holding on, I dipped the crap out of it in lugols, all the little buggers died, and now the frag is recovering.

I did this to all of them, after the success on the initial frag, the only ones I coudlnt dip are the ones with acro frags, playing the waiting game on those.

 

[tld]

They are most likely a weird harpacticoid copepod - genus is Tegastes, species is unknown, but a good guess would be acroporanus. There are very few copepods that are laterally compressed (i.e. shaped like amphipods). There are some huge threads on Reef Central about this bug - just search for "red bug" or "acro bug".

HTH,
Teresa