seamandrew
Member
I recently purchased a Pokerstar Montipora (cost me a lot too) and unlike my other corals which are thriving and growing, it died quite quickly. My water chemistries are fine (though Nitrates are 20mg/L, but I do weekly water changes to keep that down). In any event, after I thought it was dead and bleached, I put the montipora coral in my in-tank refugium (I keep my green feather duster in here because of my Copperband) and I noticed that what I thought was little specks of coral flesh remaining from the bleaching process were actually moving around.
I looked up different parasites in my coral book and sure enough, they have a picture of Turbellarians that look quite like what I have. Are these indeed Turbellarian flatworms? I'm assuming they led to the demise of my pokerstar...I can't seem to find them anywhere else in the tank and all the other coral are doing fine (knock on wood). Should I just throw the montipora skeleton away? It has a couple of barnacles that are still alive and I feel terrible killing them, but I don't know if this is going to lead to infestation problems similar to what I had with the Aiptasia. Do these feast on specific types of coral only? By the way, you're not looking at the tiny little dots, it's the larger darker brown dots that look like cells with nuclei in the middle. Look closely, you'll see them.
I looked up different parasites in my coral book and sure enough, they have a picture of Turbellarians that look quite like what I have. Are these indeed Turbellarian flatworms? I'm assuming they led to the demise of my pokerstar...I can't seem to find them anywhere else in the tank and all the other coral are doing fine (knock on wood). Should I just throw the montipora skeleton away? It has a couple of barnacles that are still alive and I feel terrible killing them, but I don't know if this is going to lead to infestation problems similar to what I had with the Aiptasia. Do these feast on specific types of coral only? By the way, you're not looking at the tiny little dots, it's the larger darker brown dots that look like cells with nuclei in the middle. Look closely, you'll see them.
