help needed asap re: slow monti death

[eric b 125]

i just had to rearrange the L island in my tank because it looked to be on the verge of toppling over. recently i have had one monti digi and part of a monti cap start to bleach. this happened in a big way to the same monti cap a few months ago and i just fragged off the living parts and it began to thrive again. i looked for monti eating nudibranchs the first time around but saw nothing on the cap.
so as i'm taking frags out of the tank before i started moving things, the monti digi had bugs on the dead part of it. they didnt move like i would imagine the monti eating nudibranchs do, and they werent red. they were small and moved quickly like small pods, but didnt seem to swim like adult pods. they were pretty tiny (too small to get a picture of) and i couldnt really see any appendages like adult pods have. I took the monti out, and it is in a tupperware container. i'm guessing that even if these are pests that they are probably rampant, not only on that frag, and putting the frag back in wont really hurt the chances if these are pests.
nothing new in tank except for some frags that came from a friends tank a few weeks ago. his tank shows no signs of this happening. what are your thoughts? thank you for your help and hopefully quick replies....

 

[snakeblitz33]

The only bugs that I know of that eat SPS Corals are red bugs. I would say that the type of bugs you are seeing are most likely copepods. Unless I'm wrong - someone help me out!
I would put the frag back in the tank. Taking out that one coral doesn't mean that you have taken care of the problem. I would check my water parameters and make sure I had enough light... Check your alkalinity and pH, calcium and magnesium and temp swings first before jumping to the conclusion of disease. Check your phosphates too... I know that a small amount of phosphate in the system can kill some SPS corals.
Good luck and I hope some other people chime in!

 

[eric b 125]

Thanks for the reply Snake. I did put the coral back in, after breaking off the dead part.
I love this forum, to me the big site is way too impersonal. the problem with a smaller community is that even when you post a thread saying "urgent help needed" is that sometimes the question doesnt get answered soon enough. This wasn't very urgent, and once the initial surprise wore off i was able to rationally figure out the answer to my question.
Despite this issue with smaller forums, I still hang out here because of the sense of an online community and not just a website. Aside from that, the big site has been real ignorant to my local club so although I maintain my membership, my post count is still in the single digits after two years.