Anacropora is one of the lesser known small polyp stony coral species which are closely related to Acros and Montis. Montipora is known to be infested by pesky white nudibranch, Acropora has its issues with Amakusaplana (Acro Eating Flatworms) and Anacropora had evaded documented infestation, until now.
Days before taking off for a big trip to Asia & Australia I decided to take some photographs of my corals to document their growth and development after a month of absence. Hopefully you enjoyed the eye candy contained in my posts on the Blueberry Shortcake, Tricolor Echinata and the Toxic Green Florida.
For some of those shots I used a macro lens which gave me a very good and close look at many of my corals, all of which looked incredibly healthy, but an undesirable outline caught my attention on the Anacropora. As many of you know AEFW are NO fun to deal with, and I was incredulous that this dreaded pest had slipped through dipping procedures, and we’ve never heard of them on Anacros!
So I pulled out the small Anacropora colony to give it a quick dip and I couldn’t beleive the cloud of flatworms that blew off within in just a couple of minutes. This was a very good sign because AEFW are normally much harder to remove, even with a long, concentrated dip.
Thankfully, this time the flatworms appear to be of the normal, annoying variety that can live on virtually all types of corals, but don’t actually consume them. But that doesn’t mean that hungry AEFW won’t resort to munching on the very closely Anacropora when true Acros aren’t available, so consider yourself warned!
