Corals can harbor such a wide variety of different pests and parasites, that learning about and controlling all of them is a hobby unto itself. This is especially true of live coral dealers who are at the front lines of…
Coral Typhoon Made a Washing Machine for Coral Dips
If you’ve been trading corals for any length of time now, you probably already know how easy it is to get coral coodies, pests, and parasites. Therefore all reefers are encouraged to dip most corals before introduction to the tank…
How to thoroughly quarantine your Corals
With just about every endeavor success breeds new challenges. As I have already noted in several articles, with the improved success we have now achieved in keeping just about every type of coral and invertebrate long-term we are now seeing…
Common Coral Reef Pests and some ideas on how to remove them
In the early days of the hobby, we paid little attention to the many small animals that came in with our corals. We had such a difficult time keeping our corals alive that little thought was paid to the potential…
Xynosphaera: the Parasitic Nephthea Shrimp
Green Nephthea is one of the most colorful and popular soft corals in the aquarium hobby, but most aquarists (and scientists) have never heard of the curious crustacean which calls it home. The above illustration [credit: Bruce, 1994] depicts Xynosphaera colemani,…
Marine leeches are a poorly known and rare group of macro ectoparasites
Parasites are a common occurrence in any hobby and we as pet owners deal with them on a regular basis. Parasites are nasty opportunistic organisms that latch onto animals (in our case, fish) and feed on their blood, tissue, fluids…
Tunicates growing on zoanthids is probably nothing to worry about
We love a good reef aquarium Critter ID mystery so when Extreme Corals shared around this photo of some odd looking things growing on their zoanthids, our inner Sherlock Holmes was on the case. The colonial nature of the benthic…
Zanclea hydroid is an Acropora and stony coral parasite you’ve probably never heard of
Zanclea is a genus of small hydroids that specializes at living on other marine creatures like corals, anemones, sponges and bryozoans. About five years ago we visited a healthy stony coral reef aquarium Seattle that had some staghorn coral colonies…
