It has been said before and I will say it again, These things are what nightmares are made out of. The bodies look nothing short of alien and what these little beast find delectable is your favorite corals. A parasitic marine arthropod that feeds on coral tissue. These particular nuisances came in on an order from Sandiego of all places but I suppose that they did not originate there , they were transhipped in and then passed on.
These little guys are extremely hard to get a picture of as they are tiny thin limbed and almost transparent, although some of them are a brown hue. A few of them are rather good sized with leg spans a little smaller than my pinky nail, some of them are carrying what appears to be egg sacs with them as they march around on the base and underside of the coral branches. I am going to have to get the coral out into a tuperware and get the macro on the camera.
I am also going to have to do some experimenting with dips and possible natural controls, the fun part..
For now Here is a quote I found.
These pycnogonids feed on the tissue of corals, similar to the related zoa-eating sea spiders. In this case it's however SPS they are after.
Oftentimes they are not really apparent during the day since they hide near or under the coral. One only notices the damage they cause on the corals.
They do not lay eggs but the males breed them and release fully developed small sea spiders. This is an advantage when fighting these animals: if you remove the adult siders you also remove the eggs.
There is no good in-tank treatment except manual removal - except one wants to try a wrasse or similar.
Prevention is quite easy: a preventative iodine dip makes sea spiders let go of corals and substrate.
Home 
