Amphipods invading coral?

[salty_dog]

Hi All,
Anyone have any suggestions as to how to deal with numerous amphipods in my tank? I used to have tons of copepods on the glass. And amphipods used to scurry along the rock and glass all the time snacking. I have a hammer, acan, trumpet, and monti. Last summer there was a major alkalininity drop and all the corals suffered for a long while. The hammer never really recovered and hasn't shown full extension since. Over the past month I notice amphipod antennae sticking out all over the hammer. I temporarily moved my six line wrasse in the tank, and it's knocked some of them back. But the hammer is still covered with these buggers. My Acan, trumpet and monti seem unaffected. Interesting now that the fish is in there, don't see them out and about on the rock anymore.

poor image, note the fuzz/hair of their antenna especially on the L side of the skeleton and base of the flesh. I am pretty certain it's an animal as they wiggle.

 

[salty_dog]

So the cleaner shrimp and wrasse knocked the amphipods back a bit, but was still seeing lots of their little antennae poking out of the coral skeleton, even up where the flesh starts, which had turned mostly white compared to the dark brown it was when healthy. Since the weekend I've been doing a series of DIY coral dips. This includes 3 days of fenbendazole and KCL. A heaping portion of both for 5 min. I also added H2O2 to this dip on day 3. Plus a vigorous scrub with the toothbrush. The hammer shows some improvement in opening an hour after the dips. No major polyp extension. I no longer see any amphipod antennae sticking out of it.
I've also decided to treat the tank with fluconazole as the bryopsis has not abated despite H2O2 and toothbrush scrubs. Plucking it only provides some relief for a few days then it's back. I've taken fish out of the tank and have cut back on feedings. Thankfully the other corals continue to do well. I get a drop in alkalinity just a few days post water change, the monti and acan are growing. Alkalinity drops fast, will go from the Reef Crystals level of 10 down to 6 in half a week. I've added 2mL of All For Reef the past couple of days and will check calcium as recommended to adjust dose. This will help if I slack on water changes. Of note when I was feeding the tank fairly heavily for the baby mollies, cleaner shrimp and six line wrasse, had phosphates of 0.1 and nitrates <5 per Hannah and Salifert test kits.

Anyway, now people can feel somewhat confident that high dose KCL (table spoon per liter) and a half packet of dog dewormer (which treats a 50lb pup) won't kill a hammer if dipped for just 5 min daily. It seems to do the trick on the pesky amphipods. Will try to update in a week or so.
This is my first coral ever so I really want to keep it going.

 

[salty_dog]

So an update. After several of my DIY fenbendazole, KCL, and H2O2 dips, the pods are completely gone. The coral is no worse or better. Moved to my main display and will see how it goes. There are 3 heads, one in direct light and the other two facing away. So if one bleaches out then I know I need to move it down some.
Also fluconazole completely eradicated all bryopsis and hair algae in two of my smaller tanks which I used the directed dose for two doses. This was impressive as I had bryopsis in my pico tank for almost 2 years.

I microdosed fluconazole in the main display for some bryopsis that hitchhiked on frags moved from the smaller display then a after a water change saw some dinos pop up, they are not getting worse after a week, so I'm not going to do anything at the moment. Clean up crew is still healthy. I'm feeding the main display pretty heavily. The bryopsis is isolated to one coral frag and not growing at all. The urchin also had a nibble of it, which they used to completely avoid.

Now to try my best to keep my hands out of the tank! So difficult as I saw a couple of Vermitids on the shell of a snail. I gave him a scrape and a superglue make over on the shell. Not seeing any in the display, though I have yet to pull the rock out of my sump and take a good look.