Red Bug Questions

[edandsandy]

I have a question, when we talk about using a turkey baster to "blow off" the corals with the red bugs, are we just "blowing" them to another coral?
I have seen a few bugs in my tank and I am concerned about them getting out of control.
My husband is concerned with using Interceptor as it will kill the crabs, shrimps, pods, etc... in the tank as we can not remove all of them.
I have read that adding a dragon face pipe fish to the tank is a natural predator to red bugs.
Any thoughts?

[beeker]

interceptor is the only way i know of that has long term sucess

[edandsandy]

Thanks beeker,
Its just that for the last year we have been spending around $100 every 3-4 months on crabs, snails, etc.... to keep up with the detritus. We have a HUGH pod inventory that we would like to maintain, we are interested in purchasing a couple of Mandarin Gobys, our tank is just over 2 years old now.
I'm still curious to see if anyone has had success at just "blowing" them.

[hk855]

The red bugs are supposed to only infest the smooth skined corals so they will not infest everything. I had a small red bug outbreak on one or two corals in a nano and added a cleaner shrimp, later found out they will eat whatever they can and it looks like it may have solved my problem. I've only been bug free for 6-10 weeks and we'll see if they come back. To save your tank from dosing I would remove the smoth skined corals and dip them in an interceptor tank, maybe QT them there for a few weeks in hopes of those in the tank starving.

[ice2fire11]

im in between my battle with them. ive done one pretty heavy dose to my tank. i used the reccomended dosage and it got rid of about 80% but there were a few still holding strong. so i up up'd the dose x2 and it wiped them out the day after. I did not do a water change after this dose, i just used a carbon reactor.

i did lose my porcelin crab (just found that lastnight) i cant tell but it looks like two redlegs went. my peppermint shrimp is still going good.

pods are still in bulk numbers.



try to grab as may crabs as you can and nuke them. I was worried about pods myself but there are still plenty left.

good luck

[ice2fire11]

to your question about blowing them off..... this would just spread them, plus they are some pretty strong litte guys. theyll just keep laying eggs where you cant get with the baster and theyll be back.


if your worried just yank the infected corals out and dip them and keep them out of the tank for a week let the bugs in the dt die out. they wont survive without an acro.

[edandsandy]

Thanks ice2fire11,
Our tank is mainly Acropora's we have tried to dip as many acro's in coral revive as we can, we are seeing dead red bugs in the bucket, but as you mentioned they are laying eggs. some of our colony's won't fit into a 5g bucket or they have encrusted on the LR.

I'm glad to hear that your pod's survived. That is giving me hope!
We must have 80-100 Nassarius snails in the tank as well, do you think the interceptor will kill these off?

It appears that our best bet is to use interceptor to rid our system of these pest. I'm just having a difficult time convincing my husband to use the product. :sad2:

[aquaph8]

im in between my battle with them. ive done one pretty heavy dose to my tank. i used the reccomended dosage and it got rid of about 80% but there were a few still holding strong. so i up up'd the dose x2 and it wiped them out the day after. I did not do a water change after this dose, i just used a carbon reactor.

i did lose my porcelin crab (just found that lastnight) i cant tell but it looks like two redlegs went. my peppermint shrimp is still going good.

pods are still in bulk numbers.



try to grab as may crabs as you can and nuke them. I was worried about pods myself but there are still plenty left.

good luck

Thats funny, I lost my peppermint shrimp and my porcelin made it. Guess you never really know how stuff is going to react.

[ice2fire11]

Thanks ice2fire11,
Our tank is mainly Acropora's we have tried to dip as many acro's in coral revive as we can, we are seeing dead red bugs in the bucket, but as you mentioned they are laying eggs. some of our colony's won't fit into a 5g bucket or they have encrusted on the LR.

I'm glad to hear that your pod's survived. That is giving me hope!
We must have 80-100 Nassarius snails in the tank as well, do you think the interceptor will kill these off?

It appears that our best bet is to use interceptor to rid our system of these pest. I'm just having a difficult time convincing my husband to use the product. :sad2:

snails are not effected to my knowledge.

its a bit scary when you first pour it in. but like i said i dosed just enough, got mad and dosed the hell outta it.

it will slowly kill the acro, just do it, you wont regret it.

[allsps40]

Yep. You need to interceptor your sps. I had the red bugs about 1 1/2 ago. Had to take an infected to a vet and get a scrip. I was cool in a way. The Vet knows someone at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and he sent some to him for research. I got to see the red bugs under a microscope. The Vet gave me a scrip for a liquid form of interceptor.

[neoalchemist74]

I've tried two pipefish and both starved without touching a single redbug(or any other food I tried).

[ice2fire11]

yeah ive been told that pipe fish dont work either.

[shenyong]

I have a question, when we talk about using a turkey baster to "blow off" the corals with the red bugs, are we just "blowing" them to another coral?
I have seen a few bugs in my tank and I am concerned about them getting out of control.
My husband is concerned with using Interceptor as it will kill the crabs, shrimps, pods, etc... in the tank as we can not remove all of them.
I have read that adding a dragon face pipe fish to the tank is a natural predator to red bugs.
Any thoughts?

Well, turkey baster works very well on aefw but i dont think it would work on RB. Fishes wont eat it eventhough u bast them out of arcos..eventually they will attact to another arco which doesnt has it previously.

The best way is to treat your tank w/ interceptor. So that way u'll have rb free in your system. Before that please take out as much as hermitcrabs, shrimps and crabs if possible..no need to worried about pods, they will easyly come back. Once the tank is done treating u can intro crabs/shimps as many as u want.

GoodLuck!

[Rickyrooz1]

Only AEFW blow right off, you'll need Interceptor for Red Bugs.

[edandsandy]

Thanks everyone for your advise.
We have been putting this treatment off for a couple of weeks now. I think I have finally talked my husband into it. We are going to MACNA this weekend and wants to talk to a few speakers before we do this. I agreed with him, but in the same breath I said we might loose $100 in crabs but we are loosing a lot more $$$$$ in corals.
I wonder if interceptor works on aefw's as well. I haven't seen them in the tank thank goodness. Just courious.

[Rickyrooz1]

Thanks everyone for your advise.
We have been putting this treatment off for a couple of weeks now. I think I have finally talked my husband into it. We are going to MACNA this weekend and wants to talk to a few speakers before we do this. I agreed with him, but in the same breath I said we might loose $100 in crabs but we are loosing a lot more $$$$$ in corals.
I wonder if interceptor works on aefw's as well. I haven't seen them in the tank thank goodness. Just courious.

It doesn't, it'll kill hermit crabs, shrimp, pods and Red Bugs. You'll want to dip your corals once a week for four weeks in ReVive for 10 minutes to get rid of the AEFW's. I just finished treating my corals, I had both AEFW and red bugs.

[didimcginty]

what about clams? i have a maxima i do not want to kill and i have what i think is red bugs on two of my acros, they are little white specks, i two scared about using interceptor so i have been reading acrhives on this site all week. and will the death of all those crabs in the tank at one time do anything to foul up the tank? just thoughts,
edandsandy, not trying to steal your thread, just in the same boat, red bugs and many fears on treating

[edandsandy]

It doesn't, it'll kill hermit crabs, shrimp, pods and Red Bugs. You'll want to dip your corals once a week for four weeks in ReVive for 10 minutes to get rid of the AEFW's. I just finished treating my corals, I had both AEFW and red bugs.

I have heard from a few of our club members, that when they treated their tanks for red bugs they found AEFW too. their opinion is, they think that the red bugs and AEFW "might" have some kind of a symbiotic relationship where as the red bugs are eating the AEFW's . This is just from their observation on their tank.

So I cannot dip every coral in my tank for AEFW's some are too large for a 5g bucket and/or have encrusted on my live rock.
What should we do if find AEFW's too?????

:blown: AEFW's!

[edandsandy]

what about clams? i have a maxima i do not want to kill and i have what i think is red bugs on two of my acros, they are little white specks, i two scared about using interceptor so i have been reading acrhives on this site all week. and will the death of all those crabs in the tank at one time do anything to foul up the tank? just thoughts,
edandsandy, not trying to steal your thread, just in the same boat, red bugs and many fears on treating

PLEASE chime in, we have the same thoughts! I have seen the little white specks too, I don't see red, just white... My husband and reef club members say I must be colored blind! :fun2:
We also have 2 maxima clams, they have their foot down on a HUGH piece of live rock.

I have asked others as well if all the bugs, crabs, shrimp, etc.... are dying, is this going to send my nitrates through the roof?

When do we do our first water change after the treatment?
How much of a water change do we do?
How many re-treatments do we do?
How much interceptor do we use? our total water volume is appx. 500g

[aquaph8]

Your clams will be fine. You will lose crabs, shrimps and pods. Your first water change is 25% after six hours. Make sure water is running through all parts of your system. Your skimmer should not bubble but have water running through it. I did 3 treatments. The first two seven days apart and the third one 14 days after the second. If you have a bunch of crabs I would recommend you remove as many as you can to prevent as much death in your tank as possible. Expect a little bit of cyano during the process that will have to be dealt with after your treatments. I cant remember the exact dose of interceptor off the top of my head but if you use the search function there is an article out there that explains everything. I hope this helps and try not to be too nervous about it, after your first treatment you will see that it really no big deal at all. Good luck.

[didimcginty]

i appreciate you letting me chime in, does you husband think they look red, to me they look like little white bugs running on the coral, i see no red behind, i can't find my magnifying glass to zoom my eyes in. i just started dipping thim in revive last night,
thank you for all your help

[aquaph8]

Found it. You want to use the Large dog pills(51-100lbs). The dosage is 25mg of a pill per 10 gallons. They come in a pack of 6 and each tablet will treat 380 gallons. You will use a little less that one and half pills for 500 gallons. Make sure you remove all carbon and GFO and any UV and ozone. After you water change following the treatment run plenty of activated carbon.

[edandsandy]

i appreciate you letting me chime in, does you husband think they look red, to me they look like little white bugs running on the coral, i see no red behind, i can't find my magnifying glass to zoom my eyes in. i just started dipping thim in revive last night,
thank you for all your help

No, he said I never saw red, just a white bug, one of our reef club members was here and we saw the EXACT bug he saw a white bug with a red dot for the head.
When I dipped the coral in revive we did see small red bugs. go figure right????
We are dipping as many corals as we can, but it is difficult, like I said some are huge and some are so encrusted we can not take out the LR.

[edandsandy]

Found it. You want to use the Large dog pills(51-100lbs). The dosage is 25mg of a pill per 10 gallons. They come in a pack of 6 and each tablet will treat 380 gallons. You will use a little less that one and half pills for 500 gallons. Make sure you remove all carbon and GFO and any UV and ozone. After you water change following the treatment run plenty of activated carbon.


Thanks for update!

How long after we treat the tank do we perform a water change out?

[ice2fire11]

You have a big window for an exact dose. I did I lot of research before dumpin that into my tank.

I have a 40g w/ a 20g sump so I rounded my displacement after rock and what not to about 40 45g. I used a smaller dose of the interceptor for small dogs. The amount of the active ingredient In the pill for the smaller dogs was the amount needed
For 40g. So being paranoid I only dosed that much to my surprise did not kill all of them. So I got ****ed and doubled my dose and wiped them out. Just after under a week now and my corals look much better. More pe and color already. The only thing I lost was pen porcelain crab and one hermit crab. Nothing else with be effected.

I ran my treatment for twelve ours the first time and did a 25% water change that morning. But when I seen a few more redbugs I dosed double and let that dose run for 12 hours and did no water change. I just reinstalled my carbon reactor and things have been great since. I'm doing another dose this Saturday and doing the same double dosage for 12 hours and just running carbon afterwards.

You'll be fine. The longer you wait the worse it gets

[ice2fire11]

You have a big window for an exact dose. I did I lot of research before dumpin that into my tank.

I have a 40g w/ a 20g sump so I rounded my displacement after rock and what not to about 40 45g. I used a smaller dose of the interceptor for small dogs. The amount of the active ingredient In the pill for the smaller dogs was the amount needed
For 40g. So being paranoid I only dosed that much to my surprise did not kill all of them. So I got ****ed and doubled my dose and wiped them out. Just after under a week now and my corals look much better. More pe and color already. The only thing I lost was pen porcelain crab and one hermit crab. Nothing else with be effected.

I ran my treatment for twelve ours the first time and did a 25% water change that morning. But when I seen a few more redbugs I dosed double and let that dose run for 12 hours and did no water change. I just reinstalled my carbon reactor and things have been great since. I'm doing another dose this Saturday and doing the same double dosage for 12 hours and just running carbon afterwards.

You'll be fine. The longer you wait the worse it gets

[didimcginty]

what about sand sifting starfish, i am going to dose my tank this weekend and want to make sure, nassarius snails also, i am already starting to take out my hermits, emeralds will have to fend for themselves, i can't find them

[edandsandy]

You have a big window for an exact dose. I did I lot of research before dumpin that into my tank.

I have a 40g w/ a 20g sump so I rounded my displacement after rock and what not to about 40 45g. I used a smaller dose of the interceptor for small dogs. The amount of the active ingredient In the pill for the smaller dogs was the amount needed
For 40g. So being paranoid I only dosed that much to my surprise did not kill all of them. So I got ****ed and doubled my dose and wiped them out. Just after under a week now and my corals look much better. More pe and color already. The only thing I lost was pen porcelain crab and one hermit crab. Nothing else with be effected.

I ran my treatment for twelve ours the first time and did a 25% water change that morning. But when I seen a few more redbugs I dosed double and let that dose run for 12 hours and did no water change. I just reinstalled my carbon reactor and things have been great since. I'm doing another dose this Saturday and doing the same double dosage for 12 hours and just running carbon afterwards.

You'll be fine. The longer you wait the worse it gets


Thanks for all you advise, I know we are being over cautious right, but you are right the longer we wait the worse it is GETTING! Now that I know what they look like, I see them on several colonies now. We are headed to MACNA tomorrow, our daughter will be house/tank sitting for us. We are in the process of finding a vet for the RX. Next week we will start the process of removing as many critters as possible. I will keep you updated.

[edandsandy]

what about sand sifting starfish, i am going to dose my tank this weekend and want to make sure, nassarius snails also, i am already starting to take out my hermits, emeralds will have to fend for themselves, i can't find them

Best of luck to you with your treatment. Please keep us posted on your progress.
I haven't read any where about star fish being affected sorry, I think the snails will be fine, I think....... maybe some one will chime in soon on your star fish & snail.

[didimcginty]

thank you and have a good time at macna, good luck to you also

[ice2fire11]

the interceptor only effects pods. the starfish will be fine. I think it actually paralyzes the pod or what ever is effected. one of the crabs i thought it killed, randomly started moving around again.

you guys will be fine. i didnt even have a single coral slime over. I even took a turkey baster with the interceptor in a cup of water and shot it all over the coral and the little bastards.

[aquaph8]

+1 Starfish will be fine. I did my water changes after 6 hours and then ran carbon.

[didimcginty]

i found old interceptor pills in my house that was for my dog, it expired in 04/09, does that matter do you think? could save me time and money , my vet wants $130 for a six pack of pills
thank you all for your help
greatly appreciated

[ice2fire11]

wow! 130 dollars is insane. 60 is pushing it imo. youve got the dog it appears go somewhere else.

if anything else get them to write you a prescription and order it online. im unsure if the active ingredient wears off over time.

what size tank?

[didimcginty]

90 gallon, 20 gallon refugium and 12 gallon sump, i guess the system at about 100 gallons of water

[ice2fire11]

what size tabs do you have

[didimcginty]

large dog 51-100lbs tabs

[edandsandy]

Oh, one more question, what about the sea cucumbers? will they survive?????

[edandsandy]

I found this site, it is very useful, however they are saying:

Remove any shrimp or crabs that you want to save. They will have to stay out of the system for the duration of the treatment. Remember, that when you add them back to your tank, there is a slight chance that you will re-introduce the red bugs to your tank.

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=14402

[aquaph8]

Cucumbers will be fine. 130 is a lot, find a new vet. I only paid $50.

[edandsandy]

I found another GREAT link,

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=27979

[edandsandy]

OK, we are back from MACNA and we found this really cool nanoscope from Deltec, so of course we purchased it. When we got home I set it up on the tank, and WOW did we see RED BUGS, the tiny "white" bugs are RED! UGH!!! anyway we are removing as many crabs as we can tonight and tomorrow I found a vet in our area (who's is in our reef club btw), he will sell us the interceptor. Then we will treat the tank. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

didimcginty, how's it going on your side?

[didimcginty]

hopefully ok, no vet will sell me interceptor over the counter without making an appointment for my dog, which will prob end up $130, so i took my infected acros and put them in my 10 gallon med tank and used my expired pills on them, they look like they lost there bugs, but have not fully regained there color and no pe, they look like they are peeking but not out, i put two peices of live rock in the 10 gallon tank i had left over from my sons tank and wow, you should have seen all the dead bristle worms coming out of them, any way i did the treatment for 10 hours on friday,then dipped them for 15 mins. in revive then put them back in my main display, just waiting to see what happens, haven't seen any bugs, so hopefully good things might happen, i know they are still in my tank if they where on my acro, but time will tell.
hope the best for you and i will keep on reading on your progress
good luck and thank you for your help

[thi7b]

That's large pill I believed treat upto 400gal. from what I read. If your system is 100gal total just divide it into 4 half. That will give you 4 treatment.

[edandsandy]

We dosed the tank tonight at 8:00 pm. We saw a few more crabs I'm the tank and were able to pull the out. It was kinda funny the whole tank was acting like we were feeding!
Oh. We used (1) 23.0 mg and (1) 2.3 mg

[coralll]

Quaranteen is the only true way of getting rid of these little bugers.

[edandsandy]

Glad to say all is well in the tank :celeb2:,

the shrimp we could not remove made it! :beer:

The polyps on the SPS about an hour into the treatment retracted, I was getting a little worried at that point. Around midnight we saw some of the polyps extending and were relieved. We guessed they retracted because the bugs were running around them?????

I was looking with my nanoscope at some of the colonies today and I couldn't see any bugs, and the polyps are all out and happy :inlove:


We will do a water change out in a few hours and run carbon and turn the skimmer back on!

Wheeewwwww, what a relief, the tank is FINE!


From now on NO CORAL GOES INTO THE DT WITHOUT BEING QT!

We don't want to go through this again!

[didimcginty]

great news, glad to hear all went well

[edandsandy]

Thanks
We did a water change out and loaded a small reactor with carbon.
The SOS are looking fine and all the critters left in the tank are doing
Well also.
How long do we wait to reintroduce the critters we took out back onto the system?

[aquaph8]

They should be fine to put back in now if your done treating the tank. You do know your supposed to do 3 treatments 7 days apart?

[edandsandy]

Thanks, and yes we purchased enough interceptor for 3 treatments.

[edandsandy]

We lost our deep water acro :( and we are noticing a cyano outbreak.
Has anyone else had the same problem cyano?

[aquaph8]

Yep, its part of the game unfortunately. Im really not sure if its from the die off of pods and such or if its the actual interceptor causing it. Very normal though.

[edandsandy]

It has been 6 days since we first dosed the tank with interceptor , and we haven't seen a red bug :beer:
We lost a deep water acro, and we noticed some of the hairy mushrooms were not happy :( we didn't loose any mushrooms just a couple moved, but we were able to find them in the tank before they attached somewhere else and we are giving them away.

We have also noticed some of the sps's have increased polyp extension.

Our 2nd dose is scheduled for tomorrow night, so today we are on the crab and shrimp hunt again!

Wish us luck!

[aquaph8]

Good to hear.

[edandsandy]

To date we haven't seen any red bugs and Wednesday will be our 3rd and final treatment :celeb3:

We have noticed the SPS polyp expansion is getting bigger and better every time we dose.

The only problem we are having now is cyano bacteria and some sort of thick green algae on the LR.. Not GHA algae, thank goodness.....

We are blowing the rocks off about every other day to help with the cyano, but that thick green algae won't budge....

Any suggestion on what it could be :reading: :reading: :reading:

[edandsandy]

We have completed our 3rd and final treatment on the tank :bounce1:

I don't see any bugs :uzi:

Yesterday I spent almost 5 hours blowing off the rocks scrubbing the glass cleaning out the "sump" part of the refugium....

I was surprised at how much cyano the interceptor created.

A few members of our local reef club suggested to to use chemi-clean to help rid the tank of this nasty pest :wave: :wave:

I am a little afraid to add "another" chemical to the tank right now.
I will continue to clean out the socks every other day, and weekly 120g water change outs for a while to see if that helps.

Oh, I had to order another clean up crew yesterday.
Ed is not going to be a happy man when he see how much I had to spend! :worried: :worried: :worried:

[edandsandy]

I was wondering how long should I wait after treating the tank with interceptor when we could safely introduce a new clean up crew? our last treatment was last week Wednesday.
We have completed a 150g water change out, and I have been blowing the LR off everyday. We are still running carbon too. Our protein skimmer is still foaming like crazy too :crazy1: