Wooohooo......I have red bugs!

[sknoch78]

Has anyone here had experience in treating them? I have about 20 frags and a couple of colonies in a 15g frag tank. Everything had been duing fine until a few days ago when I noticed some slight bleaching on a monti cap. Yesterday I noticed that one cap had bleached even further and another was showing signs. I assumed it had to do with my low alkalinity so I did a 3g water change to help boost the alkalinity. I came home tonight and was looking in the tank and noticed some lightness in the branches of a yellow acro colony I have, so I broke out the magnifying glass to get a better look at what was going on. Much to my surprise I found several small red dots and upon further inspection, they were scurrying around.

So I already have some Interceptor. Can anyone enlighten me on the procedure for dosing as well as how much for such a small tank.

Thanks,
Shawn

[Ahbrit]

ive never used it myself but most say to DOUBLE/TRIPLE the dosage.
youll lose all your crabs and shrimps

[Chief]

I would PM Ryan (R2R2) at Advanced Aquarium. I'm sure he could get you some info on interceptor dosages.

Jay

[impur]

Redbugs don't live on montis.

Here is the procedure.

http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45859

[sknoch78]

Thanks for the help guys.

[WAVES]

If its only a few acro colonies or frags I would probably remove them and treat them seperate. IMO I bet you will get them all without treating the whole tank. If it doesnt work, THEN you can treat the whole tank.

Like impure said, they dont live on monties, nor any other coral other than Acropora. Chances are good if you just treat the coral (like 1/10 a pill) you will get all the bugs, without losing your pods etc.

[impur]

If you do treat outside your tank (which i recommend) you will need to leave the display free of acros for at least 5 days. That seems to be the point that these bugs starve and die off.

[R-3]

Have you treated yet Shawn? Just wondering how it went. Later Ryan

[sknoch78]

I did one treatment about a week ago. I followed it up with a 50% water change and have been running carbon since. I would say that it worked perfectly, not a bug left that I can find. I ended up treating the whole tank as it is only a 15g. After this experience, I will treat all new acros before they go in the big tank.

[impur]

Make sure you do the 3 treatments. I did 1 in tank treatment and the bugs came back in a month.

[Lowman]

I wonder if we have a couple of pipefish in our sps tanks that eat cyclopeeze, which are red, if that would train the pipefish to eat red bugs? There are some smaller mouthed pipefish around, so maybe someone could try that?

[oldbrownies]

Is this the only treatment for red bugs?

[impur]

QT and weekly dips are the best route. Next best i suppose is interceptor treatment for your display. Be prepared to lose all your hermits, copepods, and shrimp if you go this route.

[Michael7979]

I have used Intercepter and NOT all hermits, shrimps, and pods will die.........at least some lived when I treated.

[impur]

I used it too, all my hermits died, lost my shrimp and probably 90% of my pods. Not to mention all the die-off triggered a cyano outbreak that i fought for 4 months.

So i guess YMMV.