arghhh! just realized why i have been losing my acros.. i have red bugs what do i do?

murphreef

murphreef

Active member
ok for the past 2 months i have been losing my acros

ive lost a humilis colony, a nice tri color star fragment, a blue stag, a porites coral, a green stag, and i never seen these buggers until today!

i was rearanging one of my corals and took it out to see little red specs put it back in looked closely and they are moving around!

all of my acros were growing great and coloring up nicely then all the sudden went down hill for no apparent reason...

now i remember after which coral i added this problem started happening i added a wild colony of blue tipped tenuis... back in dec.. then everything started going down hill... i had no polyp extension started fading colors the tips died off and STN...

right now all the rest of my acros only

a small frag of somehitng i dont know an acro validia, 2 tenuis acros and a blue tipped acro of some sort are all surviving barely no polyp extension losing there tips and withering away after just having had some great growth..

i will never add another wild colony without QT it again

what should i do?

the rest of my tank is doing great mostly softies and LPS with 2 clams it took me forever to figure out the problem now i fear its too late...

i was putting together my new 180 mainly sps tank and wanted to transfer soon...

what do i do now?>?

do i use interceptor and kill all my crustraceons in the tank i have now then tranfer everything or just try to dip the corals in a lugols mixture?

im affraid ill kill my mandarins food but i dont want to transfer these to my new mainly sps tank

please help!
 
well as for now since i only have a few corals remaining and they werent in that good of shape i ended up dipping them in lugols for 15 minutes seems like it killed any lil amphiopod or crustaceon living in the coral killed one of the acro crabs i couldnt get out but i did that and put them back in the tank i figured i only have a few acros left so i took that route for now hope they survive i didnt want them to transfer over to my new tank

will there still be some living amongst the LR??

and how do i prevent this from happening next time?? how do u properly remove any unwanteed pest next time?>

thanks!

justin
 
Interceptor is the solution here... itÃ"šÃ‚´s a shame I canÃ"šÃ‚´t get that stuff locally (I mean in my whole country!)
But IÃ"šÃ‚´m starting to doubt now, last weekend I saw the most amazing spsÃ"šÃ‚´s tank IÃ"šÃ‚´ve ever seen, it had more than 80 spsÃ"šÃ‚´s and they were all colorful and nice and super healthy! and guess what?... they had red bugs all over...
go figure
Marco
 
That is weird, I have never seen them infest porites or stag horns of any type so far in thanks that have them, they seem to stay on try colors and the like. Do you actually see them on your stags?

Even in tanks that have red bugs, their try colors that are infested are doing very well, even being infested from the beginning. For all your corals to all go down hill so fast it may be something you over looked. Donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t beet me up Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢m not saying the bugs are bad or not, just this may not be the exact cause for your problem.
 
I have had red bugs for a long time off and on. I never experienced coral deaths as you describe..IME the rbs were't killing your acro ...But they didn't help either.. IME bad water quality kills acros .

Good luck with the interceptor treatments
 
Treating the whole tank with Interceptor is what I would recommend. Do the Interceptor treatment right the first time then dip and QT all new specimens and never look back:)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6929291#post6929291 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by marine_freak
Ok where do you buy this interceptor...a supplier preferrably some that sells the product direct.
Click to expand...
Your veterinarian is the best place. If not there some of those online "drug sellers" have it if I'm not mistaken.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6928711#post6928711 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by clkwrk
I have had red bugs for a long time off and on. I never experienced coral deaths as you describe..IME the rbs were't killing your acro ...But they didn't help either.. IME bad water quality kills acros .
Click to expand...

This sounds like my experience too ... had RB's for 3+ months [that I knew] + didn't lose a coral.

While I would consider treatment with Interceptor, I'd check everything else as I'm suprised you're having such losses. Not impossible - but I'd check for another chemistry issue.
 
hmmm i understand what u guys are saying ... i mean i thought i had exhausted all other checks and balances trying to figure out whats been the down fall of my acros and im not sayin the red bugs have done all the damage or not but i just happened to notice them yesterday for the first time while looking closely at the sps...

ive been trying to pinpoint whats going on in my tank sicne things had been doing so good

a few issues i can think of which its impossible to pinpoint which issue it may be or it might be a combo of all of the issues

issue number 1.... had problems with my PFO ballast burning out my 250W Helios 20K DE bulbs they gave me a new dual PFO ballast bulbs work great and seem to penetrate really good .... this also happened about the middle of december... i slowly started to notice the tips dying off and a few corals stn

issue number 2..... my ph swings alot from morning to evening from about 7.8 to 8.3 by the end of the photo period.... found this out cuz i finally got a Ph monitor

issue number 3..... my SG was high i got a refractometer finally another one of those should of had along time ago things cuz my lil swing arm hydrometer always said 1.025.... well the refractometer came back at 1.029 and 37ppm another possible issue

issue number 4 .... my Alk drops fast and i cant get it above 8 always goes back to 6-7.... and i was dosing B-ionic 2 part and my calc got too high around 480-500

issue number 5.... the red bugs.... ive noticed little to no polyp extension in the last month....

issue number 6.... a small hair algae growth which isnt on any corals but i dont know why its happening since i measure my PO4 and it comes back non-detectable

so as u can see its a lot of issues here lol that have happened i kept trying to rule each other out but im figurin the stress of all the issues is whats made my acros so unhappy and die away

i only have 4 pieces of acro left in my tank now since i lost about 6 pieces.... my tank is still filled with other corals like large bubble, green brain, blastos, frogspawn, zoo's, some richordias and a few shrooms, some GSP a RBTA, a large colt coral and a yellow leather finger.... always wondered if the leather would affect the acros but i run carbon 24/7 and change every week

im switching over to my new tank within a week so im just guna start over with the sps and see how they do with a nice better system with all the right equipment i just dont want the red bugs to spread to my new tank.... when u use interceptor will it kill all my crustraceons and such?? what about all the pods in the rocks too do they die?

thanks guys sorry for the long post but after sitting here and thinking about all the possible issues i am figuring all of them combined is whats giving me the issue
 
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