Do you think this looks like a red bug?

[fishmonger2]

Ok so lately my sps have pretty much stopped growing and in the last week some have started dying. This puzzled me, because calcium stayed up around 450ppm, Alk was around 9 dkh, Mag I forgot the most recent reading off the top of my head but it was between 1300-1400. Nitrates are 0 and the most recent phosphate reading was somewhere around .01. All of these are normal levels that the tank and corals are used to. The problem was most of my colonies were attached to the rock work and I couldn't dip without removing the piece and possibly damaging it. However I started having tissue loss on a easily movable piece and I dipped it tonight. I noticed this little guy was left over in the dip solution and he looks like a red bug, but I don't have a magnifying glass to take a better look. So I snapped a picture and decided to see if you guys wanted to offer a second opinion.

I apologize the pictures aren't the best, but I got what I could.

 

[flyyyguy]

doesnt look like it red bugs are much smaller than that even

 

[acrodave]

thats a good pic flyyyguy

 

[flyyyguy]

thank you

 

[jakester]

hard to tell the size in the picture. The color looks really close to me. Could be one if the size is right. Just watch the corals closely with a magnifying glass around the polyp areas. Also, sudden signs of poor polyp extension is a good sign the little s*^@# are there. From my experience they seem to like the a. valida or other smoother skin looking corals such as oregon tort. If you have any of these in your system I would eyeball those pieces first when trying to spot red bugs. Good luck ! Hope this helps

 

[iamwrasseman]

looks like red bugs to me although its very late here

 

[fishmonger2]

hard to tell the size in the picture. The color looks really close to me. Could be one if the size is right. Just watch the corals closely with a magnifying glass around the polyp areas. Also, sudden signs of poor polyp extension is a good sign the little s*^@# are there. From my experience they seem to like the a. valida or other smoother skin looking corals such as oregon tort. If you have any of these in your system I would eyeball those pieces first when trying to spot red bugs. Good luck ! Hope this helps

That's the thing, PE on some corals is pretty good and on others it's not the best any more. The corals that are beginning to die are a Tri-color Valida, and two mili's. The other piece and the piece I dipped where that guy came from was a california tort.

 

[buy_baff]

Looks like red flatworms to me.

 

[Denadai]

Man, I think this is AEFW

 

[iamwrasseman]

they need to be erradicated asap IMO .

 

[jakester]

I second that. I would eyeball your tricolor valida for sure if thats the piece thats doing the worst.

 

[fishmonger2]

Just thought I'd follow up with you guys. I took out 4 different pieces that were all looking awful even the tricolor that was well grown in, examined them with magnifying glasses and dipped them and didn't see anything I scoured the corals and the dip solution couldn't find a thing.

To the guy who said he thought he saw an AEFW I think that was just a copepod, IIRC.

As for why the the corals aren't doing well I'm running with this theory. I had one of the guys I work with take a look, and after some thought he asked if I had used the alkalinity check solution for my Salifert AlK test kit. I had not and used their supplied check solution, to find it wouldn't change colors. With the regular solution I was getting a reading of 8.6 and with the 8.0 check solution I wasn't getting a reading at all. Therefore it seems like my alk may be off the whole time. I'm going to bring in some water to work tomorrow and check it and see if that's the case. I don't know why I didn't think of that further.

I'm not discounting the fact that there may be bugs, but results are inconclusive so far. We'll see what happens the next few days.