Good fish for eating Red Bugs

[allsps40]

What is a good fish for eating and controlling Red Bugs??? I know a Dragon Pipe Fish but those are hard to find locally.

 

[chrishayes]

pipefish is by far the best from the research I did. My sixline eats them readily too but youre not gonna find a 100% reliable method unless youre talkin pipefish.

 

[chrishayes]

interceptor is the best solution still

 

[allsps40]

YEah I know I just hate treating my tank. I have a clam attached to a rock along with all my snails and crabs. I hate red bugs this is the second time dealing with them!

 

[Allmost]

no fish is 100%

I have a pair of pipefish, dont care for RBs

3 yellow wrasses which pick on them once in a while

and then a malanarus wrasse ... after adding him, I have not seen any more red bugs.

 

[Addiction2SPS]

If you want them 100% gone interceptor does is great! Only took one time and never been back. If you want them the population to be controlled you can get a fish but they won't completely wipe them out.

 

[allsps40]

I treated my tank with interceptor about 2 years ago for red bugs, they seemed to have come back. Not nearly as bad as the first time around though. Sps still looking great and coloring up.

 

[danil]

well... you did it once so you know the procedure. Adding new fish(s) to the tank will not guarantee success and meanwhile red bugs slowly killing your SPS. I would say - bite a bullet and get interceptor.

 

[allsps40]

Already have plenty left over from the last time. I think I will treat the tank today. Need to move my shrimp, snails and all crabs into my sump or a holding tank. I dont have a QT tank due to room.

 

[chrishayes]

Good luck. I know how u feel right now. Just do it and get it over with.

 

[allsps40]

I may just dip the rock that the effected acro is on.?

 

[29reef]

That won't work, you don't need to remove snails they arent affected. Only crabs and shrimps seem to have a hard time. Many times they will make it. The best choice is to treat the entire tank at least twice, you don't want them coming back after treatment.

 

[allsps40]

Yeah I just hate treating my main display. It stresses everything out and corals loose color, dam you red bugs.

 

[t4zalews]

fwiw...I used inteceptor on my tank a while back and didnt take out any livestock..(sps, clams, reef lobster, snails). The only things that died was the red bugs. Then my PE exploded

 

[NatureNerd]

I tried the pipefish route and it was not a solution for two reasons. First, the pipe will eat RB (most will) but it does not make a significant difference in the RB population. Second, you will end up using interceptor and when you do, the pod population in your tank will plummet. It then becomes a challenge to keep the pipe fed until the tank comes back to normal. They are great fish but they are similar in difficulty as a mandarin fish. They don't do well unless you have lots of pods.

 

[allsps40]

Ok so its not interceptor I have it is called ivermectin. It was prescribed to my tank by a vet (Arizona Exotic Animal Hospital) for red bug treatment back on 1-11-09. It is a liquid animal dewormer. I found this with a google search http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1966226. I will be doing a dip of the rock and all acropora from the tank for 3-4 hours today. The red bug population is small and only on 2 acros that I can see after hours of searching. If I had interceptor I would just dosing the whole system but ivermectin is a bit harsher on inverts and I dont want to risk loosing my clams. I will do as many dip treatments as needed to kill off the red bug population. Water is mixing as I type for dripping and rinsing.

 

[29reef]

I bet you'll end up treating the whole tank eventually, not to mention your talking about 10x the work for a non absolute treatment. Pulling your corals out of the tank and dipping them is going to stress them much more than treating the tank.

If you look and see how many hundreds and thousands(guessing*) of tanks that have been treated with RB treatments and how few have had anything but positive results; inversely the people who dip mostly have the problem return. Just my observation. GL

 

[NatureNerd]

Yeah I just hate treating my main display. It stresses everything out and corals loose color, dam you red bugs.

Treating the whole tank will not stress your corals at all. Color will not be hurt in any way. When I treated, my corals looked great the day after. Two days later they looked better than they ever had. Good luck.

 

[allsps40]

This is not interceptor we are talking about it is much stronger and I was told by the vet it could kill the clams and shrimp.

 

[chrishayes]

you want me to ship you some interceptor? I dont know if its legal or not but i will if I can. I dont want to see you go through all that work just to end up with rbs still.