Help! Black bugs on LPS corals.

[RoTTen2TheCore]

Hey all,
Lately I have noticed that my frogspawn, gold torches and acans are not extending their polyps and seem fairly stressed. This morning, upon close inspection, I noticed tiny little black bugs crawling all over their polyps. Unfortunately they are way too samll (4X smaller than a grain of salt, at least) to photograph.

I immediately pulled out my torches and gave them a dip in coral revive, which seemed to only **** them off, but after adding a few more drops into the solution, they died fairly quickly, but stressed out my coral.

I read that the dog heart worm medication Interceptor is an effective treatment for these little jerks, but I would like to avoid treating my entire tank (I don't want to lose my shrimp and hermits or have to fish them all out and keep them in a quarantine during the treatment).

My question is, is there a natural predator (dragonface pipefish maybe?) that could eradicate them with time or will dipping my corals once every few days do the trick?

Thanks!

 

[RoTTen2TheCore]

No one has any input?

I have also read letting the temperature to 22c helps.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Pictures might help us to know exactly what it is you have.

 

[RoTTen2TheCore]

They are way too small to photograph. I can't even really see them unless I push my face against the glass. All I see are tiny black specks, smaller than copepods, crawling all over the coral polyps.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Do you have any coral dip? Might try dipping them to see if it helps.

 

[rt67ghy]

Each time you dip you'll probably be able to kill all the bugs on the corals but it'll probably be a never-ending process. You could try a small wrasse or mandarin and see how it works out. The only problem will be that the fish won't be able to get all the bugs and won't be able to reach the ones amongst the polys. To totally rid your tank you'd probably have to treat it with Interceptor like you suggested.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

There is a thread on this in the SPS forum you should take a look at.