Interceptor cured ailing frogspawn!

[Jon_Hewett_85]

Backstory: I have a frogspawn (dark green tentacles w/ bright green and purple tips) with 4 heads. Several months ago the tentacles started to wither for lack of a better word. They grew shorter and shorter and no longer branch until each tentacle was essentially a nub around the edges of the disk. I tried moving it, feeding it, nothing worked. Everything else in the tank was doing well. SPS other LPS softies all growing well. I had noticed that there apeared to be copepods all over it. I never worried about it because to my eye anyway, they looked like normal copepods that would normally crawl on the glass.

A few weeks ago I got some red bugs from some stuff i bought from a tank breakdown. I used interceptor to treat them for the red bugs, using 1/4 pill for 75 gallons of water. During treatment some stuff came up and the treatment went for 15 hours before I was able to run carbon and do a 40g water change.

Since the treatement the tentacles have been regrowing, some are "re-branching" and it is expanding much better now. I have also not seen any of the "bugs" on the frogspawn since. Although far from absolutely proving anything I feel like the interceptor made the difference in this instance. I theorize that these may have been some sort of pest that was bothering the frogspawn.

 

[GreenHammer]

Nice to know info!

 

[frankyrivera]

What is interceptor I think Im having the same problem with my frogspawn. Same scenario everything else doing great except for FS. Please help I love my frogspawn

 

[Jon_Hewett_85]

Here is an old picture of the frogspawn I dug up. It's fuzzy but you can make it out. It's the dark green one at the far end of the tank. This picture was taken during the frogspawn's initial decline.

Interceptor is a heart worm medication for dogs. It's being used to treat for "red bugs" infestations on SPS corals, which is what I was doing. Use the search function and research this before you decide to try it as it is not without some risks. Although as a thought you could try dipping the frogspawn as opposed to doing the entire tank.

Under close inspection today I noticed a few of the pods back crawling on it. Although this time it is only a few and not the tons of them there were before.It's also worth noting that there is another frogspawn in the tank that did not seem affected, although it is a wall type and not a branching FS. I will be doing another round of the interceptor this weekend and I will report on the frogspawn's progress. I have also noticed that these appear to be a very bright white, more-so than the copepods I see on the glass.

Also I would like to stress that I do not have scientific data or anything do back this up. This is simply an anecdotal observation that I noticed as a consequence of treating for another problem.

 

[tankaddict]

I killed white bugs on mines with interceptor as well. My frogspawn PE is incredible compared to when i had white bugs on them.

 

[Reef Bass]

Interceptor is a heart worm medication for dogs.

Ah, not exactly. Interceptor (milbemycin oxime) is primarily used to treat mange in dogs which is caused by tiny arthropods. Guess what else are tiny arthropods? Red bugs!

Heartworm is caused by a segmented annelids, not arthropods. While Interceptor may have been used on heartworm, it is less effective than ivermectin, the generally preferred treatment.

 

[jamesamantha]

I had the same issue about a year ago on my LPS and did Interceptor once in my tank. All was good for months and then they came back. So this time I took the advice from Melev and did three waves of interceptor spaced one week apart. The link below describes the process. The first part of the article is a spot treatment but toward the bottom he discusses doing the entire take three times.

http://www.melevsreef.com/redbugs.html

Good luck!

 

[Jon_Hewett_85]

Thank you for posting the article. This is the recipe I based my treatment on. I will be doing follow-up doses of interceptor starting this weekend (especially as I noticed a *few* white bugs again). I will update after the 2nd treatment.

 

[mgraf]

You can also use Bayer complete insect killer as a dip to kill these bugs on frogspawn. It is easier to get, available at home depot. There are threads on RC about it.