Red Bug/ parasite treatment questions in SPS dominated tank...

[flyyyguy]

Oh, you said "one down. two to go" I thought it was odd that we were only talking about 3 corals to begin with.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Hi! I'm not trying to start anything up again (I'm not). But, someone pointed out a really interesting article to me after reading this thread and, given that it is so pertinent, I thought that I should point you all to it.

The author of the article, Brian Plankis, ran Interceptor tests to see if he could use it to kill off some pretty nasty isopods. In part of his test, he used amphipods (as representatives of the "good" population of tank crustaceans) as controls with the isopods and dosed them with the lowest suggested doses for killing red bugs on up to Eric Borneman's suggested dosage and above. (Remember, Borneman suggests that the dosage be at least 10x the original low suggested dosage.) The amphipods, of course, died at even the lowest dose.

To quote Plankis:

[A]mphipods dead....

Okay, so maybe that quote wasn't completely necessary.

Here's his summary about the test results:

First, it appears that at concentrations up to twenty times the concentration recommended for eliminating red bugs (0.006g/gal - 0.05g/gal), 100% of the Cirolanid isopods will survive for at least six hours. The treatment could be modified to last for 24 hours, but this duration caused 100% mortality in amphipods. This is an indication that a significant portion of the helpful crustacean population would die while the Cirolanids would live in a tank treated with Interceptor at up to twenty times the standard red bug treatment level.

So, I was wrong about Interceptor killing all of the crustaceans in the tank. The really nasty ones will survive at the suggested doses for killing red bugs. This concentration of Inteceptor is roughly around the dosage suggested in Borneman's article for red bug treatment, certainly within the possible error rate, given that we are trying to powder the drug and measure out really small doses.

Plankis does go on to say, though:

While it could be possible to kill Cirolanids in a reef tank at these high concentrations, it would also stand to reason that you would destroy the good crustacean population in your reef tank. Given that my reef tank easily has 2000+ amphipods and countless smaller crustaceans, I can only imagine the cycle caused by the death of a large percentage of them.

It seems I'm not the only one worried about an ammonia spike from killing the small tank fauna with Interceptor.

You can find the article here if you are interested: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/bp/index.php

'Night!