Red Bug Questions

[edandsandy]

I have a question, when we talk about using a turkey baster to "blow off" the corals with the red bugs, are we just "blowing" them to another coral?
I have seen a few bugs in my tank and I am concerned about them getting out of control.
My husband is concerned with using Interceptor as it will kill the crabs, shrimps, pods, etc... in the tank as we can not remove all of them.
I have read that adding a dragon face pipe fish to the tank is a natural predator to red bugs.
Any thoughts?

 

[beeker]

interceptor is the only way i know of that has long term sucess

 

[edandsandy]

Thanks beeker,
Its just that for the last year we have been spending around $100 every 3-4 months on crabs, snails, etc.... to keep up with the detritus. We have a HUGH pod inventory that we would like to maintain, we are interested in purchasing a couple of Mandarin Gobys, our tank is just over 2 years old now.
I'm still curious to see if anyone has had success at just "blowing" them.

 

[hk855]

The red bugs are supposed to only infest the smooth skined corals so they will not infest everything. I had a small red bug outbreak on one or two corals in a nano and added a cleaner shrimp, later found out they will eat whatever they can and it looks like it may have solved my problem. I've only been bug free for 6-10 weeks and we'll see if they come back. To save your tank from dosing I would remove the smoth skined corals and dip them in an interceptor tank, maybe QT them there for a few weeks in hopes of those in the tank starving.

 

[ice2fire11]

im in between my battle with them. ive done one pretty heavy dose to my tank. i used the reccomended dosage and it got rid of about 80% but there were a few still holding strong. so i up up'd the dose x2 and it wiped them out the day after. I did not do a water change after this dose, i just used a carbon reactor.

i did lose my porcelin crab (just found that lastnight) i cant tell but it looks like two redlegs went. my peppermint shrimp is still going good.

pods are still in bulk numbers.



try to grab as may crabs as you can and nuke them. I was worried about pods myself but there are still plenty left.

good luck

 

[ice2fire11]

to your question about blowing them off..... this would just spread them, plus they are some pretty strong litte guys. theyll just keep laying eggs where you cant get with the baster and theyll be back.


if your worried just yank the infected corals out and dip them and keep them out of the tank for a week let the bugs in the dt die out. they wont survive without an acro.

 

[edandsandy]

Thanks ice2fire11,
Our tank is mainly Acropora's we have tried to dip as many acro's in coral revive as we can, we are seeing dead red bugs in the bucket, but as you mentioned they are laying eggs. some of our colony's won't fit into a 5g bucket or they have encrusted on the LR.

I'm glad to hear that your pod's survived. That is giving me hope!
We must have 80-100 Nassarius snails in the tank as well, do you think the interceptor will kill these off?

It appears that our best bet is to use interceptor to rid our system of these pest. I'm just having a difficult time convincing my husband to use the product. :sad2:

 

[aquaph8]

im in between my battle with them. ive done one pretty heavy dose to my tank. i used the reccomended dosage and it got rid of about 80% but there were a few still holding strong. so i up up'd the dose x2 and it wiped them out the day after. I did not do a water change after this dose, i just used a carbon reactor.

i did lose my porcelin crab (just found that lastnight) i cant tell but it looks like two redlegs went. my peppermint shrimp is still going good.

pods are still in bulk numbers.



try to grab as may crabs as you can and nuke them. I was worried about pods myself but there are still plenty left.

good luck

Thats funny, I lost my peppermint shrimp and my porcelin made it. Guess you never really know how stuff is going to react.

 

[ice2fire11]

Thanks ice2fire11,
Our tank is mainly Acropora's we have tried to dip as many acro's in coral revive as we can, we are seeing dead red bugs in the bucket, but as you mentioned they are laying eggs. some of our colony's won't fit into a 5g bucket or they have encrusted on the LR.

I'm glad to hear that your pod's survived. That is giving me hope!
We must have 80-100 Nassarius snails in the tank as well, do you think the interceptor will kill these off?

It appears that our best bet is to use interceptor to rid our system of these pest. I'm just having a difficult time convincing my husband to use the product. :sad2:

snails are not effected to my knowledge.

its a bit scary when you first pour it in. but like i said i dosed just enough, got mad and dosed the hell outta it.

it will slowly kill the acro, just do it, you wont regret it.

 

[allsps40]

Yep. You need to interceptor your sps. I had the red bugs about 1 1/2 ago. Had to take an infected to a vet and get a scrip. I was cool in a way. The Vet knows someone at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and he sent some to him for research. I got to see the red bugs under a microscope. The Vet gave me a scrip for a liquid form of interceptor.

 

[neoalchemist74]

I've tried two pipefish and both starved without touching a single redbug(or any other food I tried).

 

[ice2fire11]

yeah ive been told that pipe fish dont work either.

 

[shenyong]

I have a question, when we talk about using a turkey baster to "blow off" the corals with the red bugs, are we just "blowing" them to another coral?
I have seen a few bugs in my tank and I am concerned about them getting out of control.
My husband is concerned with using Interceptor as it will kill the crabs, shrimps, pods, etc... in the tank as we can not remove all of them.
I have read that adding a dragon face pipe fish to the tank is a natural predator to red bugs.
Any thoughts?

Well, turkey baster works very well on aefw but i dont think it would work on RB. Fishes wont eat it eventhough u bast them out of arcos..eventually they will attact to another arco which doesnt has it previously.

The best way is to treat your tank w/ interceptor. So that way u'll have rb free in your system. Before that please take out as much as hermitcrabs, shrimps and crabs if possible..no need to worried about pods, they will easyly come back. Once the tank is done treating u can intro crabs/shimps as many as u want.

GoodLuck!

 

[Rickyrooz1]

Only AEFW blow right off, you'll need Interceptor for Red Bugs.

 

[edandsandy]

Thanks everyone for your advise.
We have been putting this treatment off for a couple of weeks now. I think I have finally talked my husband into it. We are going to MACNA this weekend and wants to talk to a few speakers before we do this. I agreed with him, but in the same breath I said we might loose $100 in crabs but we are loosing a lot more $$$$$ in corals.
I wonder if interceptor works on aefw's as well. I haven't seen them in the tank thank goodness. Just courious.

 

[Rickyrooz1]

Thanks everyone for your advise.
We have been putting this treatment off for a couple of weeks now. I think I have finally talked my husband into it. We are going to MACNA this weekend and wants to talk to a few speakers before we do this. I agreed with him, but in the same breath I said we might loose $100 in crabs but we are loosing a lot more $$$$$ in corals.
I wonder if interceptor works on aefw's as well. I haven't seen them in the tank thank goodness. Just courious.

It doesn't, it'll kill hermit crabs, shrimp, pods and Red Bugs. You'll want to dip your corals once a week for four weeks in ReVive for 10 minutes to get rid of the AEFW's. I just finished treating my corals, I had both AEFW and red bugs.

 

[didimcginty]

what about clams? i have a maxima i do not want to kill and i have what i think is red bugs on two of my acros, they are little white specks, i two scared about using interceptor so i have been reading acrhives on this site all week. and will the death of all those crabs in the tank at one time do anything to foul up the tank? just thoughts,
edandsandy, not trying to steal your thread, just in the same boat, red bugs and many fears on treating

 

[edandsandy]

It doesn't, it'll kill hermit crabs, shrimp, pods and Red Bugs. You'll want to dip your corals once a week for four weeks in ReVive for 10 minutes to get rid of the AEFW's. I just finished treating my corals, I had both AEFW and red bugs.

I have heard from a few of our club members, that when they treated their tanks for red bugs they found AEFW too. their opinion is, they think that the red bugs and AEFW "might" have some kind of a symbiotic relationship where as the red bugs are eating the AEFW's . This is just from their observation on their tank.

So I cannot dip every coral in my tank for AEFW's some are too large for a 5g bucket and/or have encrusted on my live rock.
What should we do if find AEFW's too?????

:blown: AEFW's!

 

[edandsandy]

what about clams? i have a maxima i do not want to kill and i have what i think is red bugs on two of my acros, they are little white specks, i two scared about using interceptor so i have been reading acrhives on this site all week. and will the death of all those crabs in the tank at one time do anything to foul up the tank? just thoughts,
edandsandy, not trying to steal your thread, just in the same boat, red bugs and many fears on treating

PLEASE chime in, we have the same thoughts! I have seen the little white specks too, I don't see red, just white... My husband and reef club members say I must be colored blind! :fun2:
We also have 2 maxima clams, they have their foot down on a HUGH piece of live rock.

I have asked others as well if all the bugs, crabs, shrimp, etc.... are dying, is this going to send my nitrates through the roof?

When do we do our first water change after the treatment?
How much of a water change do we do?
How many re-treatments do we do?
How much interceptor do we use? our total water volume is appx. 500g

 

[aquaph8]

Your clams will be fine. You will lose crabs, shrimps and pods. Your first water change is 25% after six hours. Make sure water is running through all parts of your system. Your skimmer should not bubble but have water running through it. I did 3 treatments. The first two seven days apart and the third one 14 days after the second. If you have a bunch of crabs I would recommend you remove as many as you can to prevent as much death in your tank as possible. Expect a little bit of cyano during the process that will have to be dealt with after your treatments. I cant remember the exact dose of interceptor off the top of my head but if you use the search function there is an article out there that explains everything. I hope this helps and try not to be too nervous about it, after your first treatment you will see that it really no big deal at all. Good luck.