Bilk
New member
So a few days ago I discovered I had a pretty bad red bug infestation. Never noticed anything until they decimated one of my corals - a red dragon that had been in the system for almost a year. I pulled the infected coral, dipped it in a white bucket filled with RO water and saw the remains of the little red bugs sitting on the bottom.
So I dosed Interceptor/Sentinal which has milbemycin oxime and lufenuron as active ingredients. First I removed the flavor coating and pulverized 1.75 large tablets in a mortar and pestle and then mixed it into a solution using warmed tank water. This was dosed into the tank after removing carbon and turning the skimmer off. I allowed 12 hours for the treatment to work before replacing the carbon, retruning the skimmer to service and doing a 20% water change.
The treatment appears to have been very effective and the only issues encountered with the dosing were the loss of all of the crabs in the tank and a very active skimmer once it returned to service. It produced a profuse amount of really wet and really green skimmate no matter how the skimmer was adjusted. I was fine with this as I used it as an opportunity to do a good size wet skim water change. Snails and starfish were unaffected by the treatment.
However there was an unexpected side benefit to the dosing - grean/blue cyano that was growing in some areas of the tank, was also eliminated. I mean completely eliminated. I feared that if the cyano was killed off, the nitrifying bacteria may have been as well, but nothing is off from test readings done prior to the treatment. It's been three days now, so I feel if there were any issues in this regard, they would have appeared by now. Is there anything associated with the active ingredients in the tablets, that would wipe out the cyano? It's been pretty well eradicated from the tank.
From reading posts on this treatment, I guess I'll need to perform another treatment in a week and possibly a third thereafter. Meanwhile I've ordered a frag tank to use as a quarantine tank, which should have been the call from the beginning. :twitch:
So I dosed Interceptor/Sentinal which has milbemycin oxime and lufenuron as active ingredients. First I removed the flavor coating and pulverized 1.75 large tablets in a mortar and pestle and then mixed it into a solution using warmed tank water. This was dosed into the tank after removing carbon and turning the skimmer off. I allowed 12 hours for the treatment to work before replacing the carbon, retruning the skimmer to service and doing a 20% water change.
The treatment appears to have been very effective and the only issues encountered with the dosing were the loss of all of the crabs in the tank and a very active skimmer once it returned to service. It produced a profuse amount of really wet and really green skimmate no matter how the skimmer was adjusted. I was fine with this as I used it as an opportunity to do a good size wet skim water change. Snails and starfish were unaffected by the treatment.
However there was an unexpected side benefit to the dosing - grean/blue cyano that was growing in some areas of the tank, was also eliminated. I mean completely eliminated. I feared that if the cyano was killed off, the nitrifying bacteria may have been as well, but nothing is off from test readings done prior to the treatment. It's been three days now, so I feel if there were any issues in this regard, they would have appeared by now. Is there anything associated with the active ingredients in the tablets, that would wipe out the cyano? It's been pretty well eradicated from the tank.
From reading posts on this treatment, I guess I'll need to perform another treatment in a week and possibly a third thereafter. Meanwhile I've ordered a frag tank to use as a quarantine tank, which should have been the call from the beginning. :twitch:
