Red bugs on your sps? Share your exp.

bugs!!!

bugs!!!

OK guys,
I just found the little !@#%$rds on 2 of my acro's, a loripes and not sure of the other sp. I read several things on what worked and what did not but the only thing I had was Lugols, so I sucked up one full squiter of lugols and about 3.5 cups of tank water and in they went.... and 97% of the bugs are laying or kicking on the bottom of the bowl, so far both acros look un-affected but we will see tomorrow.

Matt
 
Lunchbucket said:
hmm, didn't know there were 2 types.

so do you guys think they have been around for quite some time and we just noticed them or is this something new in the industry??

Lunchbucket
Click to expand...
I am not trying to be controversial, but is it possible that these bugs really do not harm corals? I have had these red bugs on an A. Tortuosa for over a year now. There has been no harm to the coral and it is growing rapidly.

Is it possible that you don't notice these bugs on your corals because they are so small. Then when an Acro starts going down hill, for reasons other than the bugs, you look closer, see the bugs and just assume the bugs are the reason for the problem?

I would hate to subject healthy corals to dips in medication, disinfectants, etc to kill these bugs when actually the bugs are not the problem.

Thoughts?

Griss
 
definately a good point griss. that is what i am trying to find out. are they bad or good...seems no one knows!! i agree they could have been there then when you notice a problem you look closer and seem them and assume they are the cause.

well, i have them on about 3-4 corals. my blue tip stag is very whitish (blueish green tint under actinics) but is growing, my turqouis acro is growing great and coloring up nicely, and a teal acro doesn't look the greatest in color but is encrusting well. these color problems could be due to my ill informed lighting acclimation and they could be just comming out of it now.

i hope someone figures this out for sure!

is anyone doing research on them?? Dr Ron? Eric Borneman?

Lunchbucket
 
I would like to put my 2 cents in here as well.

I have been following this thread for a very longtime and I am now under the impression from my own observations that the little red bugs are harmless.

I am not sure about the 2 different bug theory yet. But it is possible. I had a similar problem with a tri-color acro frag that began to bleach after being in my tank for about a month or so. Of course when I looked closely I could see a lot of the little red bugs crawling on it. So I started doing some searching on this site and found that people were experiencing the same problems I was and they to had the little red bugs.

Well I decided rather than dip my acro to just moved it around in the tank to various places until I noticed that it was responding better. Low and behold my acro started getting its color back and began to grow.

It has been well over 4 months and my tri-color acro looks great. And yes the little red bugs are still crawling all over it. As a matter of fact I have noticed the little red bugs crawling on my overflow as well. They are everywhere in my tank, at least I am guessing, but my acros continue to grow.

I do not run MH's. I prefer VHO's and I am having great success with SPS's, LPS, Invertbrates, and Softies. Plus this is just my opinion, but I think the colors on my corals look brighter and deeper than any that I have seen with MH's.

That being said. I think that the bugs are not the problem at all. However this is just my opinion based on my personal observations of my own tank.

Oh! One more thing, my tank has moderate circulation throughout.

Thanks,
Bill:D
 
I do have them on some of the frags. Most of the frag got better and the bug disappeared. IMO, they are opportunistic organisms that show up when the coral is not doing well. While it is possible that they cause coral problem, IME, I did not find this to be the case.
Minh Nguyen
 
griss,

I don't have them on any healthy corals. Not to say they don't "try" them, but in my tank they don't seem to stay on them. I haven't tried moving affected corals around, though either and this may be a good idea. I dipped the hell out of a little infected tricolor chunk I have with Tech D at 4X the dose for 30 minutes and the bugs endured it...

The corals I have them on "got them" after they were stressed, so I think they are certainly opportunistic critters. They don't seem to feed(?) on anything a healthy coral has to offer (in my tank). Since stress recovery is a variable progression from coral to coral, there is no real way to know if the corals would recover faster with the bugs gone. I do know that my red bugs were all but gone when I had a yellow clown goby. The affected corals started coloring up and growing again. The problem was the goby perched in a couple of my favorite acros causing them to close, so I got rid of the goby. Three weeks later, the "recovered" corals paled up again and the bugs were back. That's just too weird to be a coincidence...I know not everone had luck with the gobies, but I seem to have.

FWIW...
 
Graham said:
griss,

I don't have them on any healthy corals. Not to say they don't "try" them, but in my tank they don't seem to stay on them. I haven't tried moving affected corals around, though either and this may be a good idea. I dipped the hell out of a little infected tricolor chunk I have with Tech D at 4X the dose for 30 minutes and the bugs endured it...

The corals I have them on "got them" after they were stressed, so I think they are certainly opportunistic critters. They don't seem to feed(?) on anything a healthy coral has to offer (in my tank). Since stress recovery is a variable progression from coral to coral, there is no real way to know if the corals would recover faster with the bugs gone. I do know that my red bugs were all but gone when I had a yellow clown goby. The affected corals started coloring up and growing again. The problem was the goby perched in a couple of my favorite acros causing them to close, so I got rid of the goby. Three weeks later, the "recovered" corals paled up again and the bugs were back. That's just too weird to be a coincidence...I know not everone had luck with the gobies, but I seem to have.

FWIW...
Click to expand...
Graham, interesting observation. But in my case, the A. Tortuosa have never lacked color. It has always been a nice powder blue. It has always looked healthy and is growing very well. Maybe this is a case of two different types of bugs:confused:

Griss
 
weird so many observations. i have a yellow clown goby and it does NOTHING for the bugs. they are everywhere on that pale stag. there are some on my healthy corals too..

just wish we knew more for sure!
Lunchbucket
 
I don't remember where (and didn't bookmark it), but at one point, Dr Ron (I believe) had pics of the two types of bugs. One is a harmless critter, the other was the dreaded red bug. They looked very similar and both live on Acros. My experience is that I know for a fact that I didn't have the bugs until October of 2001. At that point I added a frag which I knew had the bugs as I could see them very easily. This is when both Dr Ron, and Eric Borneman had stated that the bugs were probably harmless, which is why I still added the frag even though I saw the bugs on it before I put it in the tank. Within 2 weeks, the bugs were on most acros, and all of my tri-colors lost their color and turned light tan. Several blue Acros also lost their color, and some of them began to lose tissue. In April of this year I had a large red slime outbreak, and decided to treat with Chemi-Clean. After doing the recommended 2 treatments over 48 hours, I noticed that over the course of the next 2 weeks, the color began returning to my tri-colors, and the blue Acros began to re-grow tissue where it had been lost, and also to color up. I took a closer look, and discovered that there were absolutely no more bugs anywhere. Over the course of the next 4 months the corals all showed excellent color and growth, with no signs of the red bugs. I then made the idiotic mistake of not looking over a frag that I got at a club meeting before adding it to the tank( it was late at night, and I was tired). The next day I inspected it closely, and found out that it was covered with the bugs. I promptly removed it, but the damage was done, as within 2 weeks, the color was again lost from my tricolors, and most of my colonies had some bugs. Like Graham, this is just way too coincidental for me. I believe that certain corals are more sensative to the bugs. I realize that there are many Acros that do just fine with them, and my tank currently is doing great. The corals which are still in it are all unaffected by the bugs with the exception of 2 tricolors which are now light tan. Some corals that originally lost color, have regained it (including several tricolors) which makes me wonder if the corals might adjust to the bugs over time, and become acclimated to them to the point of no longer being stressed by them. I don't like the bugs, because I know that several of my corals do much better without them, but I also don't think it's the end of the world. I do think people need to warn anyone that they trade or sell to if they are giving corals that may have the bugs. It's just common courtesy in my opinion.
 
I figured I'd chime in with my current situation. I recently noticed that things were looking a little stressed in my tank so I did a bunch of tests and turned out that I was dosing buffer wayyyy too much and the calcium suppliment I used(junk) was not enough to balance it. My alk was over 20! I noticed that my Micropthalma was bleaching a little and had reduced polyp extention. today I thought to look at it closely and sure as sheet, it's covered with red bugs. not I did a close inspection on some of my other sps- the only other one I found them on was a brown/purple with bright blue tips staghorn. Difference is, it is showing zero signs of stress at all. it is still growing well, color is great....After all of this reading and seeing this for myself, I am convinced that these little guys are opportunistic. I had that micropthalma for a couple of months and it was awesome- grew like a weed but then when I thre my tank all out of wack alk wise, it starting showing signs of stress and then, the red bugs became apparent...I put the micro (small colony) in a higher flow area and am going to watch it....I don't yet have any theories on recovery tho...guess we'll see :-/
 
I've got a tri-color that seems to be loosing color. I had noticed a few weeks ago that there were red bugs on it. Since then it really hasn't lost much more color nor has it gained any. The bugs dont seem to be on any of the other SPS though (I'd like to keep it this way).

Is it me or do a good percentage of the people w/ red bugs seem to have them on tricolors or is it just me focusing on what I've got? I've got mostly SPS and they aren't on any of the others (yet).

The reef dip solution (?).... If I go that route, how long do I leave it in (24 hours @ 4x strength, redose @ 12 hours and stick an airstone in there)? Does this sound correct?

Am I correct in saying that these bugs will move from the tricolor to another acro when it dies?

I'd be willing to risk the sick acro in hopes of keeping the others OK. I don't want to go thru a mass dieoff (been there, done that). I can (if needed) quarentine it for a while (but the lighting on the Q tank is not that great - just vho).

thanks,
Chris
 
I thought I would chime in on this post. I too noticed these dreadful bugs on a couple of my colonies this weekend. I also noticed that they seemed to only be on the tricolors and my turtuosa's. These bugs seem to be taking over everywhere.

Chewie - These bugs seem to be making their way around our reef club. I noticed them after one of our meetings when I added a couple of frags, I know Piero has them also.

Kyle
 
I suggest all the newbies read the entire post and conduct a search on "red bugs".

You will find a lot of info. Especially if your keeping blue and purple Acros.
 
I used to have the red bugs. They reached their peak when they were all over every frag in my tank, and then they just disappeared.

I had a 400w Radium and no one told me that I had to change these blasted bulbs every 6-8 months. This bulb had long passed its finest hours; I'd say it was at least 10 months old. Things were going south, frags were RTN'ing left and right, and out of nowhere the red bugs came out of the woodwork. I was just too damned lazy and it never occured to me to change the bulb.

So, I read from different sources about the short life span of the Radiums. Instead of getting a replacement, I went back to 10k. Within 3 days of changing the bulb, all my corals started to brighten up. The red bugs completely disappeared and everything is growing rapidly again. Not one case of RTN since. And all my SPS that had been receding began recovering and reclaiming their dead skeletons.

I'm convinced that the bugs are opportunistic and will hit corals that are under chronic or acute stress. I'm in conversation with a few reefers who share similar experiences.

Do we really know when a bulb has outlived its usefulness? For the most part, there is no visible shift in spectrum when our bulbs die out, but that doesn't mean our corals don't see it. This applies to all bulbs, not just the radiums.

My theory is that for many people, their lights are the unseen weakpoint in the system. Their water is pristine, and the chemisty is optimal. What they often overlook is the useable life expectancy of their lightbulbs. They forget the last time they changed their bulbs. Subsequently, the corals don't have sufficient light energy to perform photosynthesis--to get the energy to fight off opportunistic infection.

Just my two cents.

Michael.
 
I'm convinced that the bugs are opportunistic and will hit corals that are under chronic or acute stress. I'm in conversation with a few reefers who share similar experiences.
Click to expand...

From my following this thread and all I seem to be getting the same impression. It seems like these bugs are somthing like pest algea, only blooming when conditions are right for them to flourish. Or maybe like ich.

Just my little analogy

:rolleyes:
RE
 
There may be a couple different types of species. The one I am fimiliar with may people in my area have had similar experinces with. They only effect acro. And even then only some species. Some acros dont get infected, some do but only mildly and do not seem to be effected, others get a heavy infection and are definitly effected adversly-In my experince the latter group included a lot of Tricolors and purple and blue acros, the Uninfected group was slimers and the carriers that were uneffected were millipora type acros. I am really generalizing here but I think it might help all these people who are questioning their virulence-it really seems to depend onthe species of acro. I also think that when corals are stressed they are more likely to be adversly effected by these mites presence.

HTH

Jake
 
My observations have led me to agree that they are opportunistic baddies. I have them on two purple tip frags and a tricolor frag. All three frags were growing and had the bugs on them. Then I switched from 10K AB to iwasakis and the corals bleached. Well, the red bugs multiplied on these corals. Finally, after a couple of months the tricolor is darkening in places and one of the purple tips is darkening and beginning to put its polyps out. The other one however is doing nothing. Anyway, the two that seem to be recovering have much fewer observable redbugs than previously witnessed. The one that is doing poorly is covered in them.

I also have seen these redbugs on other sps but what seems to be isolated individuals and the coral seems unaffected.

This may seem like a silly question, but are most of the corals that bleach in other peoples tank purple tips or related colors? These damn purple acros are the only ones that ever bleached on me.
 
Time for me to do some research on these. They are all over my big green acro colony. The coral is doing well but I'd still like to know, if possible, what exactly they are. There are so many threads, has Dr Ron or anyone gotten an ID?

PS they show up really well on a green acro under Radiums:rolleyes:

I'll try to get a photo if I can find my +10 and +7 lense. Maybe my brother could get us a micrograph.

Mutagen, if you're out there, did you ever get anyone to post the micrograph you had?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

K
Help: SPS peeling strangely.
Replies
5
Views
211
griss
griss
EXTREMECORALS
Why Acropora Coral is a Must-Have for Your Aquarium ~ Extremecorals.com Blog
Replies
0
Views
118
EXTREMECORALS
EXTREMECORALS
8
Pinks, reds, oranges.
Replies
7
Views
338
Reefing102
Reefing102
Corals.com
**AWESOME SPS UPDATE** Big Colonies, and ORA Aquaculture Frags!!
Replies
2
Views
257
Corals.com
Corals.com
T Diddy
I’ve got a parasite problem
Replies
15
Views
580
griss
griss
Back
Top