Red bugs on your sps? Share your exp.

Greg, great article! I have seen one of my skunk cleaner shrimp consuming mass quantities of these bugs. All the acros near the cleaning station are clean and I rotate out with others when possible. The shrimp doesn't ever get all the bugs though, so I'm stuck with them for now...
 
Cleaner shrimp.....geeze....why didn't I think of that!! Easy to obtain, and hardy. I hope other have the same experience.

- Greg Hiller
 
My cleaner has never touched the bugs. I do have a green chromis that eats them from one coral only. And of the 10 chromis I have, that's the only one that touches them. Go figure:rolleyes:
 
Greg, I should mention that I've got two cleaners and I've only witnessed one eating the bugs. Maybe it's an aquired taste?:cool:
 
just stick with milli's and monti's and you don't need to worry about the bugs. :D

i've had them and they seem to wax and wane with the moon. one day there will be tons on the tri colors and the next week there will only be a handful. go figure.
 
yellow-red mites

yellow-red mites

Why is everyone talking about red mites, when the pictures indeed show bright yellow ones with a little red spot at their abdomen. That is how they infact look like, at least those which are sucking out the life from acropora. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2003/feature.htm. They are yellow with a red abdominal content that flows out when you squash them under the microscope. Just observed them with their mouth pieces burried into the flesh of an aropora under the microscope. They can move very fast on their sex legs and have two specialiced anchor apendencies in the front with sharp folding claws, that's why they so hard to blast off. I am not into acropora, got some nice frags from an lfs and didn't watchout for them. All did well for some weeks and then numbers of the yellow mites increased. Well, they killed three frags slowly with massive infestation, while two others are just irritated and numbers on them stay low. I usually let things run their ways hoping that good water quality, food and light will help to defend. What a pest. susceptable in my case: a. cerealis, anthocercis, secale. More resistant: a. valida.
 
hcr21, they're called "red" because they appear red to the naked eye. Most people don't have a dissecting scope to get a closer look.
 
yellow bugs

yellow bugs

This may be related to the light one has on a tank and the color of the acropora. To me they look also macroscopically yellow as they do on all the pictures in this thread?
Well, anyway
 
yellow bugs

yellow bugs

This may be related to the light one has on a tank and the color of the acropora. To me they look also macroscopically yellow as they do on all the pictures in this thread?
Well, anyway
 
try to find these bugs on my acros but couldn't really see one clearly.. are they big enough for us to recognize them , i mean by looking at the acro body real carefully?? or i have to get a magnifier to see them????
 
you CAN see them w/ the naked eye. they look like red specs on the body of the acro. usually on the underside during the day. i see them most prevelant when the lights just come on on the underside of the infected acro

Lunchbucket
 
I have had Red Bugs on a few of my Corals ever since I set up my SPS tank. I only have had one coral bleach that I suspected was caused by them so I feel pretty lucky. I saw something late last night in my tank that I have never seen before regarding Red Bugs. I was looking in my tank around 3 AM with a flashlight (apx 5.5 hours after my lights went off) and I noticed 3 Gammarus Amphipods (the ones that kind of look like Camel Crickets) scavanging on one of my Acros. At first I was a little concerned because it has always been healthy although it has had a lot of the Red Bugs on it. After a closer inspection with a magnifine glass the Amphipods appeared to be eating the Red Bugs! It was a little difficult to see for sure with the flashlight but this morning when my Halides came on I only had a couple of Red Bugs on that acro? My population of Amphipods seems to be growing quite a bit but I have never seen that happen before (I look at my tank in the dark almost every night). The only thing that I can figure is that with the increase of ampipods maybe their normal diet is dwindling so they discovered the Red Bugs as a new food source? Any one ever seen this?
 
hmm, interesting...i would like to hear other oppinons. i have never seen this. i think my peppermint and my 6-line pretty much get all my pods :(

Lunchbucket
 
I would like to know as well. Like I said, I have never seen the Gammarus Amphipods on any of my corals before much less 3 at one time! I checked the acro and still only 2 or 3 Red Bugs on it right now which is a big drop from the avg 10-15! I will check tonight to see if anything similar happens and if so I will get pictures (immediately after I set up my "defense against red bugs" website - Protect your corals today for $9.99- Kidding of course!:) )
 
ATTML, I posted a similar observation a bunch of pages back I think(pretty sure it was in this thread). I too saw a large amphipod "grazing" on an infested acro, although I couldn't tell what it was eating. Overall my pod population is almost non-existent due to a hungry wrasse. I wonder if the pods normally eat these bugs.
Can those with heavily infested tanks confirm that their pod population is down? Or not?
 
Well, I got the flashlight out tonight and found what I think might be the dreaded red mites.... I just took my table acro and swished around and basted it in a SW/Lugols solution.... A whole bunch of "little red dots" came off in the water, so I'm guessing those are the red mites. I took a picture of them in the bottom of a 32oz white cup (about 3" across). Since I haven't seen these guys anywhere else, is this about the size of them? Sorry I don't have better macro capabilities....
 
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