Red bugs on your sps? Share your exp.

[SawCJack00]

They're Baaaack

They're Baaaack

Just an update. The buggers are back on several of my acros. So far no problems. I'm keeping a close watch though.

 

[clwnphish]

I just found about 20 of these little guys on my favorite tri color, i'm going to try the Redox and putting a powerhead near it to see if it helps. I'm also going to try a sixline wrasse.
Clwn

 

[simonh]

I have these bugs on a number of frags in my tank. I live in England and so our only source of corals is either wild imports or frags from friends of their colonies... so it must be some natural occurance rather than a mutant coral farm breed I only recently noticed them after taking a super macro shot of an Acropora. When I got the image onto my computer I noticed a small red dot! Oh no!

I inspected a number of frags with a powerful macro lens and noticed a few (6 in the worst case) on most frags. However I could not see any damage. One coral looked a little white and upon looking it did have quite a few of these bugs on it. I decided to just leave things and see how it progressed. So far I haven't seen any real problems. The small colony most affected (light blue tipped) is now showing a more patchy brown colouration as if density of zoox is increasing with no modification in position or flow.

Here is a picture of it today:

Also, I recently got another frag from a friend to look after while in transit to someone else. In his tank the coral is fairly light tan colouration as he uses 400W lights. On transferring to my tank most of his corals darken as the zoox density increased under my lower 250W halides. After a few days in the tank I was looking around and noticed some of the red mites had moved over to this coral. When I was looking at the coral yesterday it still has about 5 or 6 mites on it but the coral is getting darker brown (as usual due to the lower light). So the coral has still been able to increase the zoox density even in the presence of these critters.

 

[coralite]

Hi mark and all,

I originally got my uninvited guests from Mark and in the middle of the summer the buggers reached epidemic proportions. The corals went pale and some eventually got stressed into recession. going on the idea that the zooxanthellae was being consumed, i cut back the skimmer and reduced the photoperiod to 6 hrs a day. W/in a week i got a positive response and the affected corals began to darken up. i also experienced a resistance in yongei and some milleporas. Certain corals had been moved to systems containing primarily softies. Infected corals were completely cured in the tank containing alot of leathers. As far as physical damage, i noticed distinct spherical light areas where i believe part of the coral was consumed on the corals with the most bugs. These markings were only visible on the shaded part of the branch where most of the bugs are to be spotted.

Today the lights are back to normal and i noticed a dramatic decrease of the bugs with an increase in water flow. i have only a couple stags and a purple acro also infected. The bugs are being really species specific in their preference. I believe that certain allelopathic compounds produced by certain corals may interfere w/ the proliferation of the copepods particularly by interfering with their reproduction. i say this to explain the very gradual decrease ive experienced in stony tanks with some soft corals. I cannot say that i have noticed anything other than the bugs themselves on the acro so i cannot comment on possible micropredators. the problem also seemed at its worst when the temp was high and it appeared to ameliorate in cue with cooler temp.

Mark,

do you remember the frag you gave me from the colony you grew from one of doug's frags i sold you in Denver? Well that particular coral was moved into a skimmerless mostly softy tank and it has been able to ditch the bugs and it has regained color and thrown out a base.

My recommended course of action
Cut down your lights
Cut down your skimmer
Move some softies into your sps tank
Cool down the water
increase water flow

 

[djbh]

Have had them on monti.
The flesh was sort of being torn off,and dangling in the water.It was a terrible sight.It started at the tip and worked its way down the branch.
All I could see on the branch was the skeleton and those tiny red mites.The mites were visible on the flesh part but not on the skeleton itself.
Wrote Dr Ron about this back then and he reccomended I add a mandarin dragonet.
So I toke the branching Monti out of the tank and dipped it in sea-chem dip.Those bugs were all over the container must have been atleast 50-60.Then I fraged the monti with what was left.Re-dipped in a clean solution and re-acclimated.
Then I added a mandarin.
The monti is recovering but is now a frag size....
The mandarin is fat as a cow.
The mites are nowhere to be found.
All my other SPS are doing great.
I keep a close watch on the sps.

Were the mites responsible for the monti or were they feasting on a weakened animal.
I am clueless?????

Happy New Year to all,and I wish you and your reefs the best.
Dan

 

[G-money]

Dan,

If you have the same bugs as we are speaking of, it is the first I've heard of them on any coral other than Acropora sp.

It is also the first I have heard of a mandarin eating them. Hope you have alot of 'pods!

IME, the mites feed on weakened specimens most heavily. Most notably, specimens that have recently been shipped or specimens that have experienced a degree of stress/bleaching. This would lead us to believe they are the reason for the decline in health, but I think there are other precursors (stress).

I have them in my tank. It is a very stable system lately (parameter-wise), and while the bugs are present, they are in very small isolated populations. We'll see what happens with the next few additions....

 

[JasonD]

Hi,

I too had the red bugs on my Acropora. Well my 100 gallon tank broke and I had to move all of my acro's to a 40 gallon tank with a Sinularia leather in it for about a month. When I put everything back all of the bugs where gone.

The the Sinularia in close contact have an affect? I also had mushrooms and some xenia in there as well.


I never saw them on my montipora. Also my Mandarin never went after them.

Now I'm battling bryopsis, wish I had the bugs instead. I can't say the bugs themselves ever killed anything. But it seemed to me when there were a lot of them on an acro the color was lighter


Jason

 

[clwnphish]

The frag I got that came with with these bugs came from a local reefer. I noticed only one on the frag and since then they have multiplied like crazy. The only thing that I can think of why his bugs werent multiplieing is that he has 2 6line wrasses. I just got one and hope that it will help out with the situation.

 

[djbh]

Jason D what is bryopsis??

as for my mandarin it was Doc . Ron who reccomended I get one,in order to take care of the mites.However it was his opinion that the mites were not dangerous.My question to him was that I wanted to know if mites or parasites had predators.

I might add that after dipping the frag,my tank was free of those mites.The mandarin was a precaution.As for my pods.
My main tank has a 2 inch sandbed,while the dsb of 3 inches is in my sump,and it is made up of miracle mud,and pods are everywhere in it.
There is alot of conflicting opinions about mandarins.
While the mites are gone for now,was it the mandarin or the dip that got rid of them?
Dan

 

[clwnphish]

GRRR!! I noticed to day the bugs on a frag of ose nic neon green table acro and on my blue tip stag!!!! I tried a sixline wrasse and no luck. I am goig to set up a 10 gallon with pc's to quarentine them. I am now going to siphone tank water out into a separate bucket an with a syringe blow them off manualy. I'm also going to try a dip,some softies, and a mandarin. This is reall bugging me though they have infested my 5 favorite corals and they just slowly loose color. The seem to infest smaler plyped sps, y bais milles and larger polyped tables and other sps are fine but the smaller polyped ones seem to get infested. They dont like bright light and lots of water flow and haeing a powerhead pulsig onthem seems to help. How abot this or a mini set up.
10g tank
lit by a 27 and 9 watt csl retro and a LOA 65watt.
Deep sandbed from my 125(non infested tank)
One of those sweeping powerheads
Mandarin Goby
and the infested corals

Anything else I might want to do? Are there any chemicals that kill bugs but not the coral that I could add drectly to the tank?
also would taking the helpful crabs, in one of my mother colonies ,and put it in the frag tank eat the bugs?
Imay get a sooter blenny or other simila species of fish if the mandarin doesnt help.

Clwn

 

[ScavDog]

I just noticed these guys today. They are out in large numbers on my blue tip stag. I am eagle-eying these guys and will more than likely try to suck some off with a syringe.

<img src="http://www.scavdog.com/reef/images/640x480/spscritters1.jpg">

<img src="http://www.scavdog.com/reef/images/640x480/spscritters2.jpg">

 

[djbh]

Nice pics Scav.
Are they only on that one coral?
If I were you I would dip the coral in reef dip for 10 minutes and nuke them...
Good luck.

 

[coralite]

Id have no difficulty collecting some of these guys if some endeavouring soul wants to Scrutinize them. Maybe dissect them and see what they are feeding on.

Ok so these guys are really tiny right? Tiny bug, high metabolism, short life right? Since these guys are spreading between tanks and between colonies, its probably safe to say they are reproducing. I think id be going along with the general concensus by also saying that these guys are BAD and they are consuming the corals in some way or another.
Since some people are saying that they live w/ them and they are just there and others are saying that there corals are paling and becoming overtaken, why are the same bugs doing varying amounts of damage? More bugs are doing more damage and vice versa.

Since these bugs I assume are short lived but able to reproduce, Id like to theorize here that the people living with the problem, either have something picking them off or, something is "hindering" their reproduction perhaps by picking off juvy mites.

Learning about these pest life cycle, I believe, will be the key to determining how to handle them.

 

[griss]

I must hang my head in shame and admit that Mr Sandman was right. I did not think I had the bugs. Mr. Sand has been telling me for months he is sure I have them. The other night I was looking really closely at my blue (of course) A. Tortuosa and saw the tell tale little Orange/Red specks.

The only thing I can say is I believe I have prolly had them for some time and none of my Acros show and signs of damage or slow growth. In fact, I recently switched back to Iwasakis after 2 years of 12k and my growth have since taken off.

So, I think the jury is still out on whether these bugs harm the Acros or not.

Any other thoughts?

Griss

 

[MrSandman]

Well, i just thought i would give an update on these red bugs in my tank. I just took a very very thorough look over all of my acros today and DID NOT FIND ONE RED BUG!!!!!!!!! Woooohooo! I have no idea what happened to them. I only had 1 tri color colony that was dusted with them and 2 small frags that had them too. I just took a look at these acros and there were none to be found. I'm pretty happy about this and still can't believe my eyes. I will keep looking all night just to make sure i'm not fooling myself. There were only 2 things that i can think of that could have contributed to the decline/demise of these bugs. Over the last 3 months i added a psychadelic mandarin goby and a 6-line wrasse. Nothing else was done or added. Could this be the solution??? Quite possibly......all i do know is that their population has definitely decreased if not deceased. I'll see if i can get some before/after photos of these things.

 

[coralite]

The copepods are about .3mm in length so I doubt 6lines or mandarins would eat them let alone even notice them. In the first tank that had the outbreak, I upped the flow to where there is ~1000gal/hr passing w/in 6" of all sps from both sides. Everyone is clear except one sm colony that is covered. I have noticed that some corals just kick them out, poof just get rid of them while the same coral in another tank suffers.

 

[robertm1357]

Well I have noticed these guys on my acros as well. They started on a blue tip. I just received 10 frags from lonestar and now about half of them have these bugs. I have not noticed any harm being done to the acro's, but time will tell. For now I'm not going to stress about them, do any dipping, or other techniques discussed on this thread. I'm just going to leave them be. I have too many to even try any of that anyhow. I must have 300+ NO JOKE! IMOH I believe more people have these on their acro's than people who do know. Saying that, the bleaching/decline people have noticed might be caused by something else. And I'm sure dipping ect. is just doing more harm than good. Oh no, we all have bugs Don't worry so much fellow reefers

 

[David Grigor]

I am now an official member of the "Bug Club".

I noticed them yesterday on a couple of corals. Even having seen them first hand before they can be real tough to spot. The key was focusing in on movement. . A couple of weeks ago Bill ( SawCJack00 ) came to by house and I had him inspect my corals and at the time he thought I had a clean bill of health.

Both of the corals I spotted them on originally came from Lone Star Corals. At this point I have absolutely no evidence that they came on the corals or if they just migrated to them. In the past I have traded with both Graham and Bill ( SawCJack00 ) who have both been active in this thread but only frags I have received from them are montipora or a.millepora.

 

[SawCJack00]

Sorry to hear that David...Hey wait a minute, maybe you had them all along, and I got them from you Anyway, I copied the following from another thread that I posted to, but this is my updated experience with the buggies.

Creepy Crawly's

As you may have read in other threads, I've got the bugs. After having them for almost exactly 7 months (I know the date they were added), I have reformed my opinion on these bugs. My original opinion was that my SPS were mostly doomed because I had many frags that got the bugs, bleached, and did not recover. I now believe that there were several other contributors to the stress on these corals, and that the bugs caused more stress which combined to kill the frags. I think without the other stressors, the frags would have been fine. I have many healthy SPS frags and colonies with the bugs. My observations are:

1 - The bugs aren't the end of the world. Most of my colonies and frags that have the bugs don't seem to be affected by them, even some of the blue ones.

2 - The only effect they seem to have is slowed growth in some of my frags. The most obvious is a 1.5" frag of A. horrida which is heavily infested. It has great color and good polyp extension, but hasn't grown much, if at all, since it got the bugs after being added in October. No corals have bleached, or lost tissue, etc due to the bugs, since my original problems. I do think the bugs irritate some of the more delicate Acros, but this can be remedied with higher flow.

3 - The bugs do not like high flow, and corals placed in high flow will have fewer bugs. Moving some of my more delicate Acros to higher flow areas has reduced the populations on the corals and they have colored up and begun to grow again.

4 - My corals with Acro crabs do have the bugs. They are not nearly as high of populations as some of the corals without crabs, but the bugs are there, none the less (this includes one colony that has 2 crabs).

5 - My Acro formosa has some bugs, but has shown absolutely no ill effects.

In conclusion, I now think of the bugs as similar to flatworms. They are part of the diversity of the tank, and I am not going to be able to rid myself of them. I think that as long as excellent conditions are maintained, the corals will be no worse for wear due to the bugs. This is in my tank, and your mileage may vary. The SPS in my tank thatdon't have bugs are:

M. digitada
M. capricornis
A. millepora
S. hystrix
P. damicornis
Porites sp
Hydnophora sp
Pavona sp
Stylophora sp

All acro's besides millepora have the buggies. I would always try to avoid getting them, but as I said before, I don't think it is the end of the world.

 

[Reefmonster]

Hello Everyone!!!!

I have something very interesting to add. About a month ago I found this little red headed bug crawling on a small frag of Acro that I got from a guy on eBay. After about a week I noticed that there were LOTS of these little guys on my Acros. They didn't seem to be hurting the corals, and, in fact, most of the corals were still growing very rapidly.

Anyway, I recently aquired a small colony from a friend in Ponepei (sp), and this very small green goby was inside it. Aparently this goby EATS those little bugs, because their numbers have been SEVERELY reduced since his introduction. I have seen it go from colony to colony settling to eat where the pods are the heaviest. I have tried like crazy to get a good pic of him, but my digital camera isn't the best. Besides he wiggles alot and trying to get a pic of him is like trying to start a fire with a rock....I will keep trying, though.

I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but maybe this is something promising. Incidentally....I have also seen this goby eating slime or maybe a bollus(?) that comes from the Acro's polyps. I have researched many a website trying to find an ID of this little guy, but as of yet have been unable. If anyone knows what he/she is I would be VERY grateful....I try to keep a catalog of all my reef pets. So this is high on my list.

The description is as follows:

1/4" long green goby with a reddish-orangish stripe beneath the eye. Each eye is ringed in blue. One blue spot on each side of the dorsal edge. Orangish tail and fins.

Thanks Everyone!!!

Matt