Red Bugs...

[BrettH]

Good news my tank is only about 7 months old and I only have two acros - montipora and Validia - I did use the Bayer treatment a month ago to try an eradicate them, but they came back. I did a Bayer dip today (10ml/cup) for five minutes and hopefully that will solve the problem.

Here is my question, do red bugs require a host to survive? Are they like ich? IF they do, then I would rather just remove the acros for now and wait a couple months to add any acros. I just want to eliminate this issue once and for all.

I do have interceptor, but I'd rather not hit the entire tank. Plus red bugs have been known to be resistant to interceptor.

The montipora has some Black Bugs "“ and I am not sure Bayer is killing them off. Any thoughts about these little buggers?

Thanks"¦
Brett

 

[peequin]

it may take multiple dips to totally get them out. I had to dip my Red Planet 4 times to completely get rid of them. This was over a period of a few months though. If I saw bugs I dipped it. Every time I saw less and less bugs.

 

[lighthouze08]

i double the dosage of interceptor in my tank a few months back to make sure all the red bugs are killed the first or second round so there's less of a chance for them to survive. and i did it for 9 hrs each time. So far so good

 

[jdhuyvetter]

I did a double dose (Interceptor) yesterday for 2 hours. No bugs this morning. I plan on waiting about 10 days and doing another dose.

 

[BrettH]

But do red bugs need a host to survive?

 

[Donkeykong]

I had to dip my corals with bayer 3 times to kill them all, but so far I have yet to see any return in 6 months.

 

[sirreal63]

They need a host to survive. I set up a separate tank for the acro's when I did my dip. I waited about 3 weeks IIRC (this was 2006 and I am old and forgetful)before putting them back in the display. I did not treat the display and have never had them since. I st up a dipping station, dipped and placed them in the temp tank. It really sucked because I had large rocks encrusted with nice sized colonies. You have to make sure and get all acro's out of the tank, that includes any small frags that may have fallen into cracks yet are still alive.

Borneman had a great article on treating with Inteceptor but it has since been taken down.