What Kind of Pest Damage?

[Thorium]

**Update**
Did my first treatment of interceptor and no red bugs to be found. I, also did flatworm exit treatment for the last 45 minutes of the interceptor treatment and I did notice a few flatworms floating around. Hopefully this is the begining of the end for those breasts.

 

[nait002]

What breasts? A new name for red bugs?

 

[Thorium]

Whoops!, I typed too fast I meant beasts. Too much HD for me tonite!

 

[Ranat1]

OK too bad you did that. It is a better idea to positively ID things before throwing in chemicals. Interceptor kills a lot of good stuff as well as bad that then needs to regenerate or be replaced.

First off if it is flatworms then the best way to determine if they are there is to:
A) pull the coral out and let it completely dry out in the air for several minutes. Don't worry the coral can take it. When this happens look for irregular blotchy moist spots. These would be the flatworms.
B) Blast the coral with a powerhead and see if any flatworms blow off.
C) Prepare a container of new salt water at exactly the same salinity as your tank. Put it in the fridge until it is around 50 degrees and then dip the coral for a few minutes. If there are flatworms then some will fall off.

If you find flatworms then treat with either levimisole dips, Tropic Marine Pro Coral Cure dips, or Flat Worm Exit at around 4x dose or so. If you just used FWE then you might have some trouble confirming flatworms but they are still there.

If it was redbugs then they are likely too few to confirm or not. In my tank I would see them most at the tips of the corals and they would look yellow not red. If you look at them with a magnifying glass then you would see the red head on them. Just remember to finish the next 2 treatments to make sure they are gone.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/290/cat/520
There is the only good picture I could find of them. If someone has a better then please post it.

Also a fish that is believed to eat AEFW is the Christmas Wrasse or Ornate wrasse.
http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/msub28wrasse/l/blpickxmaswrass.htm

Good luck

 

[Thorium]

Thanks for the reply and info about the ornate wrasse, I did not know that. Second, with the size of the affected coral colonies it would have been difficult for me with my current setup to treat all the corals individually. The red bugs I saw also appeared to be more yellow than anything except with a red head. As for Flat worms, I used a 2.5X dose of FWE and I did see a few flat worms floating around in the tank, my CB angel went after them.

When I did recon on a possible cause of the coral damage it took me a while to train my eyes to see the red bugs, the flatworms were another story. Although, I did not directly see them the posts of our fellow reefers made me wonder if in fact it could be the work of a flatworm as well. I did read numerous posts about flatworm damage, and decided that a AEFW may also be at fault here, I did not want to wait until irreperable damage was done to the colonies and have them initiate STN or RTN.

This morning after running lbs of carbon and a 40% water change the tank looks great. Polyp expansion is fantastic probably the best Ive seen on the austera. However, I did lose a few hermits, but a good amount of my hermits are alive and so are my serpents. Fish seem unaffected. Perhaps I made a mistake about the treatments together, but like I said I did not want to wait a month to treat for FW's if they were in there with the bugs after their treatment.

 

[Ranat1]

OK so long as you were relatively sure that they were there then its fine. I just wanted to mention that if you weren't then you don't want to just treat for stuff. I am also surprised that noone else provided you with good diagnosis guidlines. You are also the first person that I know of to treat FWE and Interceptor at the same time so at least we know its safe to do. Good luck treating.

 

[Thorium]

Thanks for the encouragment Ranat1. Yeah I know what you mean, I did not go into this blindly. It was a difficult decision to make to do both treatments at once. But I continue to monitor the tank and everything looks normal. Im not sure if Im the first to do both treatments together, I suspect others have, but just not posted. This is a great learning experience. I do think that for success after the treaments a substantial W/C is needed with loads of carbon. Hopefully all goes well as I do my next treatment of interceptor next week and the following week.

 

[AcroSteve]

I did both treatments at once, over a year ago. Pretty much the same reasoning as you.

I did not have any problems I could attribute to doing it.

Do at least three treatments a week apart. Interceptor will ABSOLUTELY DECIMATE your pod population.

 

[Ranat1]

also remember that if treating for AEFW, the current thinking is 4 treatments a week apart with 4x dose each. If you just do one then you will miss some and also miss the eggs since nothing kills eggs.

 

[Thorium]

I do plan on doing the interceptor and FWE treatment in tandom for the next few weeks just to be sure. Everything in the tank continues to do well.