Red bugs
 

Someone got a frag from me at the meeting and I guess it has red bugs. I've never had any coral problems so I wouldn't know, nor can I see any.

Those who bought my frags, sorry, I didn't know, you should find out how to deal with the bugs if you need to, and I won't sell any more frags.

red bug
 

got to hate them little buggers. interceptor is the onlyway i know how to get ride of them.and even then you might have to do it once or twice.
i had to pull all my sps out and put them in a hospital tank so i could treat them.you will have to talk to a vet, or if you know someone with a big dog.
you might beable to get your vet to get ti for you.

reply
 

What was the frag Deb? I got the pink rim cap and the other pink glossy one. (I can't remember what you called it)

It was the purple acro, but they all came from the same tank Danny.

I'm not going to treat my tank as they are causing me no problems at this point. The frags should be dipped I guess.

I did a bunch of reading on this topic, and it appears that the bugs are dependant on acros for survival. They apparently die within a week or less when they don't have an acro to live on. Thus, you can pull your acros out and treat them in a seperate tank from your system, then leave them there for at least a week ensuring any left in the main tank will die off.

Treatment is either the Interceptor dosing or using a Lugol's solution dip. Both are apparently effective treatments and are not known to be detrimental to the coral. If you do the Interceptor treatment, there is varying accounts of mortality to other crustation populations in the tank. Some report high mortality of all, while other report little or none. The Lugol's dip method was shown to be a bit harder on the coral if it was all ready weakened by the infestation, but not so much so for a healthy coral. Of course you would have to keep them in a seperate tank until you were certain none remained in the main tank to reinfest as dipping does not treat the whole tank.

Of course the standard disclaimers were always presented with this information. There has not been a significant amount of research on these bugs to make a full determination of their lifecycle and habitat requirements for survival. Likewise, the treatments are not fully researched to account for all variables.

I'm afraid I did not keep track of all the posts I found on the topic, but the best ones were on Reef Central and Reef Frontiers as I recall. One of the best and most credible was by Eric Borenman on Reef Central. If you research those sites you will find a ton of reading.

I saw red bugs for the first time in the past couple of months. It was on a frag that I bought this year. They did seem to be eating the tissue as I saw tissue missing from a few parts of the Acro and it was getting worse day by day. I just used a turkey baster and blasted them off the Acro over a period of a few days. I haven't seen any red bugs since then. I assume that after they got blasted, they got eaten (as they tried to find their way back to the Acro) or they just couldn't find their way back. :biggrin: I didn't have many to begin with so it was easy to get rid of my red bug problem. The Acro frag has recovered and the tissue that was gone has regrown.

this one doesn't work, when I got red bug frags I did a dip of 5x the recomended concentration for 20 min and I repeted it two more times.. I still got red bugs.

Steve

Here is the information on the Lugol's dip written by Eric Borneman on RC in this thread.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=726005

b) Lugol’s solution: We used two high dose Lugol’s dips as a method of dipping to kill copepods. Within about 30 seconds, most copepods had bailed off the corals, and fallen to the bottom of the treatment vessel, rapidly dying and turning black. Several corals maintained attached to the coral but were dead. The dose level was 5m/L and up to ten minutes was tolerated by even highly colonized corals, although the effect on the coral was seriously stressful, resulting in partial bleaching, abnormally increased mucus production, and in a few cases, death. The majority of corals survived and recovered within a week and without any copepods present. The duration of treatment varied from 3-10 minutes, and examination under a dissecting scope was done every minute to assess the status of the parasites. At 10ml/L, copepods died generally within 30 seconds, with some lasting up to 2 minutes. The effects on the corals were more pronounced and resulted in significant mortality, especially at durations from 2-5 minutes. This may be a good “dip” method for minimally colonized corals that can tolerate the high dosage of Lugol’s solution.

Deb... I think I speak for most of us when I say:

KEEP ON FRAGGIN! I still want your frags! :mrgreen:

Andy

Absolutely, this is not an insurmnountable issue. The frags and or corals can be treated to rid them of the bugs. As long as everyone is up front about it, no one should get burnt. Its also a good lesson to all of us on the importance of QT.

I can't remember where I read it but I think it was on reef.org where lugols just was not effective at killing red bugs. I could be mistaken but it seems to me that the only effective way of getting rid of them is interceptor. Here is a link to the treatment.
http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45859

So has anyone in Calgary found a vet they could convince to write the prescription. Also where do you get the prescription filled. I assume the average drugstore won't be the right choice :lol:

I will try the Lugol's first, but if that fails I will see about getting the interceptor. Fortunatly I don't need to worry about my main tank, just a frag in QT.

You actually get it right from the Vet's office - at least up here. I went in and explained what I wanted it for and talked to them a bit about my tanks and they were more than happy to order it for me. I could have gotten 10 boxes is I wanted but only ordered 2. If you have trouble let me know and I will get you one up here or send you a couple of the pills from my stash.
It might not hurt to print out the write up from reef.org if you are going in so they can see your not fluffing them.

I've been printing out a ton of info, including the one from Reef.org. I will check with a couple of vets and see if I can convince them to give me the drug.

The 7 frags I got from you in July never had a problem and seem to be surviving in my system. This red bug thing must be a fairly recent development.

I got the Interceptor yesterday and treated my qt tank. One hour after the treatment, the bugs appeared to be dead or dying. Many were still attached to the coral but there was no sign of movement other than due to water flow. By this morning there were no longer any bugs attached to the coral, or anywhere to be seen for that matter. I did a 50% waterchange and placed the carbon and filter sponge back in. The coral looks fine as do the little feather dusters and a single aptaisa that is on the frag base (I'll deal with it later, or leave it for my peppermint shrimp to dine on). I am going to keep the frag in QT a few more days to ascertain that there is no return of the bugs.

The tablet that I got was the 2.3mg dose size for dogs 2-10 lbs. Following the reccomendation of Eric Borneman that was posted on Reef Frontiers, I dosed 1/4 of the tablet. This is much higher than the original dossage that was reccomended by Dustin Dorton on reefs.org in the original trials for this treatment. His information was based on treating the main display tank and the doses were conservative to prevent unknown and unwanted effects upon other organisms. Bornemans research showed that the drug was safe at much higher dossages and durations, at least for the corals. Therefore since I was treating this acro specific pest in my 2.5 gallon QT tank, I was able to dose at 4-5 times the dose suggested by Dorton. Borneman found that the treatment at this dose was safe for the coral even after 24 hours. I left the treatment for 18 hours and there appear to be no ill effects on the coral. In fact, the coral appears to be healthier now with the bugs gone. Dorton also reccommended three treatments since the lifecycle of the bugs was unclear at that time. Borneman discovered that the bugs bear their offspring in broods, thus there was no need to retreat since the offspring are killed with the parent. With the higher doe, there was a much higher degree of certainty that there would not be any survivors left after the initial treatment. This was another reason Dorton reccommended multiple treatments at the lower dossage.

This was an easy (once I managed to get the drug) and inexpensive treatment. Thanks to those who dissuaded me from using the Lugol's dip method. I still have 3/4 of the tablet that I got to use later, though I'm not sure on the shelf life of the drug now that the tablet is out of its blister pack. It might be wise to treat all future new acros as a "just in case" measure before introducing them to the display tank. At the very least a careful inspection and qt is in order now that this problem is in our midst.

Deb, if you are able to remove all of your acros to a hospital tank for a week to treat them, I'd highly reccomend it. Bornemans research has shown that in the absence of an Acro host, the bugs will die off in 3-5 days. Thus by treating your acros in a seperate tank for a week, you eliminate them from the coral, and the main tank. He suggests that if your corals are encrusting your live rock, to move those rocks with the coral, or break up the rock to remove the encrusting coral. Once you are rid of the bugs, you can put the corals back in the tank.

Perhaps for easier future refernce, could we create a sticky post on this issue? I'm sure it will come up again.

Ed,

How did other stuff like shrimp and crabs handle it? Some have people noted that their shrimp made it thru the treatment.

shrimps and crabs
 

Kari
after removing all but one of the shirmps, the one shrimp made it through one treatment, then died on the second.

Crabs - acro crabs were all dead after first treatment, other ornamental crabs carcasses were seen several days after the second treatment.

If you want to keep them and if you can remove them, its highly recommended.

I had the coral in a QT tank with just one other new frag. No other critters to wory about losing. There were no acro crabs in them, and had there been, I would have rescued them before treating as they would have certainly perished.

Thanks for the notes guys. Wonder if EmilyB noticed me stealing the thread:mrgreen:

What a toss up. Save the acros and wipe out the shrimps/crabs/misc 10million benificial little guys or let it ride and replace the acros. Again I'm starting to lean toward acro replacement. Maybe simple joe QT tank for acro is the answer.

I'm not seeing any acro problems that would indicate treatment at this point so I'll just hold off for now. Ed, did you have any other frags in the QT with mine? Just curious since I don't seem to see any problems at this end.

Sorry to hear the news Deb, tho it seems we all have to battle them at one time or another. I don't know how well stocked your tank is now with sps but I would suggest treatment sooner than later.

I had a bout with them last year and it was a simple thing to treat-hydroids were way more of a pain in the a$$. If you leave them too long, before you know it they will be everywhere and your acro's polyps will not be able to open. I ran a hospital tank with all my sps and a smaller dose of interceptor for about 3 days and I haven't seen any since-tho I'm sure they will be back one day:twised:

Removing the sps would mean removing all the rock....I have sps encrusted everywhere. :neutral: And I'm not killing my 11 shrimp. Guess I'll wait it out. Thanks guys.

Never had any polyps open anyway with the bflies....:lol:

I did have another frag in the QT, but there were never any bugs on it. I left it in until I treated since I couldn't be sure they hadn't moved over to it. I never did see any on it though. The frag from you did extend its polyps finally after the bugs were gone, the other frag always had its polyps well expanded. I'm just moving both into my tank now as there is no sign of any more bugs. Just so you know, they are extremely tiny and difficult to see without magnification. My coral QT tank is only a 2.5 gallon, so I could get a pretty close up view - only a few inches away. I could just make them out moving around on the coral. From normal viewing distances in a tank, it might be very hard to see them. Under 10x magnification of the coral, I could make out the distinct red spot that is characteristic of these bugs, but they still appeared small. There were actually quite a few of them once you got the close up view.

Here is a picture I got of a branch of the coral with the bugs to give you some idea as to how hard they are to see. The little amber specks are the bugs. They actually were moving around quite a bit, which is really the thing that helped me to spot them. Had they been still, I might have totally missed them.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/...th-bugs-01.jpg