Parasitic Tegastidae copepods "Black Bugs"

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

Hope your dose kills them all on the 4th week treatment. Too bad there is so little known on dose size and water volume. Cutting up pills int 4 peaces then guessing water and if that’s enough medicine.

I have a very accurate scale. Each 23mg pill weighs .95mg so I have a record of exactly how much I have been adding.

Todays dose will be the 5th treatment. I have an exact breakdown of what was added and when I added based on the size of my tank. As soon as I am confident I have the right dose I will let you all know what that dose is. Even though I know I go go up to 4 times the recommended amount I do not want to go there unless I have to as I do not want to kill more microfauna then I have to.

My last dose was 43mg which is almost half a tablet. 1 tablet is supposed to treat 400 gallons per treatment. My tank is about 75-80 gallons of actual water so I should be using 19mg per treatment. At 43mg I was using 2.4 times the recommended dose.

I will be adding about 50-55mg (of a tablet) later today which would be 2.7 times the recommended dose. I have to take my skimmer offline and remove my carbon. I use no other form of filtration like GFO, carbon dosing ect. It is a good thing there are 8 tablets in a package I may end up needing them all.

What I do not know is:
How will the other treatments affect this treatment?
Does the drug build up in the system?
Does the black bug build up a resistance with the lower doses?
Does skimming and carbon remove residual drug from the water?

What I will be able to do is establish a baseline from which other reefers can treat their tanks.