Red bugs are BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD very BAD.

[Chin_Lee]

Just looking to share my experience with these bugs.......

I just treated my system with interceptor last week after Jesse came over and politely brought to my attention the number of red bugs that were on my acros. You really need to have a trained eye and know what you are looking for to see them but once you do see them, you can see them anywhere. On one of them, there were at least 100+ on each stem. OMG - i was amazed that it was still alive. I had also recently experienced some receding from the base on some of them and I wasn't too sure what it was... my biggest fear was the "unknown" acro eating flatworm that nobody seems to have a cure for except a freshwater dip. Well I captured all the hermits and shrimps except for one peppermint who refused to get baited into my trap. I put almost a whole tablet into my system to treat last Sunday. All red bugs vanished within 6 hours (as indicated on the instructions for reefers).
Casualties:
A couple of hermits that were not located in time were found later out of their shell deceased.
The peppermint shrimp was deceased at the 4-5 hour mark and quickly became food for my green bubble coral.

Within a couple of days, I've noticed a drastic improvement on the polyp extension on 90% of the acros. I should mention that the polyp extension on the millis were noticably better which IMO substantiates that red bugs are on millis as well but they are just harder to see because of all that hair. This acro I've had for about a year and I've finally seen some polyps on it!!!


At night, the polyps on some of the acros extended a good 1/4 inch from the tips. Truly amazing difference from before treatment.

And best of all, the receding from the base have seemed to stop and are now growing back.

My plan is to do another treatment this coming Sunday and then every 2 months from herein. No more shrimps will be added to my display tank and no more hermits.

If you have acros, I recommend you treat for red bugs. I believe that most sps keepers have them or its just a matter of time before you do. I've seen some red bugs coming in and out of the polyp holes so its very difficult to see them all the time.