Parasitic Tegastidae copepods "Black Bugs"

[Frogger]

Ok it is Thursday night, my last dose was last Saturday and it is time for an update. I have been keeping a close eye on my corals looking at them closely every night and have not seen any activity. This evening I broke out the microscope and did a complete full view of my orange passion.

These little guys are really small and even with a microscope they are tough to find. They are smaller then the tip of a polyp and often hide inside the coralites making them tough to see. Tonight when I pulled out the orange passion the polyps were out a lot more than usual and seemed really big. I took me about a hour to completely search the coral. A couple of times my heart stopped because I thought I saw a black bug, however it was usually just a polyp at an odd angle. I could find no black bugs. I also pulled out a coral from my quarantine tank to give it a once over and found no black bugs.

I am going to call this a success for now and will keep you posted. It took me 5 treatments to finally get this guy. One pill is 94mg (23mg of actual drug) First 2 treatments were 20mg (1/5th) of a pill. The third treatment was 31mg, the forth treatment was 43mg and the final treatment was 54mg more than half a pill. I ended up using almost 2 whole pills for my 75 to 80 gallons of actual water. The drug I used was Interceptor Flavor Tabs as it has only Milbemycin Oxime and nothing else. I was a little worried about Sentinel or the other ones because they have other drugs. I was using fresh Interceptor expiry date Jan 2021. So there shouldn't have been a problem with drug potency.

The Good
I watch my corals closely and am always aware the first sign that something is wrong. Many of my acros currently look better than they have in a very long time. They are showing colours I have not seen and polyps are extended during the day. I feel I may be over the hump with this pest. The treatment did not effect any of my fish or corals and I am not sure about the snails because I had hundreds and I still have many.
The Bad
The drug is expensive and difficult to get. I have pretty much wiped out my pod, my bristle worm and my feather duster populations. Some would consider loss of bristle worms as a good thing, I do not follow that chain of thinking. CUC can be replaced. It took a while to get this drug to work. Coral dips like Coral Rx are not effective on this bug.
The Ugly
This pest is extremely difficult to detect. I have had this pest for a long time and it has effected many of my acros, I can't say they directly killed them but they stressed them. I am hoping that local reefers will really inspect their acros because if they do not they will just keep being spread to reefers tanks.