Parasitic Tegastidae copepods "Black Bugs"

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

8pk of pills that is nice my vet sold me a dose 1 pill only. That came in a box marked large dog.

My mistake there are 6 in a box of Interceptor Flavor Tabs Large dog not 8. I have used 2 so far for my 75 gallon tank.

[Frogger]

It is raining bristle worms in my tank. Looks like I have hit the Bristle worm threshold.

[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.

[DKoKoMan]

Great write up frogger! Hope I don’t get these buggers, but if I do I can refer to this.

[Frogger]

THE KILLING DOSE
I have calculated out the dosage that seemed to kill the black bugs and it is nearly 3 times the recommended dose for red bugs.

One 23mg tablet will treat 135 gallons of water.
3/4 of a tablet will treat a 100 gallon tank. This works out to 16.7mg of Milbemycin Oxime per 100 gallons. One tablet is 23mg (M.Oxime) and weighs 94mg.

As I did 5 doses I do not know if the earlier doses played any part in killing all of these bugs. You might have to do multiple treatments.

I make no promises that you will have the same success as me, it may wipe out your entire tank. I have no shrimp, crabs or clams in my tank so I do not know how these would be affected, based on the red bug treatments probably not well.

[Razor Ramon]

Thanks for the up date ! Keeping my fingers crossed for you . Hope you got them all .

[Razor Ramon]

Do you have a 2 week up date we’re you able to nuke all the wee beastys .

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

Do you have a 2 week up date we’re you able to nuke all the wee beastys .

Ok update time. Last treatment was March 23 (3 weeks ago). I have kept a close eye on the corals and I have not seen one black bug since March 23.

The treatment was not without its problems. I lost most of my amphipods, bristleworms, feather dusters, spaghetti worms, etc. Not sure if it affected any of the smaller organisms in the tank.

Many of my acros are looking better, however my Jason Fox has taken a turn for the worse since I started the treatment my strawberry shortcake is half looking great and coloured up nicely but half of it has lost quite a bit of colour. There are a couple other corals that are not really doing great. The other 15- 20 or so acros are looking great with increased growth.

Not sure if the issues with these acros are from the actual treatment, the bugs before the treatment stressing them or recently I had my Giros revert to alternating gyre mode once or twice a day, it kicked up quite a bit of gravel covering everything with dust and making the water column cloudy. The gyre thing has been happening for the past few weeks until I finally figured out yesterday it was happening. I think I have fixed it by completely reprogramming it.