Red bugs......what would you do?

[Aquattro]

I treated whole tank, couldn't catch most shrimp, only lost 2. Hermits made it thru. I noticed a slight decrease in the pod population for a week or 2, but they made a full recovery. Never saw bugs again, and would never add a frag to my tank that didn't get dipped in Interceptor first.
Oh, and I left my skimmer on, figured more O2 was good...

[christyf5]

I've treated my tank a couple times, I never found my hermits to be affected. Never had any shrimp because of my wrasse. Interceptor will kill any starfish you have as well so get them out of there as well.

I treated my whole tank because I have some colonies that have encrusted on the rock and besides having to chip them off the rock I didn't want to leave anything behind for the bugs to survive on while I treated various colonies and frags. Not to mention I just have too many for that anyways.

As for pod population decline. I did notice some dead pods floating about but didn't notice much of a decrease in population, they were still hanging about in my overflow in pretty good numbers and my wrasse managed to still ferret out many from within the rocks and such.

As for dangers, I have never encountered any. Its business as usual in the tank while you're treating for most of the critters (although the first time I treated there was a lot of nailbiting on my part). At about hour four you can see the redbugs aren't happy campers and start to fall off the corals, about hour 5 you can actually see polyps on corals you didn't see polyps before. By hour 6 I was preparing my big waterchange (which usually took me into hour 7) and running carbon. At about 8 hours the tank looked sooo much better with all polyps fully extended on those corals that were having a rough time previously.

I don't think I've ever treated interceptor with a sandbed, only since I've run my tank BB. You might want to consult with some DSB people

[Chaloupa]

THANK YOU for the replies!!!!!

Tangdaddy, Reef Raf, and fishface...do any of you have a sandbed? The reason I specifically ask that is some of the reading I have done says not to treat entire tank when you have a sand bed....I just want to be sure before I jump in and treat...also can ANYONE give me dosage?

[christyf5]

from here

"The dosage used in an aquarium to kill redbugs is 25mg (0.025 grams) per 10 gallons of actual tank water . That is 25mg of the entire tablet. Each tablet in the pack of 6 will treat about 380 gallons. The tablets are ground with a mortar and pestle into a fine powder. "

[Chaloupa]

Thank you Christy! How big is the margin for overdose error? Anyone know..I could tell ya what it is ifor dogs.....but not for aquariums! When I calculate my tank.....how do I know actual water volume with live rock etc in there?

Oh yes, and after this....all frags go in Q tank and get treated no matter what!

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by Chaloupa

Thank you Christy! How big is the margin for overdose error? Anyone know..I could tell ya what it is ifor dogs.....but not for aquariums! When I calculate my tank.....how do I know actual water volume with live rock etc in there?

Oh yes, and after this....all frags go in Q tank and get treated no matter what!

Eric Borneman reported using 10x that dosage with no ill effects. In fact his testing suggested that the dosage should be much higher than what I posted (Dustin Dortons treatment dosage). To be honest, at the beginning when I was treating I had access to a scale and measured it out exactly, however I don't have access to a decent scale so I was just taking a piece of the pill and grinding it up (ie. one pill does 380G so I'd use about a third of the pill or a little less). Its better to use more than less IMO.

For calculating the tank volume hmm, I found a calculator for that that calculates tank volume with sand and rock and stuff. Give me a bit and I'll find it for you

[christyf5]

Hah! Found it. I rock!

http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/volcalc.html

For doing the calculations, I don't bother with figuring out how much water my skimmer has in it etc. I just unplug everything, let it sit and then figure out water depth of tank and sump.