Red Bugs.. Can I Wait?

[picassoman]

I have a RB problem but wont be able to setup up a QT tank for about two weeks. My corals all seem okay, and only one has faded in color slightly. It it okay to hold out until I get my new QT or should i toss them in a 5 gallon bucket to treat with interceptor?

[easye123]

I recommend treating the whole tank.

You will losse most pods,shrimp, and crabs but its good to know that the whole tank was treated!

I got lucky and had couple crabs live and my cleaner lived. I also notice I had a decent amount of pods left.

Treatment was very easy, and after the treatment is done and the water changes are done and carbon is added, the tank looks spotless!!!

HTh

[Lobster]

You should probably read up on it more. You can't just treat in a 5G bucket and return the corals to the tank, as they would likely be reinfested. You need to either leave the main tank free of host corals or treat the main tank (preferably multiple times). There is plenty of information available on this.

[RichConley]

Originally posted by easye123


I got lucky and had couple crabs live and my cleaner lived. I also notice I had a decent amount of pods left.

Treatment was very easy, and after the treatment is done and the water changes are done and carbon is added, the tank looks spotless!!!

HTh

If you had a cleaner shrimp survive, theres no way in heck you killed all the red bugs.

[picassoman]

That's why I wanted to wait for my 33L tank to come so I can QT them for a week because I have read the bugs in your tank usually die within five days without a host. Also I don't feel like killing all my pods in my DSB, because thats like starting with fresh sand. I read about algae blooms after treatment as well, and my tank and sand is spotless. Now to the question.. my acros should be fine for a week or so longer with red bugs right? I have read that some people have had them in their tanks for years with no adverse effects.

[RichConley]

DSBs have nothing to do with pods. Bacteria is what drives a DSB, and interceptor wont do anything to that.

[reefkoi]

I think the whole point of this was your question "can I wait" right?
Yes you can wait, the red bugs won't kill your corals. Treat when you are ready it'll be fine.

[Serioussnaps]

Originally posted by RichConley
If you had a cleaner shrimp survive, theres no way in heck you killed all the red bugs.

I disagree. I have noticed larger cleaner shrimp can survive but smaller ones are gonna be toast.

I vote treat the WHOLE system.

[picassoman]

Sorry i should have wrote and my DSB. if algae blooms occur, some of the bacteria must die off. Reefkoi, thank you, that's all a really wanted to know. i don't feel comfortable treating my tank anyways, not matter waht luck people have had. I read a post stating someones tank crashing with interceptor.

[aquarius77]

Thousands of us have used it in the tank, including me. One posting about a tank crash after interceptor out of a thousand is still pretty good odds. I vote for whole tank treatment because Montis and LPS can have bugs as well. Its easy to do and if you decide to go that route you will say the same. Stressing the already stressed corals with a move does not make sense when an in tank treatment is not only easier but more effective.

[reefkoi]

I recently treated mine, I lost emeralds and some red-legged hermits. I figure these guys only live for so long and are relatively cheap so I decided to do the whole tank.
No other side effects. If you have several smooth skinned acros its cheaper to replace the crabs than look at a coral that lacks polyp extension. And you'll never be able to give or sell frags from your tank with a clear conscience.
I also vote hit the whole tank.

[RichConley]

Originally posted by Serioussnaps
I disagree. I have noticed larger cleaner shrimp can survive but smaller ones are gonna be toast.

I vote treat the WHOLE system.

Snaps, maybe, but I've never seen ANY shrimp survive, and the person not have a "reinfection"

[The Reefer91]

whoa whoa, slow down, now i have a question.

if you removed all SPS from your tank and QT'd them for like, i dunno, a week or two, then treated them and put them back in your tank, wouldn't all the redbugs be dead without a host?

[TwistedTiger]

Originally posted by The Reefer91
whoa whoa, slow down, now i have a question.

if you removed all SPS from your tank and QT'd them for like, i dunno, a week or two, then treated them and put them back in your tank, wouldn't all the redbugs be dead without a host?

You would have to be 100% sure there is not a single piece of frag left anywhere in the tank. Any SPS tank set up for an extended period of time is going to have bits and pieces growing everywhere. When I upgraded tanks I moves some rock and found a piece of monti about 2" in diameter growing under my first layer of rock. It wasn't colored up but it was living and growing. Your safest bet is to treat the whole tank if you want to get rid of them all.

[Serioussnaps]

Originally posted by RichConley
Snaps, maybe, but I've never seen ANY shrimp survive, and the person not have a "reinfection"

You also haven't seen the cleaner shrimp in question

[The Reefer91]

"You would have to be 100% sure there is not a single piece of frag left anywhere in the tank. Any SPS tank set up for an extended period of time is going to have bits and pieces growing everywhere. When I upgraded tanks I moves some rock and found a piece of monti about 2" in diameter growing under my first layer of rock. It wasn't colored up but it was living and growing. Your safest bet is to treat the whole tank if you want to get rid of them all." - Twisted Tiger

i only soft corals and LPS. it isn't SPS yuet, but i plan on making the new tank SPS.

[picassoman]

Kind of getting convinced here. Did anyone have algae breakouts or show test kit readings Funky ex. ammonia spike, pH fluctations, etc?

[chrismhaase]

What is the dosing rate/amount of interceptor to water volume? For example if you treat a QT that is 10 gallons what would you dose and how? Crush it up and mix it in?

What about whole system? Same method? How many mg of interceptor to say 100 gallons of water?

[picassoman]

Okay kind of off the subject bud.. There are plenty of threads showing this.

[picassoman]

Well I did it! I dosed about a 1/4 of a pill for 9 hours... Good news, the bugs are gone! PE looks great and my big cleaner shrimp is still kicking. Bad news.. my crabs died and most of my pods (not all though???) but that is a small price to pay. Thanks guys for your input and reassuring me the safety in dosing interceptor.

[carpus]

I find that pods recooperate fairly fast. I hear some burrow deep into the rockwork where flow is minimal so no medication reaches them. I could be wrong. But existing pod eggs will hatch and repopoulate your pod populations

[Racenrich]

Originally posted by RichConley
If you had a cleaner shrimp survive, theres no way in heck you killed all the red bugs.

I second this....as i had them (RB) and thought they were gone....my cleaner survived, haha!.......2 months later and I noticed RB again.....and yes i did the THREE TREATMENT process as well as run carbon, H20 changes, etc......what to do now?

Picassoman......your not done.....you have a least 2 more of those treatments to go before you bring out the cake and icecream!!

[TwistedTiger]

Originally posted by Racenrich
I second this....as i had them (RB) and thought they were gone....my cleaner survived, haha!.......2 months later and I noticed RB again.....and yes i did the THREE TREATMENT process as well as run carbon, H20 changes, etc......what to do now?

Picassoman......your not done.....you have a least 2 more of those treatments to go before you bring out the cake and icecream!!

It's not the number of treatments, it's the length of treatment. Borneman has done research that shows they are live bearers and do not lay eggs. He also suggests as many others now longer times for dosing. 18hrs is what I'm seeing most now for successful one time treatment.

There has been some speculation that repeated treatments of tanks of colonies is required to ensure that eggs or larval stages are killed after adults are killed. The anatomy of the copepods shows a prominent brood pouch. Brood pouches usually mean that the species brood their young. Also, many obligate marine parasites are direct developers, giving them a higher fitness since complex larval cycles would limit their likelihood of finding a host and direct development allows for immediate host access. I took a small fragment of Acropora and examined it under an Olympus dissecting scope and found five copepods present. I put the fragment in a 2.5 gallon tank on a piece of eggcrate suspended above the bottom by PVC and placed the tank on a stir plate with a magnetic stirrer. I needed to provide adequate water flow to keep the coral alive (hence no airstone) and no powerheads lest the putative larval stages or free-swimming juveniles or adults were killed. The tank was placed so as to receive indirect light for the coral, but not so much that the tank became too hot. I used freshly made and autoclaved sterile seawater. No other substrates were present. Fifteen days after placing the fragment in the tank, there were 18 copepods present. I filtered the 2.5 gallons of water under vacuum onto #2 Whatman filter papers and resuspended the filtrate in about 5ml of fresh seawater and examined it under the dissecting scope. Large numbers of diatoms were present, and I counted three or four larval polychaetes and one nematode. No copepods, eggs, or other larvae were present. Therefore, I make the assumption that these are direct developing copepods and there is no need to worry about larval stages.

http://www.ericborneman.com/Tegastes.../Research.html

[reefkoi]

What I can't understand is "treatment length" if I change 10% of my water after 8 hours is that really "ending" the treatment? I didn't add any carbon, I simply did a 10% water change a day later. That was a couple weeks ago, I am not planning on another treatment, I really don't think it's needed if they don't lay egg's.

[JRaquatics]

I suggest a super dose and leave in a week. The extended period of time I think is the key to be red bug free...