Interceptor question

[Bomber]

Well I bit the bullet and dipped three things in Dursban today.
We'll see what they look like in a few days.

[EricHugo]

Randy - took epsom salts and stirred them into freshwater until it read 35ppt on a refractometer. Why? Am I missing something?

No, I did not measure pH - This was just sort of a "let's see what some relatively non-toxic things do and see if they are worth looking into further." I'll bring my pH meter and check, though...good point.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

took epsom salts and stirred them into freshwater until it read 35ppt on a refractometer. Why? Am I missing something?

I just wondered what concentration actually got used, and whether it might have been substantially hyper or hypo saline relative to seawater (potentially causing some of the coral stress). 35 ppt "Epsom Salts" might mean different things to different people, as Epsom salts themselves are more than 50% water.

Using a refractometer like that, it was probably roughly 25 ppt solids. So one might consider doing the same experiment at higher magnesium sulfate, although I have no particular reason to think that will be beneficial.

[Bomber]

That's why I'm looking for something simple. Add one tbs to 5gal of salt water and dip for 2mins.

Nothing to test and make it complicated for hobbyists, collectors, wholesalers, pet shops. No pH, no salinity, etc.

[griss]

Originally posted by Bomber
Well I bit the bullet and dipped three things in Dursban today.
We'll see what they look like in a few days.

Let us know how this works. I will be moving my corals from the 300 gallon stock tank to the new tank in the coming weeks. If I could just dip them all when I move them to get rid of the red bugs, that would be awesome. I just happen to have a bag of Dursban in the garage

[Bomber]

George

Do you have any sacrificial corals around there with the red bugs?

[Hobster]

I think that it's great that folks are trying to come up with a solution to a pest problem. It is however, a bit alarming that people with advanced degrees and who are known authorities in the reef keeping area would advocate the violation of pesticide labeling. Not only is the target pest not on the label but not even the site. We are also talking about a product that has been discontinued. Sure, as an individual, you are pretty much free to do what you wish to your own livestock but what of the many people who read this thread? They may read it and think, "well if so and so can dip corals in pesticide then I'll try it too!" If 1 tsp works than 2 must work better.
Why not dig up some chlorinated hydrocarbons and try them also?
I'm sure we can search the garages and outbuildings and find some of the "good old stuff" I just hope someone doesn't end up killing their tank or harming themselves, family or pets.
Just my 2.5 cents.

[Greg Hiller]

>Has anyone put a ID on these "red bugs"?<

The info on this was posted a long time back in the red bugs thread in the SPS forum. The copy of the paper I have shows a drawing of the little buggers and looks just like what I saw when I had them a few years back. Unfortunately, the scan of the article that was posted on the thread was a bit blurry, so I could not get the exact Journal title, #, etc. It looks like Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash, 1981, pp 2??-2??. Title: A new speceis of Tegastes (Copepoda: Harpacticoida) Associated with a Scleractinian Coral at Enewetak Atoll. They gave it the species name (fitting don't you think?) of Tegastes acroporanus (I like the anus part!). In the article they mention that the only other know species is T. georgei, and that species attacks (or was found on) Stylophora and Pocillopora.

In my systems the parasite never was found on anything other than Acropora, and only certain species. I assumed it was probably T. acroporanus.

I tried to get some 'experts' to look at my bugs with little luck.

[Bomber]

Not only is the target pest not on the label but not even the site.

Noooooooo, you've got to be kidding!


Tegastes acroporanus = pain in acros butt

Thanks Greg! I'm looking for it now.

[gregt]

I'm just waiting to find out when Bomber's coming up to my place to detach all my acros, dip them and reattach them.

[griss]

Originally posted by Bomber
George

Do you have any sacrificial corals around there with the red bugs?

I have a few I could try it with.

[AcroSteve]

I wish there was more of the "good old stuff" still around. I appreciate all the help these guys give to this hobby. All in the interest of healthier and longer-lived livestock.

It takes educated and or very smart people thinking "outside the box" to come up with the great solutions.

[Bomber]

Originally posted by gregt
I'm just waiting to find out when Bomber's coming up to my place to detach all my acros, dip them and reattach them.

We're shooting for the beginning of summer.

George and I took this to PM.

Thanks Steve. This is the way it works in the real world.

[Hobster]

It's great to think outside the box and try to solve this pest problem. I just don't think misapplication of a pesticide is the way to do it. Even if it proves to be a safe (for the coral) and effective treatment there isn't much chance of an approved usage that anyone could actually use. so what's the point? The good old stuff is gone for a reason and it still persists. Why not try to find a safer alternative? No, I don't know what that may be, nor do I have the advanced education to do so, I just live in the "real world". I think the wasp spray would give fast and effective knockdown.

[griss]

I checked in my garage last night and, unfortunately, it is Diazanon (sp?) I have and not Dursban. So I will not be able to test the effect of Dursban on the Red Bugs.

[jfinch]

Bomber, I might have missed it. Any reason why you're focusing on dursban and not one of the more readily available organophosphates?

(is it just what you had in the garage? )

[davejnz]

He/they are trying to do experiments here and if he/they feel they need to use pesticides or whatever lets let them do it without making comments like"Whats the point" or "misapplication of a pesticide"The point is simple,to find a way to kill redbugs without treating tank.He is not trying to market unsafe pesticides to the public,merely using it for experimentation
which might lead to other cures from different "pesticides"/chemicals.Keep up the good work Bomber,Eric,and everyone else that i forgot to mention

[Bomber]

We're out on a island in the middle of the ocean, it was what was in the garage.
But they are all so close, we just needed some place to start.

[EricHugo]

So, another 6 hours with the bugs today and a whole lot of time under the microscope.

Given what has transpired, we inreased the scope of a few of the treatments.

Also, I had my "partner in crime" go to the vet to buy Interceptor. He returned with the "generic brand" according the the vet. Unfortunately, it is a diffferent drug - ivermectin. Looking at the MSDS, it appears to be equally effective and against mites, too, but the dosage is 136mcg, not in mg, so I estimated based on dog dose levels and using the intereceptor tank recommendation.

Like Interceptor, this stuff is not appreciably soluble in water, which is a pain. I will look at solubility - maybe DMSO or something, but unsure right now. I also tried heating it, but it doesn't melt, probably from the other additives. Basically, I am wondering how a bunch of particulates floating in the water with a minimal dissolved drug level will really be effective, but I set up a quarantine tank using 60 gallons of seawater and the equivalent dose as for Intereceptor and added two fragments for six hours. At the end of six hours, bugs were alive and well.

Now, while the fragments were percolating in powdered drug in swirling seawater, other more valuable things happened.

First, these amphipods are really good and fast swimmers, and despite my earlier observations that they remain attached to the coral, they don't. A simple swish in a bowl and I collected a dozen or so, rapidly swimming amphipods that were confirmed as being the right bugs. So, I was able to do a sort of LD100 this afternoon. I pipetted 2-5 bugs into a drop of water and added a few grains of the ivermectin, and a knife tip of Nix (permethrin). It is much easier to observe them in a water drop than on a coral under a scope. Anyway, the bugs were catatonic within 10 minutes in the Nix, but continued to periodically convulse for up to 30 minutes and after an hour all were dead. Ivermectin took much much longer, but eventually they died after several hours.

While I was waiting, I pipetted two bugs in a drop of water and added 1/2 drop Lugol's solution. The bugs were dead within seconds, and turned black within a minute. I posted earlier that direct application of Lugol's killed bugs on a colony in my lab tank, but slightly bleached the coral where the application happened. The coral recovered, but it was obviously stressful. So, while I waited for the ivermectin to work, I played with Lugol's and set up other tanks.

I put 5ml Lugol's in 1 liter of water and dipped many colonies for five minutes, and then ten minutes. The first notable reaction is that most amphipods jump ship immediately and then die quickly in the solution. After about ten colonies were dipped (each with many many amphipods - 20-100?), I examined them and found 2 colonies had two amphipods left on them, the rest were clear. I returned those to the dip for another five minutes, and after that those colonies were clear. Dozens upon dozens of black dead amphipods were on the bottom of the container.

I upped the dosage to 10ml/liter for five minutes. Five minutes in the stronger dip also killed all amphipods every time. However, the corals exhibited a stronger stress response from this concentration, producing opaque stringy mucus upon replacement in the tank.

I also found that dips of three minutes in the lower concentration of Lugol's, even down to one minute, could rid a colony totally if light pipetting was done on the colony surface, basically blowing the bugs off. they dislodge very easily in the dip, unlike their tenacious hold on a coral in seawater.

In the interim, I also prepared 2ml Nix in 1 liter of seawater and 1 full crushed tablet of ivermectin in 1.5 l water. This is approximately 1000 or more times the dosage recommended for the functionally similar Interceptor. After thirty minutes, almost all bugs were dead in Nix, but a few remained on some colonies...some were completely clear. Virtually all the bugs were alive in the ivermectin treatment, even after four hours. These were then dipped in the Lugol's at 5ml/liter and, of course, all bugs were dead.

All corals were rinsed and replaced into a tank for observation. Polyps had extended on all corals within minutes to an hour. I'll post back in a few days and give an update, and I plan on getting the right drug yet and try it both on corals and free-living bugs and see how effective it is. Right now, though, and provided the corals remain looking good, the Lugol's dip (at a vastly higher concentration than is typically used by aquarists) kills the amphipods quickly and the corals seem to tolerate it, even weakened as they are from the infestation.

I have fifteen bugs in a Petri dish of seawater, covered, right now to see how long they can live without a host. Tomorrow, I will pipette out some more, and see if they will go to another host (Montipora), and set up a mini chamber witha clean Acropora fragment, add a known number of bugs, and see how fast they reproduce and see if I can figure out anything about their life history.

However, insofar as I can tell, Lugol's is the DDT of coral amphipods at 5ml/liter for 10 minutes.

[AcroSteve]

Good work Eric.

I have noticed in my tank that they seem to ignore most of my millipora and montipora while prefering other acro's.

[Greg Hiller]

Eric,

Rather than reinvent the wheel you might read the article I wrote about 1 1/2 years ago, I found basically the same thing with respect to Lugols. Yes, you can clean individual frags, but it is painstaking work, and you need a scope. We already have a whole tank treatment that works. I think that a 100% effective method to treat frags in a 1 hour span would be the thing we should be working on. A less dangerous treatment for the whole tank would also be nice of course.

[Bomber]

I thought so too Greg. Only shorter than a hour. Like a 10 second dip for me. I'm usually in a hurry.

Well so far so good. It's been three days and the dipped corals are still fine. Now I need to take a trip to Home Depot on the mainland and see what's on their shelves.

[Hobster]

Originally posted by davejnz
He/they are trying to do experiments here and if he/they feel they need to use pesticides or whatever lets let them do it without making comments like"Whats the point" or "misapplication of a pesticide"The point is simple,to find a way to kill redbugs without treating tank.He is not trying to market unsafe pesticides to the public,merely using it for experimentation
which might lead to other cures from different "pesticides"/chemicals.Keep up the good work Bomber,Eric,and everyone else that i forgot to mention

davejnz,
As I stated, an individual is free to do whatever they wish. It is however a "violation of Federal law to use a pesticide in a manner inconsistent with its labeling" Yes the bugs will probably die when treated with any OP product (Dursban, Diazinon) Even if they work it does not lead to a usable solution as they and others are not avaliable(BTW, Diazinon will probably give a faster knockdown). If one is going to use pesticide then why not try some of the avaliable synthetics? (still not recomended) I much prefer Erics approach as he trying some research methods. With all the chemical warfare between corals, maybe there is a derivative from some soft corals which could be developed. Are there any natural predators?, life cycle alterations, IGR's? Anyway that's where I was coming from. The products mentioned are just plain toxic to aquatic life.
http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/chlorpyr.htm

[Bomber]

I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where Interceptor and ivermectin are labeled for dipping corals.

[EricHugo]

Greg:

I did read your article. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing that there is an ideal solution yet, nor did I see that what you wrote was the end-all-be-all of the story...if it was, this thread wouldn't exist, would it?.

I said I do not like the idea of treating a tank, not only for reasons mentioned by others above, but as I said anything that kills bad bugs is going to kill good bugs, too, unless there is some genetically or biologically valid rerason the drug targets just those bugs. Second, I'm not finding that it works particularly well. Third, if dealing with almost microscopic organisms, how can you know much of anything without magnification?
Fourth, as I have just now found, the adult bugs can live 3-4 days without a host. All the ones I isolated have now died. So, a dip with a seven day quarantine, provided there are no other hosts or that the life cycle is not complex, could be all that's required...a heck of a lot better than wiping out all the crustaceans and possibly other flora and fauna in the tank that has its own slew of potential problems in terms of biomass loss. Fifth, you will excuse me if I reinvent the wheel, because I frankly don't trust the results that most aquarists "discover." Like I said, I have seen "miracles" many times in the hobby, only to discover they are anything but miracles.

So, if its all the same, let's just consider this replication and repeatability and I'll just keep reinventing. In the meantime, I'll also continue to work with other aspects of them, including the description and life history. I have not pulled the article you cited yet, but will get it in the morning and see if there is even an adequate description to compare to....since these bugs have not, to my knowledge, been described by any aquarist, how do we know these bugs are the same as the bugs in the article? Is it like coral identification where "it looks like the one on page 276 of Veron's book?"