Red Bugs!

[jcook54]

I just posted a pic of a nice tricolor I was going to sell. It's been a long time since I've sold anything out of my display tank and I've got a real problem. They are really, really hard to see with the naked eye but they're pretty obvious in the picture - Red Bugs. I feel guilty about even posting the item for sale when I look at the picture below, it's seems so obvious! Seriously, every time I look at the close up of the pic below I kick myself! I've spent the last 20 minutes scanning and scanning my frag system and don't see any of them anywhere. My plan is to remove the crabs and snails from the display, treat 3x and then do the same thing for the frag system. I wanted to post here just to give y'all a look and to see if anyone has any Interceptor that I can get a few tabs of. Have any of y'all had red bugs and treated them successfully?






Thanks @hzheng33 for pointing them out.

 

[dball711]

Sorry to hear about this, but the good news is this is a very easy pest to treat for. The problem is finding interceptor or a veterinary and it’ll give you a prescription for it. Sorry I wish I could be more help.

 

[jcook54]

I am so embarrassed that I even tried to sell that frag with that exact picture. I have an android phone and when I take pics of the tank I select "Night Sight." My guess is that this auto-setting cuts down on the blues and makes those nasty little red bugs really pop. Now that I see them, I can certainly see them on the frag and those surrounding it but I have no idea how long they've been in the system.

 

[civics14]

Sucks man. At least you now know its there ans you can start treating it.

 

[jcook54]

I'm going to do a series of dips with different products to see how well they combat red bugs. I've got a few frags that are obviously infected so I should be able to perform at least 3 good dips with different products. I've got the Interceptor sourced and the corals currently in the infected system don't seem to be at risk of annihilation so I wanted to do a little research. Plus, this give me time to make sure I get all of the crabs out of the tank before I treat.

TLF Revive - Mixed per label to 40 mL per gallon of water (5 mL per US pint).

I've been known to double the dose of the Revive but decided to give it a shot per the instructions to start. When I added the coral to tank the container with raw tank water, I swished it around a few times and was able to see a few red bugs come off. When I added the Revive I didn't notice much of a difference until the 3 minute mark. At that point they really, really started coming off the frag in astonishing numbers. I continued to agitate the water and they kept shedding from the frag. At that 10 minute mark, I rinsed the frag in a container with fresh tank, agitated the frag and put it back in the system. Before I added it back I used my trusty jewler's loupe to look at the frag up cloase and did not see any red bugs still attached. However, I did see what I think were a few red bugs in the container where I rinsed the frag. In the dipping container I could see lots of red bugs and quite a few of them were still alive. I added an additional 5mL of Revive to see if that would kill them off. After an additional 10 minutes, they were all dead or stunned to the point of total inactivity. I should do this again but not add the additional 5mL to determine if it was the time or the concentration that caused them to die. It's possible that 5mL/pint was adequate and it was the additional 10 minutes that did them in rather than the added Revive.


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Conclusion: Revive is a good dip for red bugs. At the very least you will absolutely be able to tell if you've got an issue and need to dig into it more. However, based on this single test, it would be quite possible to dip in Revive and still introduce red bugs to your system. Since Revive is my standard all-purpose dip, I still plan on using it. It's saved me from monti nudi's once and I trust it well enough to stun pests to the point where I can see them easily. In the case of the monti nudis, I threw everything away. At this point I'd be tempted to do the same if I saw a bunch of red bugs dropping off but hopefully the next dip will perform better.