Red bugs on Acros.
 

For those of you that do not know what Red bugs are. Here's picture I took. And this link has several more photos.

They are a little bit difficult to see via the naked Eye.

Here's what you would need to look for.

Ok now that you know what to look for. Here's what you need to do... This has been my own story and it's been quite successful. As far as I know there isn't any side effects of this treatment. It's has been done on numerous tanks and nobody had any big problems. Now here's the disclaimer: :D I do not responsibilize myself to anything that can happen to your tank... Like I said this is my presonal experience. PREFORM AT OWN RISK!!!!


Now that's taken care of: There is several ways to take care of this problem. Three ways from my research:

1.) The use of a Dragonface pipefish (Corythoichthys haematopterus). "The Natural Way"

Further info can be found on this website. Information/Purchase

2.) The use of a heartworm medication known as Interceptor. (Prescription is needed to aquire this.)

3.) The use of a quarantene system... And the use of dips i.e. Lugol's solutions or reef dip.

The treatment that I will be discussing here is the second treatment as it's prob the most effective if your whole system is contaminated.

Well I decided to treat the whole system with the heartworm meds called Interceptor because I watched over the period of a month and a half, all my acros slowly deteriorating in health. It got to the point that I thought I was going to loose some acros.

Signs and Symptoms of a red bug infestation are:
-Fading of colors of the affected acros.
-Reduced polyp extension.
-Stunt/slowed growth.

These are the best signs indicating a red bug infestation.

Treatment: After searching for a long time I was able to identify the problem that was affecting my corals. I came upon this website that allowed me to identify what was going on. Well you can read exactly how the treatment is to be preformed. I on the other hand was in a bind. I could not get a hold of the medication via the internet like they said was possible and I did not have an accurate enough scale.

My treatment was as followed... I was lucky enough that the most heavily infected acros were not secured to any live rock or anywhere permanent. While waiting for my scale to come in I actually took some of the meds that I was able to acquire locally and treated a small container with approximate 200x the dosage because I did not have any way to weigh the pill.

I placed the most heavily infected pieces with looked like they were going to die into the container. And closely monitored the progress.

After about 1 hour I could tell that the majority of the red bugs were not moving about as much. This rapid progression I think was due to the fact that I had a small syringe and was blasting the slime from the coral away so that the medicated water was actually reaching the red bugs.

After about 2 hours and taking several red bugs under the microscope. I could see that there was not life in the bugs. Just to be on the safe side I opted to leave the coral in for one more hour.

After 3 hours I have replace the coral in the tank. I was surprised to see how fast the polyps started to extend again, even while being treated.

After I got my digital scale I. Prob about 3 days after the first treatment, I then followed to treat the whole tank using the appropriate dosages of 25 mg per 10 gals as Dustin Dorton suggested. But because I felt that I had gotten most of the red bugs and I had my pom pom crab that I did not wish to loose I dosed a little lite. I believe I have close to 70 gals of water in my system but I treated the same amount as if I had only 50 Gals. I allowed the treatment to go through the 6 hours of “soak.” And then I proceeded to do a 50% water change, and run the skimmer again. No carbon was added to the tank and I suffered absolutely no loses in livestock. About seven days later I again proceeded with another treatment. No loses there also. It’s been now a month since treatment and no signs of red bugs again.

Tanks Dustin. ;)

I now QT all my corals and dip in an interceptor solution and allow my corals to sit in this solution for about 2 hours.

My recommendation to everyone is to follow Dustin's treatment schedule and treat accordingly.

Like I said this was my experience. I cannot vouche that it'll work for everyone but it worked for me.

Very informative post! I'm glad to hear that you didn't lose any livestock.
Awesome photos! Great job and thanks for sharing your experience. This thread deserves a sticky.

Very Informative
 

I have not experianced this problem in over 10 yrs. of keeping SPS. I do Quarantine and do a Lugols dip on all new SPS. This may be the reason, I am very glad do find out that there is a way to combat this problem. Once again it shows how important it is to Quarantine...

Thanks for the great info.