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ARGH!!!!! I have red bugs!


Sharkey18

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I was moving some frags around today and thought, oh look, that one has nice orange polyps.  But wait, the orange isn't at the end of the coralites.... wah waaaahhhhh. Red bugs. 

 

Don't know where I got em'. Don't know how long I've had em'. If you've gotten anything from me recently.... I am really sorry. 

 

Can't decide if I should just treat the whole tank or pull out all the coral. 

 

What are the chances of red bugs being maintained in the tank (in rocks, etc) if I just treat the corals? 

 

I have very few inverts so removing them and treating the entire tank would be easier. 

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Dang it. I better keep an eye out.

 

Treating the tank with or with some form of a treatment that rhymes with binteceptor I hear is super easy to do. You don't have any shrimp or many inverts that I remember seeing. Your fish will love it, your corals will love it, and you'll be red bug free with little to no hassle. I think FSCBishop did a writeup on his recent deal with it, and he went from worried to, "that was easy as pie."

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Very easy if you can find the meds nowadays. Just bag up all you inverts as if they were being shipped and then after you add the carbon the next day out your inverts back in. Or setup a small tank and a powerhead. They will be fine.

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Easy fix for me not long ago. Had to sacrifice all the inverts I couldn't get out but it was a quick easy fix with interceptor

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So I need help with the dosage for my tank. 

 

I have about 400g of water. I have read that a 25 mg tablet of interceptor can treat 350 gallons but I also read that the dosage should be 25 mg  / 10 gallons. 

 

"It is commonly agreed on, that a large tablet of Interceptor will adequately treat about 380 – 400 gallon or aquarium water. And although this is sometimes difficult to estimate, do your best, taking into account variables such as your sump, Calcium Reactor, Protein skimmer, refugium, and the amount of rock you have. It has been found that 25mg of Interceptor per 10 gallons of aquarium water is the appropriate dosage for killing red bugs".

 

What am I not understanding here.... 

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Maybe because some sources talk about the weight of the entire tablet in mg, and some talk about the active ingredient in mg?

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I think that's it Jon. 

 

I'm going to use two 12.5 mg tablets. 

 

Water is mixed, carbon is ready. I'm working on catching shrimp, but they either get in the net by tomorrow night, or they don't. 

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They could be saying 25mg in 10 gallons is good for dipping new corals rather than a long tank tretment?

 

Either way it's nice of you to come out and let everyone know you got them! Easy pest to get rid of if you can get the meds but also an easy one to pass around since a lot of people don't know what to look for. Another reason why doing what your doing and warning people is a good thing to do. Everyone check your acros, especially if you plan on trading or selling! If you don't know about acro pests look up info and read!

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Curious how many smoothskin acros you have. If it's just one smoothie and that is the only one they are on then QT that munchkin and let the rest starve so you don't kill yo crabs

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No I have several smooth skins and plan on getting more. I'm just bombing the whole thing. 

 

Also, I don't have any crabs.  the only things at risk are my skunk cleaner shrimp (3) and a fire shrimp. 

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(edited)

Leave skimmer running, but remove collection cup.  This will ensure the meds get everywhere without being removed.

 

I find smashing the pill with the back of a spoon and mixing in luke warm water helped dissolve it when I had them.

 

Easy pest to get rid of actually, so don't sweat it to much.  I would rather deal with red bugs than aptasia or bubble algae.

Edited by BowieReefer84
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I wish I had thousand of those. I wouldn't mind the death of my corals nearly so much. 

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Here are some pictures....before I knew what unsafe fragging was....

 

These are progression pictures showing the:

  1. A purple bonsai with red bugs
  2. 2 weeks later after treating entire tank
  3. 3 months later...what a difference

 

IMG_2597a_JPG.jpg IMG_2841a_JPG.jpg PurpleBonsai1_JPG.jpg

 

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Meds in at 9 pm tonight. Water change starts at 9 am tomorrow. Unfortunately I could not catch ANY of my cleaner shrimp.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I know your tank is huge but you may wish to consider a large change out. I know someone had a kalk overdose on a 260 and the only way she got alk back down was with a 50% change out. I've done more 50% changes than I can recall and my tank was never the worse for it BUT make sure with a change that size the salinity and temp are matched pretty close.

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I treated the tank Thursday night and did a 100g water change on Friday. System volume is about 400g so it's only about 25%. Wish I could 50% like sen5241b suggested but things are looking pretty good today. 

 

Could not catch the shrimp before treating. 1 skunk cleaner shrimp died, 1 survived and 1 is missing and presumed dead. The fire shrimp survived. 

 

Will treat again in 2 weeks.  At least red bugs are relatively painless to deal with. 

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I treated the tank Thursday night and did a 100g water change on Friday. System volume is about 400g so it's only about 25%. Wish I could 50% like sen5241b suggested but things are looking pretty good today. 

 

Could not catch the shrimp before treating. 1 skunk cleaner shrimp died, 1 survived and 1 is missing and presumed dead. The fire shrimp survived. 

 

Will treat again in 2 weeks.  At least red bugs are relatively painless to deal with. 

 

 

Yeah, making 200g of change out water would be insane. You should be good with your 25%. Hope it all goes well.

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