Our redbug interceptor experience

[mnat]

A few weeks ago we found out we had redbugs in our 20g tank and we needed to treat them. I figured I would do a quick write up of our experience and keep updating until the tank is clear.

Getting the gift that keeps on giving:
We lost power for two days during one of the heavy snowstorms which crashed all of our tanks. We lost about half to 2/3 of our SPS corals and had to setup our tanks all over again. After some time and getting the tanks cycled and balanced again we went on a little shopping spree because it was just plain depressing looking at a tank with no coral in it. We picked up a bunch of SPS frags put them in the tank and all was good with the world again. Some time later we noticed an ORA purple plasma frag turned brown when all the other corals were doing really well. I first thought this was something I was doing wrong (lighting or flow issues) and tried to move it around to no avail. Eventually my wife pulled the frag and noticed the egg sacs all over the bottom of the frag. That frag was given a quick burial.

Saying hello to our little friends:
We kept an eye on the corals but did not notice anything, most were still doing well. The survivors of the crash were starting to color back up and some were actually starting to grow. One frag in particular, a pearlberry frag, was not coloring up and looked the same. We picked him up and took a close look at him and noticed the red bugs running all over him. We don't have a good camera so sorry for no pictures. Once you know what you are looking for we saw them all over our smooth skinned corals.

Nuke it from orbit:
After doing some reading, we knew Interpector was our only hope. After procuring some form MikeM (thanks again) we put together our plan for treating the tank. We bought a frag rack to mount the SPS so we could keep a good eye on them. We pulled out all the snails and hermits we could find and removed our pistol shrimp goby pair (in a 20g tank this takes less than an hour which I know it tough for a big tank). Here is where we made a mistake, we tried to get to cute with this. We know interceptor wipes your pod population out completely so we decided to move some live rock out of the tank and pull the chaeto ball out of the HOB fuge and put them in our live rock cycling tank. The goal was to keep our pod population alive and yes we know red bugs can live on LR and in chaeto but they will die within a weeks time without and SPS (according to what we read). Remvoing all this biological filtration caused an algae spike and our nitrates got a little out of control but we were able to correct everything. So our piece of advice, leave your tank alone.

The aftermath:
We added the interceptor and kept a close eye on the tank, we had extra water ready to go and fresh carbon. After a day or so we examined the corals and saw no live red bugs. We waited a week and last night after the water changes checked the corals again. We flipped over a frag and saw a bunch of egg clusters so we know we have to do another dose and probably a third. We forgot we had put some naughty hermits into the fuge and we found them all dead, however our snails we missed laid eggs 3 days after the treatment. The other consideration here is that one pill is supposed to treat rougly 300g of water, so we split the pill in thirds and then again in half. We dosed that half of a third which should be for rougly 50g which is 2.5x the dosage. Now this is not something if you overdose will crash your tank so we are not that worried but I wonder with the stronger dosage if that is what killed the hermits.

Stay tuned for episode IV A New Hope...

 

[rodclement]

Good read Mike! Thanks for sharing and looking forward to the updates, every crash, every problem brings a little bit more knowledge....

rod

 

[Dave]

I am also treating for red bugs. I have completed my first dosing.

Based on the reading I have done, red bugs still seem to have some unanswered questions.

For example, some of the more recent reads I have done on red bugs suggest they are live bearers, so one treatment should be enough. However, a second and possible third is put out there as a "just in case" suggestion.

It has been suggested that if you take out out the hermits and add them back after the end of a three week treatment, there is a slight chance you could reintroduce the red bugs.

If they cannot survive more than 5 days without acros, how would that be possible.

There is no doubt Interceptor works, but I still think the definitive red bug story is evolving.

 

[Gonzapa]

Just another note in Here. There was no way I could catch my shrimp in the tank. My coral banded and a peppermint shrimp survived with no problems.
Also Blue legged crabs didn't seem to be affected, but almost all my red legged ones died

 

[mnat]

The common thought is that red bugs lay eggs which is why you do the 3 week treatment. Interceptor apparently only kills the adults and not the eggs. I have seen the egg sacs on the corals so I am more inclined to go along with the common thoughts on them. We put our second treatment in last night so we will go from there.

 

[Hawkeye]

you realize that after episode IV was episode V - the empire strikes back.

any thoughts as to how you got it? frag swap? lfs?

 

[mnat]

But as everyone knows Empire strikes back is awesome and is much better than Episodes 1-3.

"Yousa redbugs going to die"

 

[qwik]

Thanks for the play by play . I have not had to deal with them yet, but have a feeling it is inevitable to avoid them forever .
I will watch and read along your experience so I will be ready when the time comes . Good luck killing all those little b@st@rds .

 

[Hawkeye]

But as everyone knows Empire strikes back is awesome and is much better than Episodes 1-3.

"Yousa redbugs going to die"

i'm not familiar with that quote. Are you TRYING to quote jar jar?

No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try

 

[NikkiT]

Well, we did our third and final Interceptor treatment last night (thanks again MikeM!). We did our weekly water change on suday, as always, so we do a water change, and then right before bed, add the interceptor.
Here is what has happened/how we are doing so far:
We lost one ORA Acro to RTI. It had started before the red bug treatment began, and we were concerned about spreading it to the other acros, so I pulled it and trashed it. It had lost 3/4 of its tissue, and 90% of the tissue surrounding the polyps, I decided it wasn't worth the risk that it would spread to another coral.
Our blue efflo looks awful. It has lost all of its color and is now tan, and has lost 1/3 of its tissue. The red bugs loved laying eggs on it- i pulled it two weeks ago, and it was just a mess, with the entire underside covered with clusters of eggs. The egg clusters are now gone, and we are holding out hope that it may recover, as we had some tiny nubbins survive the tank crash and color up again.
The rest of the acros look pretty ok, those that were browning out are slowly coloring back up again. However, just about all of them have a lovely large amount of algae on their plugs as we had to remove our cleanup crew- the hermits we missed died from the first interceptor treatment, the 2 cerith snails we missed survived, the nasarrius we missed died, and the small pods died- although the large pods have survived. I pulled the acros out on saturday, and scrubbed their plugs. It took me about 2 hours to clean all the plugs, and three days later, they have algae on them again. However, I didn't see any red bugs, or any eggs! Our nitrates and nitrates have stayed low, despite the algae bloom, and we have more clean up crew arriving on thursday, so that should help. I'll be replacing the carbon and phosban tomorrow as well, and doing a partial water change before we add the new clean up crew. I'll probably add a few canaries tomorrow night as well in the form of snails and hermits, to make sure the amount of interceptor is low enough to avoid killing al the new guys.

 

[Hawkeye]

well things can only go "up" right? Hopefully the worst is over.

 

[mnat]

We are looking foward to having the tank back to normal this weekend. We have everything rearranged in the tank to make it easier to inspect the SPS and the rest of the tank. You realize how important a clean up crew is when you don't have one. The amount of junk that settles on the sand is amazing when nothing is eating it. We turned our mp10 up to full blast to help keep things from settling but that only works so well.

 

[NikkiT]

Well, our intercceptor treatment was completed on Sunday.
On Saturday, I did a big algae scrubb, and I did another one yesterday.
I also pulled out and looked at all of the acros closely last night, and did not see any signs of red bugs or eggs- fingers crossed!
I threw a few canaries in there (in the form of a blue leg hermit, a scarlet reef hermit, and a nacarrius) to be sure the interceptor was out of the water, and the canaries were all ok. So, last night we added our inverts from the ReefTopia (thanks James for picking them up for us!) and they are chowing down on all the algae on the plugs and the walls. Even more exciting, a couple of the frags that had browned out are coloring back up nicely and continuing their progress towards encrusting. On the down side, I move our ORA birdsnest, and its resident acro crab, into the 30g for the duration of the treatment so as not to kill the acro crab. Unfortunately, the birdsnest bleached a bit in the 30g, but it is now back in the 20g under the t5s, so I'm hoping for a speedy recovery. We'll post pics of the 20g soon, once we have the tank stablized again.
The tank was starting to look better already when I looked at it this morning, and I'm hoping that with a strong clean up crew and no more red bugs, the tank will be healthy again in no time.