Bad black bugs or harmless mites?

[Veljko]

I'm a beginner and have a 5 month old reef cube. It is a mixed reef, packed with sps among other things.
Used TBS live rock and sand.

I diligently dipped all frags.

Taking a video of something else, I saw these tiny black bugs. I would absolutely not see them with a naked eye. This is as zoomed in as possible and on a rock that's almost touching the glass.

I started googling and terrible black bugs come up that destroy sps. But, I did see a few mentions of mites that could resemble these in my tank.

I think these have 8 translucent legs and, obviously, black bodies.
None of my sps show any problems. Good PE, good color. I could not spot a single one of these on any of the coral, although most of them are further from the glass so can't zoom in this close.

I am mostly seeing these individually or in small groups on rocks closer to the bottom in algae covered sections. I mean, they almost look like they are grazing on algae.

I do have some newish rock, and can barely see one or two on those bare rocks. They seem to prefer to be on the older, algae covered sections.

Are these black bugs and I have to nuke my tank with interceptor? Or are they some harmless mites? They do seem to hang around algae covered rocks, I cannot see them on corals or see any damage on corals.


Thank you everyone for chiming in!

 

[Tahoe61]

1. Treatment for Red Bugs or Black Bugs doesn't nuke your tank.
2. Hundreds of thousands of different arthropods, even marine biologist may not be able to definitely ID many. That's a lot of little Bugs.
3. If your corals show PE, growing and otherwise healthy I would not be concerned.
4. Out of all the interventions I have done over decades treating with Interceptor was the easiest and most effective.
5. Be warned you will need to remove shrimp and crabs or risk loosing them. Research dosage.

Happy Reefing.

 

[billyocean]

You're good. Ive never seen them eating anything like healthy flesh. Interceptor doesnt seem to phase them.

 

[Veljko]

You're good. Ive never seen them eating anything like healthy flesh. Interceptor doesnt seem to phase them.

You saw/had these same ones?

 

[billyocean]

Yes....saw them during the Great Flatworm Battle of '23.

 

[Veljko]

1. Treatment for Red Bugs or Black Bugs doesn't nuke your tank.
2. Hundreds of thousands of different arthropods, even marine biologist may not be able to definitely ID many. That's a lot of little Bugs.
3. If your corals show PE, growing and otherwise healthy I would not be concerned.
4. Out of all the interventions I have done over decades treating with Interceptor was the easiest and most effective.
5. Be warned you will need to remove shrimp and crabs or risk loosing them. Research dosage.

Happy Reefing.

Thanks for chiming in.
I am a beginner so got scared when I googled black bugs :)

Yes....saw them during the Great Flatworm Battle of '23.

that's it. Thanks!!!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I'm a beginner and have a 5 month old reef cube. It is a mixed reef, packed with sps among other things.
Used TBS live rock and sand.

I diligently dipped all frags.

Taking a video of something else, I saw these tiny black bugs. I would absolutely not see them with a naked eye. This is as zoomed in as possible and on a rock that's almost touching the glass.

I started googling and terrible black bugs come up that destroy sps. But, I did see a few mentions of mites that could resemble these in my tank.

I think these have 8 translucent legs and, obviously, black bodies.
None of my sps show any problems. Good PE, good color. I could not spot a single one of these on any of the coral, although most of them are further from the glass so can't zoom in this close.

I am mostly seeing these individually or in small groups on rocks closer to the bottom in algae covered sections. I mean, they almost look like they are grazing on algae.

I do have some newish rock, and can barely see one or two on those bare rocks. They seem to prefer to be on the older, algae covered sections.

Are these black bugs and I have to nuke my tank with interceptor? Or are they some harmless mites? They do seem to hang around algae covered rocks, I cannot see them on corals or see any damage on corals.


Thank you everyone for chiming in!

Definitely marine mites, and most likely harmless:

These are probably marine mites of some variety, but there are a ton of species, and I don't know enough about marine mites yet to make an ID beyond that (or to know if your species is harmful or beneficial).

For an example of a fairly similar-looking, unidentified specimen, probably of a different species:

Photo 177937301, (c) Graham Montgomery, all rights reserved, uploaded by Graham Montgomery · iNaturalist

www.inaturalist.org

Not yet, unfortunately - marine mites haven't been very common hitchhikers for me to ID, and there are a lot of species, so I'm not very well versed in them yet. I know there are a handful of parasitic marine mite species (including some parasitic on sponges or other inverts; to my understanding, most are predatory to smaller critters, some are algae-eaters, and a small group are parasites), but I don't know of any species that parasitize corals specifically.

The idea of these being more opportunistically predatory toward dying corals is also plausible, but I can't confirm one way or another at this point.

On the very unlikely possibility that they cause problems for you:

You would be looking for a miticide; ticks require an ixodicide - Ivermectin (as Dooly mentioned earlier being effective) may work, as it's a miticide. I'm not aware of any other miticides being commonly used in aquaria, but maybe some of the Chem forum regulars or Jay might be.