Black bugs (acro, psammocora, montipora) - EU

[Vovo]

Greetings fellow reefers,
with great sadness my first post has to be about something so grim.
I have a nanocube 40l with a mixed reef.
Everything has been going fine for 2 years, I haven't added anything for a year.
A few days back I started to notice STN on my Acro strawberry shortcake, Monti cap. and Psammocora watermelon.
I inspected the corals under a microscope in a search for a pest and on all 3 I found what other describe as black bugs. Small copepod creatures that hide in polyps cavities and eat away at flesh.
I immediately started looking for a cure and it seems like this is one of the worst pests to encounter in a reef tank. A nightmare.
I tried hypersalinity dip, concentrated betadine dip and DipX from redsea and even transfer the rocks into a tank with a pastel green wrasse.
Nothing seems to work and I can not get my hands on the US available Dr. G's dips. I'm also scared that some of the chemicals such as Milbemycin oxine would kill the rest of my lps and softs.
Please if someone has any tips, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.

 

[Dburr1014]

Thread 'Black Bugs - An Acro keepers worst nightmare?' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/black-bugs-an-acro-keepers-worst-nightmare.493329/

I hope not, but posted this to help, or hope to help.

 

[Vovo]

Thread 'Black Bugs - An Acro keepers worst nightmare?' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/black-bugs-an-acro-keepers-worst-nightmare.493329/

I hope not, but posted this to help, or hope to help.

Read this entire threat, all of the pages. I don't think anyone mentions anything on how to get your hands on any chemicals used outside of the US since most of them are almost impossible to get in my country without permissions.
That is why I'm asking if someone has succesfully beat them with anything readily available.

 

[ScottB]

Greetings fellow reefers,
with great sadness my first post has to be about something so grim.
I have a nanocube 40l with a mixed reef.
Everything has been going fine for 2 years, I haven't added anything for a year.
A few days back I started to notice STN on my Acro strawberry shortcake, Monti cap. and Psammocora watermelon.
I inspected the corals under a microscope in a search for a pest and on all 3 I found what other describe as black bugs. Small copepod creatures that hide in polyps cavities and eat away at flesh.
I immediately started looking for a cure and it seems like this is one of the worst pests to encounter in a reef tank. A nightmare.
I tried hypersalinity dip, concentrated betadine dip and DipX from redsea and even transfer the rocks into a tank with a pastel green wrasse.
Nothing seems to work and I can not get my hands on the US available Dr. G's dips. I'm also scared that some of the chemicals such as Milbemycin oxine would kill the rest of my lps and softs.
Please if someone has any tips, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.

Milbemycin Oxime is perfectly safe for all your corals. It is lethal for all your pods, shrimp and crabs. The most common source in the US is a dog heart worm medication called Interceptor. In the US it requires a veterinarian prescription which is exceedingly hard to get. I have ordered it before from both Canada and Singapore. How it got through US Customs I have no idea.

You could try potassium chloride. It kills isopods and amphipods quickly. But not Tegastes and likely not the black bugs either.

 

[Vovo]

Milbemycin Oxime is perfectly safe for all your corals. It is lethal for all your pods, shrimp and crabs. The most common source in the US is a dog heart worm medication called Interceptor. In the US it requires a veterinarian prescription which is exceedingly hard to get. I have ordered it before from both Canada and Singapore. How it got through US Customs I have no idea.

You could try potassium chloride. It kills isopods and amphipods quickly. But not Tegastes and likely not the black bugs either.

Thanks, I'll try to get my hands on the interceptor. I'll try calling the vet today and see how it is since I can't 'just' order it online here. Hopefully I can get it sorted before they destroy all my sps.
The weird thing is that is seems to be the same species of black bugs on all of my sps. -psammos, montis and acros.
Never seen anyone deal with them on psammos. If anyone has any experience, let me know.

 

[sculpin01]

If non-acroporids are involved, I would want to get microscopic images of the offending organism. If it is a copepod, it should be susceptible to milbemycin or ivermectin. If it is a ciliate, treatment would be metronidazole or clove oil (sounds hokey but actually works well and is supported by the scientific literature).

 

[Vovo]

If non-acroporids are involved, I would want to get microscopic images of the offending organism. If it is a copepod, it should be susceptible to milbemycin or ivermectin. If it is a ciliate, treatment would be metronidazole or clove oil (sounds hokey but actually works well and is supported by the scientific literature).

It is a copepod (or something really simillar) for sure. It has that shrimp like appearance under a microscope. Though I do not think I have the abillity to take microscopic pictures with the equipment I have. Its all very amateur.

 

[sculpin01]

Amazon sells “microscope smartphone adapters” that replace one eyepiece on your microscope, allowing you to take pictures. Although the optics aren’t great on the one I bought (~$25), it still takes reasonable pictures.

 

[sculpin01]

BTW, here’s the article on ivermectin for red bugs that I went off of. One caveat is that you will inevitably track the medicine back into your main system after dipping, so you should start running fresh activated carbon when you reintroduce your treated corals. Also, I dipped for 1 hour with a powerhead for circulation rather than an air stone.

Use of Ivermectin to Control Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus) - Reef Central Online Community

Use of Ivermectin to Control Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus) SPS Keepers

www.reefcentral.com

 

[Vovo]

BTW, here’s the article on ivermectin for red bugs that I went off of. One caveat is that you will inevitably track the medicine back into your main system after dipping, so you should start running fresh activated carbon when you reintroduce your treated corals. Also, I dipped for 1 hour with a powerhead for circulation rather than an air stone.

Use of Ivermectin to Control Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus) - Reef Central Online Community

Use of Ivermectin to Control Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus) SPS Keepers

www.reefcentral.com

I am currently going to dose Milbemycim interceptor right into my tank with the recommended dosage from multiple forums. I saved most my snails, my shrimp and fish. Since it's a really micro tank I can just do an extremely large water change if anything goes wrong. I have fresh activated carbon ready and purigen aswell.

 

[Vovo]

Hello all,
So an update: I dosed the interceptor right into the tank. The first dose didn't seem to do much since I added the recommended dose and the pill had something else than Milbemycin mixed in at a pretty high rate so I suspect it has something to do with that.
After 24 hours I dosed 2x the recommended amount and it seems to have worked 24 hours later. Black bugs are dead and everything else is alive. (Except copepods). I hope they're not going to return as I had to pick my tank apart to do all of this.