My experience with high-dose interceptor

[joseph.timbs]

I have a mixed reef that's SPS dominant. Interceptor had no adverse affects on any of my corals.

Has the change since then been worth it in your opinion? I saw ur comment and I’m guessing it was

 

[kartrsu]

Felt like I should chime in since I am also doing an interceptor regime right now as I noticed a bug on a new acro I had bought. I had previously done interceptor a while back at >6x dosage (1 large dog pill for 60G) for 3 straight weeks with to treat white and red bugs with no side effects. They are so hard to spot!

I should have quarantined the new acros, but they were partially bleached from cooking them on the drive back. Regardless, I did perform a 10 min KCL dip at 2 TBSP/G to kill any flatworms (didn't see any) and rebased all frags. For me, passing the flatworm test is the most important. Seller admitted he does annual interceptor, so I thought it was safe, but here we are.

For this round, I used interceptor plus with prazi. I had removed most of my hermits and both of my shrimps before hand. I had to leave my 2 blue porcelain crabs in because they are hard to catch. Skimmer was on for oxygen, but I removed cup plug so water would return. I turned off my reefmat and GFO reactor and did not run carbon.

Shortly after dosing, bristleworms were whipping around dead in the tank. Some acros were fine, some kind of closed up. LPS were kind of *****. Today, I would say most things look normal. I don't see any pods near the sand as they usually are. To my surprise, my porcelain crabs are still alive but looked drunk last night. Cocoworm, fanworm, and wrasses were unaffected by the prazi. I will also say that it's pretty cool to not see any spionids too.

Will try to keep ya'll updated, but 6x interceptor dose for 3 weeks in a row is totally doable. It definitely eradicated white and red bugs for me when I did it in the past. FWIW, two close local reefers have tried 10x-12x dosage with no issues. .

 

[Biff0rz]

Felt like I should chime in since I am also doing an interceptor regime right now as I noticed a bug on a new acro I had bought. I had previously done interceptor a while back at >6x dosage (1 large dog pill for 60G) for 3 straight weeks with to treat white and red bugs with no side effects. They are so hard to spot!

I should have quarantined the new acros, but they were partially bleached from cooking them on the drive back. Regardless, I did perform a 10 min KCL dip at 2 TBSP/G to kill any flatworms (didn't see any) and rebased all frags. For me, passing the flatworm test is the most important. Seller admitted he does annual interceptor, so I thought it was safe, but here we are.

For this round, I used interceptor plus with prazi. I had removed most of my hermits and both of my shrimps before hand. I had to leave my 2 blue porcelain crabs in because they are hard to catch. Skimmer was on for oxygen, but I removed cup plug so water would return. I turned off my reefmat and GFO reactor and did not run carbon.

Shortly after dosing, bristleworms were whipping around dead in the tank. Some acros were fine, some kind of closed up. LPS were kind of *****. Today, I would say most things look normal. I don't see any pods near the sand as they usually are. To my surprise, my porcelain crabs are still alive but looked drunk last night. Cocoworm, fanworm, and wrasses were unaffected by the prazi. I will also say that it's pretty cool to not see any spionids too.

Will try to keep ya'll updated, but 6x interceptor dose for 3 weeks in a row is totally doable. It definitely eradicated white and red bugs for me when I did it in the past. FWIW, two close local reefers have tried 10x-12x dosage with no issues. .

One of my fears is getting a new coral and re-introducing white bugs. I plan to KCL/re-plug to avoid aefw but I also plan to do a 8hr interceptor/de-bug dip prior to introducing any coral. It's just too risky and expensive not to do that now.

 

[fish_collector]

Today was the last day of 3, 7 day Interceptor treatments at 3x the dose in my tank. I see no negative effects from the dose, it's business as usual. I haven't seen an improvement in PE yet though, perhaps it will improve with some time post treatment.

I'm doing a 15% water change and adding the carbon back to the system.

Fwiw, I used 3 chewable tablets for large dogs in my 80gal system, 3 tablets at a time 7 days apart, 21 days total. I believe it is a safe treatment.

 

[slingfox]

One thing that is confusing about interceptor is the dosages and time of treatment seem all over the map. I have 12 doses of Interceptor so not sure if I should do 3 weeks at 4x, 4 weeks at 3x or 6 weeks at 2x. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

 

[BCSreef]

My experience with white bugs is that a 1X big dog Interceptor chewable tablet (23 mg/300 gallons) every week for 3 weeks did not kill any bugs. A 2X three times killed ~50%. A 6X three times killed all, so I thought. A month later, I saw bugs again. No new corals were added during or after any treatments. Finally, an 11X dose three times killed all with no bugs detected for last few years.

No issues with Acros or other corals. Shrimp, pods, mysids, crabs that couldn’t be removed died. Bristle worms seemed drunk. Starfish, fish, clams, snails, were unaffected. Worse issue was Cyanobacteria outbreak. I think that was due to the large amount of excipients in the chewable. I would love to find a source without all the excipients.

I would not hesitate to do it again but I would go with the 11X from the start.

 

[fish_collector]

I used 3 of the large dog chewables per dose in 80 gallons of water. If the large dog chewable allegedly treats 300g, my dose was over 11x as well. I viewed a good number of my corals this evening with an Ogles mesoscope and saw nothing on them so I'm fairly confident any bugs on my corals have been eliminated. Stay tuned...

 

[ReefED!]

It's hard to know if it was interceptor or the dino outbreak which hurt your corals

You probably had ostreopsis which will really go to town on stuff via toxin.

 

[T-Hart]

I did a full 6x dose of interceptor on my system 3 weeks in a row. Got immediate turn around on my sps but did not have any of the negative side effects you describe. I used the chews.

I've always done 6x one round every 90 days or so. I finally did a 21 day (3) round treatment. My torches always got a few heads in brown jelly disease. After the 3rd. Round this time, yep, BJD again multiple heads. In 24hrs. I woke up to find my Poto Hoto half covered in brown jelly same with TSA Rasberry splice coming off of the base of a blue stag. Nasty brown slime covering 3/4from the base upwards. Totally upset. Pulled them out of DT quick lights weren't even on yet before coffee. Not sure the hoto will make it. Stag maybe but this happened 12hrs. After putting in Rox Carbon Brs to try and just remove residual interceptor. Not sure that was necessary or the cause. I'm praying tomorrow **** looks the same and it doesn't spread around the tank. Added 4 bottles of pods from TSA and 1 bottle red phytoplankton and half a gold. Fingers crossed. If that all I lose this will be worth it. Tenius were looking the best they've ever looked yesterday. Today the ones that weren't BJD so most of them looked great still. WD etc. Tenius are the main ones we want that PE on. Voodoo magic vivid confetti Pinky bear tsa wooly mammoth millipora were always super hairy/polyp.

 

[Biff0rz]

This coral had no PE before interceptor.

JF Blowtorch

Same with Vivids Confetti

Less than 1 year later....(9mo)

JF Blowtorch

Vivids Confetti (1/4 under a diff acro and couldnt get in frame, moved, deeper down now)

 

[REEFRIED!]

Today was the last day of 3, 7 day Interceptor treatments at 3x the dose in my tank. I see no negative effects from the dose, it's business as usual. I haven't seen an improvement in PE yet though, perhaps it will improve with some time post treatment.

I'm doing a 15% water change and adding the carbon back to the system.

Fwiw, I used 3 chewable tablets for large dogs in my 80gal system, 3 tablets at a time 7 days apart, 21 days total. I believe it is a safe treatment.

Isn’t this 12x the typical dose?

 

[Biff0rz]

Isn’t this 12x the typical dose?

The 12x made me think you read Andre's recent post about killing white bugs with 12x-15x interceptor treatments.

 

[fish_collector]

Isn’t this 12x the typical dose?

Probably something like that. My treatment didn’t end up doing much that I could see, except wipe out my pod population. I wouldn’t do it again.

From now on new corals will go into QT for a while.

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

I bought 3 acro frags from a local reefer and it seems all 3 had red bugs on them. I pulled them from my main tank and into a little QT tank for the time being. The seller already has interceptor on the way and is giving me a pill. Luckily, it was caught before they could spread anywhere else. The smooth skin SPS I have on a rack that was next to where those 3 frags were along with all of the ones on my main rock structure still show zero signs of them. I’ve been checking daily since pulling the 3 recently purchased ones.

I’m just going to use a bit of a pill and run a “bath” for the 3 frags. All 3 still have full polyp extension, despite the red bugs and being in an Eshopps Deskmate 4.8g QT tank with the stock white light it comes with. It’s also a good thing my camera is capable of picking the little buggers up, and a fellow local club member commented it looked like there were some in the picture I posted on our forums.

This is what they look like for anyone else unaware of them. I had no idea until the fellow club member commented and I looked them up. Orangish yellow body with a red head. Tiny little guys too, you won’t be seeing them with just your eyeballs.

 

[IPT]

I did 2 large Pills in a 120 with great results for white/grey bugs. After the first treatment I had better PE on some of the more infested corals. After the first treatment I had a hard time finding any White/grey bugs. I used Milbemycin straight up.

Didn't affect my LPS at all (Hammers and a variety of torches) my clams, or any of my SPS in a negative way. Wiped out my pod population for sure. Didn't see any dead bristle worms.

My experience was only good. I'd do it again in a heart beat. That said I am dipping and do 8 hours in a Interceptor on any new SPS that comes to the tank. It was a true PITA getting the meds and in hindsight it was largely preventable.

 

[fish_collector]

I can’t say anything was harmed in my tank with a high dose treatment, except my pods. I just feel it didn’t do what I was hoping it would, that’s all predicated on whether or not one’s tank has the bugs in the first place, it’s obvious there was something else that was causing a lack of good polyp extension for my acros besides bugs. I think a good hard look under a dissecting scope is a good idea before nuking one’s pod population into oblivion. I’ve added pods on 2 occasions and I’ve yet to get a breeding population started