BattlesReef
Community Member
I thought I would share my expreience with this. In the past few weeks I noticed a few pieces of my SPS where not looking the best. For example, my Setosa wasnt looking the great as well as my yellow tort, hawkins blue, bonzai, and so on. My water perameter were great so I thought it was a pest but I could not find any. At night I would search the tank and still nothing. Not untill a few days ago while the main light were on I saw them! There were thousands of them! I could only see them with the lights on and the bonzai is what gave them away. the purple on the banzai made the redish brown bugs stand out. I first thought maybe flat worms but they moved so fast. So after a bit of research I came to the conclusion that they were in fact red bugs. I found quite a few threads about "Interceptor" as a reliable treatment for this. Everyone claimed to be reef safe eccept for inverts, shrimp, crabs, so on. I have no shrimp and only a few crabs so that did not concern me. Now the funny part about the medication was, It is dog heart worm pills!? which lead me to my next issue. How do you get a perscription dog medicine for your fish tank lol. after about 50 calls I found a vet that would give it to me after signing a 3 page waiver stating "We are not resposible for what ever you decide to give this to" I thought it was kinds funny. Any ways, I was a little hesitant because from my experience with the hobby. If there is a claim that a drug sounds to good to be true it usually is. The directions from the guy I was using only said that one large pill can dose 400gallons. So my tank being a 60 cube and a 30g sump I unded up using 19.5% of the pill. crush the pill into a powder mix with a cup or so of tank water and put into a high flow area of the tank. turn off your skimmer and carbon or GFO reactors for 12 hours. Again I cant stress enough how nervouse I was thinking about a potential crash. So I did just as he said. I dosed the tank at 7PM shut the skimmer off and my carbon and let it sit. Next morning before I went to work I turned the skimmer and carbon back on. Everything still appeared to be alive, good sign, I would not be able to tell if the treatment worked untill the main lights were on. So once I got home from work I was shocked. It actually worked... what where thousands of bugs where now 0! I did not have any ill side effects from this treatment and it worked perfectly. It said to do it every 7 days for 3 weeks just to prevent future breakouts. I just wanted to share this with every one because I have never had a pest treatment so easy and effective. It was correct in killing crabs, to be honest I though they would be fin being that they can make it through just about anything. But not the case here. every last one has died lol. but I figure that is a small price to pay rather than losing a valuable SPS collection. Apparently red bugs mainly go for "smooth skinned acro's" now that being said I did find some on other pieces sush as birds nest and a milli, just as an FYI. So thats all, thought this might be some useful info for someone that was going through the same thing as I. If you have any questions let me know.
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