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Red bugs

Olivier my friend-thanks for the offer, but these guys will not be hurt by the Flat worm exit.

Darren-That is encouraging to hear that at least these are a fairly easy pest, by reef pest standards.

Thanks for all the help guys. I started prepping for the treatment tonight, which includes stashing some pod filled chaeto in my makeshift aquaclear refugium on my newly running NPS tank. (oh did I mention I just set up a NPS tank? pictures of that will be forth coming). I am also moving all the crabs I can catch to that same tank. So far Jonathan got the harlequinns, I got a bunch of hermits (including my giant blue one, which got moved back to the main sump due to homicidal tendancies). And 2 of 3 (that I can see) emerald crabs. Also a porcelain crab. (still got one clever porcelain in the main that will prove to be difficult to catch. Still to catch and oust are my last emerald (giant guy too) A cleaner shrimp, a porcelain crab, and 2 pistol shrimp. I've kinda resigned my self that the pistols might not make it, they'd be impossible to catch. :-(.

Bax, my plan is to start treatment asap. I was going to hit the tank every week, for 3 or four weeks. That's not a good schedule according to what you posted? I should be doing the treatment every 3 weeks? Also I want to dip the target colonies, but most are stuck on quite well. And in the future, everything will definitely be quarantined from now on (lesson learned-dip isn't enough)

Phil-I don't think I got these from a fellow NJ reefer. Considering these have a pretty short life cycle, and I just noticed them, I think it was something more recent. I just picked up some frags from a couple LFS, so my bet is it is due to one of them. I am meticulous about dipping. I use double strength dip, and dip for double the time, and visually inspect before I put coral in a tank. Every coral, everytime. As we see now though, and bax has been telling us for a long time-dip is not enough, they must be quarantined too.
 

dnov99

FRAG SWAP VENDOR
CJ, when I dosed I did it 3 times one week apart. I also dosed about 1.5 times the rec dosage. The first time I did the treatment I did the rec dosage and they were back in 6 months. I turned skimmer off, but did continue to let the water run thru the skimmer to allow treatment of that too. Also carbon and any other filtration was turned off. I left all filtration off overnight for about 12 hours. If you have any questions feel free to PM or call me. Dont stress over this, sounds like you are off to a great start catching everything.
 

howze01

NJRC Member
Anyone want to buy some SPS frags? Guaranteed to maybe not be pest free!

He's stressing but CJ always stresses about everything so no biggie. Now we're going to set up a coral quarantine tank......sometimes I think the tanks will never stop...
 
OK-so the first interceptor dose was done today. I could not get my large emerald or my cleaner shrimp out, ( I tried for hours a day, for a couple days). As such, I lost the cleaner shrimp, and I do not know yet about the emerald. However the good news-There are no more red bugs, my fuge is still filled with pods (I did end up dosing the whole tank), and one of my pistol shrimp is confirmed alive and well!

I dosed 1/3 of the large pill I got from Nikki, (about 4.8g) this should have been more than enough for the system volume. I left it in fo 7.5 hours, then did a water change, and dumped in a bunch of carbon.

So, next sunday it's dose 2, and then 2 weeks after that, it's the third and final treatment.

As an aside I will add a few observations:

-My butterfly fish (Hemitaurichthys polylepis-yellow pyramid) were acting weird until I did the water change and put in the carbon, now they are acting normal.
-all other fish, clams, and snails appear fine
-Coral all appear fine.
 

howze01

NJRC Member
He is changing water from his second treatment now. Haven't seen any red bugs since the first treatment was done so it's looking good. I'm sure CJ will post eventually for an update.
 
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