Red Bugs and Interceptor and Zoa Pox, OH MY!

[cybermeez]

Things have just gone from bad to worse.:banghead:

As some of you know I undertook the interceptor red bug treatment last week to rid my acros of these nasty little buggers. The good news is the manderin's copepod supply is alive and well and I don't have red bugs any more. The bad news is I also don't have many of my acros any more. :sad2:

The interceptor worked like a charm. The problem was I had trouble controlling the heat build up in my small q-tank and lots of my acros melted...litterally.

All totaled my main tank went acro-less for 5 days. When I put the surviving acros back in the tank the red bugs did not come back. It appears to have taken a mere 5 days to starve to death any red bugs that were left behind when I pulled the corals for treatment. But wait....it gets better.

I noticed the other day, as I was putting my acros back in the tank, that several of my zoa frags and colonies didn't look right. Upon closer examination it appears they have zoa pox. :anger2:

I'm aware of the Furan-2 treatment, but given the loaction of my biggest zoa colonies in particular (covering a huge 20lb rock), I don't know how I'm going to save them. If I treat the frags without treating the big colonies the frags will just get re-infected, right? Any help and advice is welcome.

All my zoas and corals had been healthy until recently when I added a new anemone to my tank. I dip every coral that goes into my tank, but for obvious reasons I did not dip the anemone. The anemone appeared and still is very healthy (and pretty). I don't think I'd even know how to dip it even if there were a way to do it without killing it.

Could red bugs and zoa pox both have been carried in as hitchhikers on the anemone?

 

[prattreef]

Sorry for your losses. I thought you were going about this the difficult way.
FWIW, the fact that you haven't seen any red bugs yet after only a few days back in the display means nothing. They may in fact be gone, but it is way to early to declare this a triumph-- there may be eggs that have not yet hatched, or hatchlings that are too small to see.

More than once, I have treated my whole system, thinking I got all the bugs with 1 treatment and lazily neglecting to do the follow ups only to have a VISIBLE reoccurance a month + later.

Good luck with the zoanthids- I have no advice or experience to offer.

Randy

 

[cybermeez]

Thanks Randy. Fortunately my favorite acro, the German green with purple polyps came through completely unscathed. It lost some of it's mint green clolor but that will come back.

This is my first real encounter with any diseases in my reef tank. I guess I've been fortunate to have gone the first couple of years without any problems. Before getting into reefs I had a decade of combine freshwater experinnce, but very little of freshwater husbandry can be applied to SW. It's a whole new ballgame.

Until I got into reefs I took for granted the natural balance of the worlds oceans and reefs and just how complex and delicate it all is. Given what mankind has done to them with pollution etc., it's a wonder there are any reefs left and the whole thing hasn't crashed.

 

[reefman]

y did u put the acros in a small q-tank, i thought u can leave the acros in the tank when treating with Interceptor.

 

[cybermeez]

You can leave them in the main tank, but it wipes out everything inclucing good copepods. I have 2 manderins (male and female pair) whose sole source of food are the good copepods and I did't want to lose them. It took a long time to build up a large enoungh, self-sustaining copepod population that could support 2 manderins. I didn't want to jeaopordize that so I had to compromise with a bit of a trade-off and treated the corals in a q-tank.

I still have a a good number of non-acros including several species of montipora, so at least not all my corals were wiped out. But on the heels of red bugs this zoa pox thing has got me pretty bummed out.