Red Acro "Bugs" -- Looking for volunteers

[DustinDorton]

Hello,
I have been working on a "cure" for the dreaded Red Acro bugs for several weeks now. I have come across a drug that appears to eradicate all of them in less than 6 hours, with minimal harm to the tank.

The treatment has no visible effects on fish, corals, worms, flatworms, snails, clams, starfish, and sea urchins. . .
Corals infested with bugs will start to show increased polyp extension during the treatment! However, it will probably kill every one of your amphipods and copepods and really mess up any crabs and shrimps. The effects on shrimp and crabs are not long lasting, 24 hours after the treament (and two partial water changes later) new crustaceans were unaffected.

The treatment is rather simple, 6 hours of medicine followed by a partial water change (at least 25%) and activated carbon. 24 hours later the carbon is replaced and another partial waterchange is performed.


I have performed this test in several isolated treatment systems. The first test in a full blown reef tank is being performed by Jeremy of Coral Reef Aquarium, and is currently underway.



I am looking for some volunteers willing to test this out. Here is what I am looking for:
1. People who are really desperate to get rid of these things.
2. Someone with a setup they deem "expendable". I guess this would be a smaller 'prop' tank that is offline from your main system.
3. Someone who is willing to loose the good crustaceans with the bad ones.
4. Someone who will provide me feedback.

If you are interested in helping out with this, please email me at [email protected].

I will not release the name of the medication until more testing has been performed.

I am sure there will be some questions, so feel free to ask them in this forum.

 

[Bone]

Hello Dustin,

It's great to see you working on this. I'm sorry but my red bug infested 125g display tank has some valuable corals and a good number of crabs, all of which I'd like to keep. I'm not desperate but some of my SPS are not thriving and I wonder how much better off they'd be sans the red amphipods. Do you mind if I post a link to this thread on Reef Central? Maybe I can talk them into making it a sticky until you have enough volunteers.

thanks,
mark

 

[DustinDorton]

A link to this message has already been posted on Reefcentral.

Once its determined that this treatement is ONLY going to kill crustaceans (I am pretty positive thats the case), I am going to switch gears and figure out a Dip dosage. For those that are not willing to replace their crabs and shrimp the dips will work, however you wont be able to rid your tank of Red Bugs without treating the whole thing.

 

[ReefRelated]

I have done some different tests of my own in the past. Obviously I was not able to completely eradicate all the bugs from the system. In one of my tests I dipped a coral in club soda water. It did kill all the bugs on the coral but it also stressed the coral very bad. I am very interested in your project so I'm gonna tag along to see what comes about. I can't try it on my system but I am really interested in what the method is. I know a lot of people in the hobby and maybe I can gather someone up to try it. Good luck.

 

[JeremyR]

My firsthand experience with this treatment is as follows:

At 1:30 pm, I turned off the skimmer and added the called for amout of medication. I had pulled as many crabs and shrimp as I could locate, but a few hermits, 1 acro crab, and 1 peppermint shrimp remained in the tank, as well as all corals, the fish, snails, etc.

At 2:30 pm I checked the bugs. No noticeable change.

At 3:30 pm I checked the bugs. Looked like some were hanging on slime, but most seemed ok.

At 4:30 pm the check showed many loose bugs, but a good portion were still alive.

At 5:30 pm at least 75% of the bugs were gone, and the living ones were inactive, many hanging by coral slime.

At 6:30 pm, it was apparent that there was a near 100% kill (no visible bugs whatsoever). Peppermint shrimp was eating one hermit crab that had apparently died, other remaining crabs lethargic, acro crab still alive.

At 7 pm I turned the skimmer back on and closed up shop.

The next day:

At 11 am, arrived at the shop and found no bugs visible. Crabs were moving around and eating. Peppermint shrimp is not in evidence, but no carcass either. It's a good hider.. remains to be seen if it is still alive. Acro crab is alive and active (as active as they get). Tested ammonia & nitrite.. no noticable spikes. Corals seem to be polyping more, fish and snails are healthy... in short, unless I told you I had treated the tank, you would not be able to tell I did so. Some pods did survive that were buried in the sandbed.. evidentaly the medication did not stay active long enough to penetrate the sand well enough to kill them. Returned the removed hermit crabs to the aquarium.

At 7 pm, the crabs were still active and fine, and the tank looks better than ever because there are no red bugs to be seen.

The plan is to do a follow up treatment in a week or so to make sure any stragglers get killed.

System info:

60 gallon 48x24 frag tank (if you've been to macna or IMAC you've seen it). Heavy frag load. 2-3" sandbed. Sump with TF1000 skimmer. No other filtration. Canary blenny, shrimp, snails, hermits, small brittle stars, other asstd microlife.

 

[ReefRelated]

So when will we know what this treatment actually is? I may try it if I knew what you were using. Can you PM and tell me?

 

[DustinDorton]

Thanks for posting that Jeremy.

You forgot to mention your water change and carbon information.

You mention coral slime several times in your message. Did your corals slime up a lot? I didnt notice any out of the ordinary sliming on the coral in my tests.

 

[JeremyR]

Some of them had slimed a bit because I had taken them out of the water to catch the shrimp before I dosed.. but there was not excessive sliming.

Yeah.. I ran the test as a "bad" reefer.. sortof took it upon myself to see what the limits were and not do the prescribed water change amount (maybe 15%) and did not run any carbon post treatment... I think carbon is a very good idea.. I just wanted to see what would happen to the lazy reefer if they ignored the "work" part... the risk to me was less I felt as I have large amounts of water on hand had there been a system failure of some sort.

 

[DustinDorton]

ReefRelated, check out the first message in this thread.

I wont release the name of the medication until the testing is done with. I do not want people going off half cocked and messing up their tanks. I need to know who is using it, and how it is performing.

You can participate if you want, please email me [email protected].

 

[Paul A. Ifkovits]

Jeremy-Did your tank contain any other corals besides SPS?

 

[JeremyR]

A couple of LPS (galaxy). I know dustins tests have included a much wider variety, but our tank was predominantly sps.

 

[DustinDorton]

My tests included several soft corals, some zoanthids, clams, starfish, snails and fish. Nothing but crustaceans were harmed by the medication.

 

[jimbo327]

How are the pods population after treatment?

 

[DustinDorton]

The majority of amphipods are wiped out by the medication, but enough survive to repopulate the system. This may change as the tank is treated several more times.
Pods are easily replaceable, and the medication doesnt appear to leave any lasting effects on the tank.

 

[DustinDorton]

I would like to thank those that are volunteering, and those that have offered to volunteer. The next stage of testing is going to start tomorrow. We will have some prelimnary results to post here Sunday or Monday.

At this time, I am not looking for anymore volunteers.

 

[Blue Jester]

I just completed my treatment using the provided drug from Dustin. Below are my notes and basic tank parameters.

_______________________________________________
Inverts: Snails, Pods, RED BUGS

Corals: Acropora, Montipora, Zoanthids, Pocillopora, Mushrooms, Green Seriatopora guttatus (Green birds nest)

Water Parameters: Alk -> 3.09 mEq/ml, ~400ppm calcium, 0.0ppm amm, 0.0ppm nitrites, ~3-4ppm nitrates, SG 1.025, Temperature 79-81

System Data: 110g Tuff-Stuff Stock tank with Rubbermaid refugium. ~110 Gallons of actual water volume, 2-3” sand bed, ~75# of live rock, and 28g refugium with macro algae. Flow comprised of MJ 1200s and 900s. Moderate flow.

TIME – OBSERVATION
12:15 – Treatment Added. Timer Started. Selected three primary heavily infested Acropora to monitor. Normal population. Normal intermittent rapid movement by red bugs. Normal pod population observed.

12:45 – Red bugs seem less active. Population is as before but very little movement of bugs. For the most part, all are motionless.

13:15 - Many bugs appear dead but still having a hold on the tissue, as their bodies gently sway with any current. Population (counting dead and alive) looks close to normal, but maybe slightly lowered (~10%). Snails are thus far unaffected. No corals are showing any sign of distress or sliming. Pod population isn’t quite as heavy with little movement of pods across rocks/sides/etc.

13:45 – Same population hanging on, but most appear to be dead or dying, as there is absolutely no movement on the three monitored frags. The count appears similar to the last observation.

14:15 – At first inspection, all seemed the same as before, however, given agitation from a baster and around half came off fairly easily. No pods readily observed.

15:00 – No visible red bug life. The remaining bug bodies appear dead. No movement visible amongst them. Approx 50% less on coral.

16:00 – Slight amount of slime attached to dead bugs, but not noticeable at a glance. Most bugs have fallen off or are hanging on by bits of slime. No adverse affects on snails or any other corals. All Acropora have good polyp extension. A small patch of red slime that was present has disappeared since the beginning of the treatment. This could be unrelated and simply coincidental, however there is stringy mucus coming from where the red slime was. No pods present by close observation.

17:00 – Observed a majority of the most heavily infested acros and found no live red bugs, only an occasional slimed dead one. I did encounter several live copepods that were all of what appeared to be the same species. No way I could get a picture with my camera. The ones that were present appeared to be very small, somewhat slender, similar to the shape of an amphipod but much much smaller with less ‘tail’ to the body. No other varieties were observed.

18:00 – Not one visible red bug anywhere. Few amphipods and copepods visible while doing an inspection of every acropora in the tank.
________________________________________

 

[Blue Jester]

Off to go do the 'prescribed' after treatment water changes and carbon run...

2 more treatments to go, but looks like those will be a guarantee on the deal, as my wife and I could fine zero remaining bugs. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

 

[DustinDorton]

Thanks for your report Chris. Hopefully the other testers will get their accounts posted by the end of the weekend. Things are really looking positive.

 

[loui]

This is awesome I am already salivating with the thought of getting these little SOB's out of my system.

I would like to Thank Dustin for all the work and time spent on this project and with keeping us updated. Also would like to Thank those who have volunteered their tanks for this research for what may be the cure all for these Red Bugs.

 

[andre1]

I also used Dustin's medication today.I started at 11:00 shut off skimmer and added the provided dose of medicine.I really did not notice anything different during the treatment period corals did not slime at all fish and shrimp were active throughout treatment.I have a large pacific sea cuke that really did not at all in the 6 hours of treatment then i did a 100 gallon water change on the tank(400gal)and even the cuke looks fine.I also have a large long spine urchin that did well every thing lived except the RED bugs.I was not infested i had a large colony and a few frags that had them.I am doing this mostly to prevent the bugs from getting a foothold on my system and to help Dustin find a ratio for a dip so we could use this for future additions and not have to go through these huge water changes.