First Red Mite Treatment Today

[scuba_steveo]

Well I am just over one hour into it now.

I woke up this morning and started collecting all the crabs and inverts that I could. I think I removed most of the hermits. I removed 1 of two or three emeralds, 2 of 4 cleaners, my lobster, box crab, and stone crab. For shrimp, 2 cleaners, 2 blood fire shrimp, and a few peppermints remain in the tank. All seem fine to this point.

A big thanks to Texas Todd for helping me so much this morning!
Awesome guy.

BTW, the red bugs are running around and falling off the SPS like crazy.

[TexasTodd]

DIE RB DIE!

Your tank's starting to look sweet again Steveo.

Todd

[scuba_steveo]

I found a few dead hermits that I could not remove but no more bugs. All in all this has gone pretty well so far. The big water change is at 7.

[RobertG]

Beware you are taking a big chance of reinfestation putting those removed items back in the system. :( I took no chances, did'nt Todd have another way of treating the tank. Not going the 6 hours or something. Thus not killing any of those crabs & such. I lost all my crabs & shrimp but those are cheap in comparison to the coral colonies. :P

The crabs made it through the first treament, the second is what got them.
With my tank. I also lost three nice colonies. After the treament( 1st )they RTNd.

Hope they are all gone & stay gone. It is a real pain to do what you are doing right now. It is not really that bad , just bothered me so **** much. :lol

Now go CHANGE YOUR WATER! It is 6:57 on my watch. :lol

[TexasTodd]

No different treatment.

LOTS of water changes.

I researched on the life span. Eric B identified that they DO NOT have an egg stage so I used only two treatments instead of 3 and never had any return.

Also, either Eric B or someone else studied how long the red bugs can live without Acros to live/feed on. It actually wasn't very long....like 7 to 10 days. I kept all pulled inverts out of my system for 3 weeks I think and then returned with no re-infestation. I did go over this with Steve.

How's it all going Steveo?

Guess what, you get to do a monster water change again tomorrow! Oh BOY! :sick

Todd

[TexasTodd]

Hey Robert, do you remember if the Acro colonies you lost after the treatment had acro crabs in them before?

From what I've read many people have lost Acro colonies seemingly from an acro crab being killed by the treatment and then the dead crab starting an infection spot on the acro.

T

[RobertG]

Todd, these colonies were med. sized with no acro crabs. They slimed up really bad from the treament. Then the next day were completly gone.

I also heard the same about them not living long without a acro to host on. We do what works right. Hopefully Steve has the same experience as you have. I am going to replace all those crabs this week.

Robert

[scuba_steveo]

Man that 150 gallon water change was a pain in the rear. Thanks to Don-n-sa for all the super big help. Another awesome guy. All seems well now. Just put the RO line in a freah 45 gallon trash can so it should be filled tomorroe morning. Then another by lunch and another when I get off work to be ready for the second 150 gallon water change. Then I will do it again next Sunday/Monday. Too much fun!

I plan to keep all removed inverts out of the system for about 3 weeks.

I can no longer see any mites on the acros that were most infested!!!!!!

[NaCl_H2O]

Great to hear it seems to be successful. This whole process should be written up in fine detail and placed into the Ed Committee archive ... GaryP?

Keep us posted Steveo

[rocketeer]

Wow! You've got to have guts. And determination. Sorry I'm not there to help. You can put your crabs in my QT tank if you want. I've got one acro frag in there though that I'd want to remove. We can put another in there though to check for infestation. The tank's not real big, 10 gal. You saw it.

Jack

[TexasTodd]

AHHHH grasshopper. ;)


Steve was much more worried about the front end of the treatment for help yesterday. I told him it was the back end that was a real pain in the arse! Of course the front end is the one that can be dangerous.

Glad to hear it's gone well Steve. We want an AM report!

Glad Donny made it over to help.

T

[scuba_steveo]

Jack, thanks for the offer. I have them all in a 10 gallon QT right now. They are packed in there so I am planning on doing a bunch of water changes for them.

This morning everything is looking good. I can tell more when I go home at lunch and see everything with the lights on. I am not looking forward to another water change tonight.

[TexasTodd]

If you run low on RO/DI let me know and I can run some more over Steve.

Todd

[scuba_steveo]

Thanks but I think I have it covered.
Now if you just want to come help with the water change.............
:D

[Tim Marvin]

The first time I treated was much more deadly than this last time. I re-treated my tank a few days after RobertG did his and have not seen any return. I did 2 treatments 5 days apart. I removed nothing and lost only a couple hermits this time. I did the water change at exactly 7 hours and switched out about 75% of the water. I put in a large bag of carbon, and after a couple weeks the acropora and critters looked great! I thought I killed off all the mysid and pods, but the tanks are loaded with them again.

[bigdscobra]

Does anybody have any pics of what the red mites look like???
:blink

[scuba_steveo]

Thay are small and red and are hard to see.

I do not have a picture but if you search online you can find several. They are very hard to see if you do not know what you are looking for or if you are looking under 20k or actinic.

[RobertG]

Try this out http://www.littlereef.com/redbugs.htm