How do you avoid introducing these pests into your tank? Quarantine. Not all of us can do that in the real world we live in. In the case of Monti nudis, and AEFW, dipping can go a long way, especially if you do repeated dips. You generally want to use the repeated dips in cases where the first dip shows signs of pests. Every third day pull the coral out and do a light dip leaving the coral in for a longer duration, IME that not only helps remove the pests, it is not as stressful as full blown (strong) dips, make sure to use your baster. The dipping should be done no more than three times to avoid stressing your coral. During your initial dip look at the bottom of your dipping container, do you see anything? Little white fluffy nudis? Little squirming tan flatworms? If you do chances are it’s time to grab a toothbrush and go at it. Usually the egg masses are found in out of the way places where the tissue meets the frag plug, or in between the scrolls of plating corals. Both animals have eggs that are incapsulated in a tenacious slime that needs to be carefully brushed away without harming the surrounding tissue. The process needs to be repeated every three days like the dipping, not only will that help to eliminate pests, it will give you visual cues so you can monitor your progress. I will say when I saw AEFWs in my qt tank in the past, I threw out all of the Acroporas in that tank, they are that difficult to treat for.


Red Bugs are difficult to prevent with conventional dips, they have serrated appendages that dig into the flesh of corals, so much so that even if the animal is stunned in the dipping process they will still hang tenaciously even when being hit with a baster. Lots of reefers use Interceptor dips in conjunction with conventional dipping methods to avoid introduction, IME they work well, that is if you can get interceptor... I don’t have a hard fast rule regarding Interceptor dipping, I simply crush up a portion of a pill and add a pinch to a gallon of water in a bucket with an airstone. After about 2 hours your coral should be RB free, I used this method several times and it has worked 100% (so far), there are many more specific dipping techniques to be found online, again feel free to add anything you know regarding dipping for RBs. There's been threads about the success of Bayer Advance here and though I've not used it yet myself I've heard great things from several trusted sources, here among MAAST members and plan to use it myself soon.


•Dips and methods There are many different types of coral dips on the market, heck you can go down to your local drug store and purchase Povidone it makes a great coral dip. Most dips are iodine based, Lugols solution, Kent Tech-D, Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure (TMPCC), SeaChem, all use iodine in one form or another. They are quick and efficient when it comes to pest removal, however, IME some corals don’t like them very much. For example Montiporas can brown out quickly from dips, especially at higher concentrations, always keep that in mind when using iodine in dips and err on the side of caution. I really like the Two Little Fishes Coral Revive, not only does it seem less harsh, I’ve noticed that the pests overall do not like Revive as it irritates them strongly causing them to remove themselves from the coral rapidly. This can be a huge benefit when dealing with animals like RBs that have a tight grip and need a little encouragement in leaving their hosts. Again I like the straight Povidone and look forward to testing out Bayer Advance.


•”The Plug” Most corals you get will be mounted to a plug, disk, rubble, that is a huge vector when it comes to spreading pests, not just mean little critters that like to snack on corals, but planaria, pest algae (Asparagopsis), Asterina stars, Aiptasia etc. I’ve been thinking for a while on how to eliminate the ecosystem that surrounds “The Plug” and stumbled across a random post on RC that got me thinking. The entire coral is not on the plug normally, so that leaves the rest of the plug exposed to be cleaned up. Of course the easiest way is to lop the frag off the plug and be done with it, that is a common practice for myself and saves some time. If you do not feel like doing that for one reason or another, you can take a tupperware type container and mount a piece of eggcrate in the container so that frag plugs can sit upright like normal, and disks can sit on the surface of the eggcrate. Fill the vessel just to the point where the frag plug or disk is immersed to the rim (for lack of a better term) with limewater, yes limewater... Place the frag in the container with the coral exposed for a couple of minutes, don’t stress out the coral by letting it remain exposed for too long. This technique works very well with stony corals, with softies there is a strong likely hood that the coral will come in contact with the limewater which is a worst case scenario type situation.

Well I think this post is long enough, Please share your experiences, input and practices!