Dragon Face PipeFish for Red Bugs!

[familiar1985]

Hi, i have red bugs on a bunch of colonies that i cant remove to treat with interceptor. I am considering getting a pipefish as a natural predator to help control the numbers.

Current stock is a Powder Blue Tang, Pacific Blue Tang, Diamond Goby, Mandarin goby, and a firefish.

The tank is a 100gal 5' by 18" by 20" and about 10 months old. I have a 30 gal fuge with tons of life.

How many pods do the pipefish go through? Would there still be enough for my mandarin? Iv had the mandarin for about 6 months and he eats pods mostly.

 

[DaveK]

If you had a reef with fish generally considered compatible with the pipefish, I would say ok, it's worth a try.

However, you have tangs and possibly the other fish that are going to give the pipefish a rough time of it.

Since you have a 100 gal tank plus a refugium, you shouldn't have a problem with pods.

One other thing to keep in mind. Fish are going to eat when they like best first. If you get the pipefish and it likes pods better than red bugs, it's not going to eat any redbugs until it can't find any pods. This is why biological controls often don't work.

 

[Frankie]

I would treat the whole tank with Interceptor and be done with it if your infested and they are damaging your corals.
Pods can be replaced along with shrimp and crabs. Snails and starfish will not be bothered by it if you dose properly.
Keep this in mind, if you do not treat the entire system, skimmer, ca++ RX and anything else with water (refugium) you will never get rid of the red bug.
The cost of acro's out weighs the cost of pods and shrimp and crabs in my book any day.

 

[jski711]

Interceptor. Use it and skip the posibility of buying a fish that won't work.

 

[mps9506]

Ditto to what was said above. My experience is that the treatment followed properly is the way to go.

 

[familiar1985]

Some corals that have the bugs on them are still growing well. I dont think the bugs are that bad, they wont kill anything. They do stress some colonies. I only have a couple colonies with retracted polyps not growing well. Im going to be moving all the livestock to a 240 within a year and i was going to interceptor all the colonies during the move. I wouldnt want to do something so drastic as adding interceptor to the main. Seems a little extreme at this point. Just figured the pipefish would be a cool addition.

That is a good point though about the pods. If the pipefish likes the pods more maybe it wont even eat the red bugs. Im interested in finding out if thats really the case most of the time.

You think my tangs will harass it? They seem to ignore non Tang fish. I have never seen them pick on others in my tank.

 

[jski711]

just treating dipping the corals when transfering them to a new tank won't get rid of the problem. There will be bugs in the rocks and all throughout the tank. Interceptor is not as "drastic" as it seems.

 

[familiar1985]

just treating dipping the corals when transfering them to a new tank won't get rid of the problem. There will be bugs in the rocks and all throughout the tank. Interceptor is not as "drastic" as it seems.

Iv heard of people doing this succesfully. I will take all acros out and treat in qt while im setting everything up in new tank. Not just a dip.

The bugs with nothing to eat will die within 5 days according to what this guy says.

Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus) - Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board

I think thats a better method then killing a lot of life in the tank and exposing all of the live rock to medication.

Another option to save some life would be disconecting fuge for 5 days and throwing buncha crabs in there while treating main. I might do that if i see it really hurting an acro. I think the method this guy uses would work well and would rather hold out until i transfer into new tank because it will be conveniant.

The tangs will bother the pipefish? I read the pipefish clings onto live rock or acros and eats pods. Would the tangs really bother it?

 

[mps9506]

Some corals that have the bugs on them are still growing well. I dont think the bugs are that bad, they wont kill anything. They do stress some colonies. I only have a couple colonies with retracted polyps not growing well.

My experience with red bugs was not so pleasant. It wasn't overnight but I noticed retracted polyps and slow color loss in a few of my colonies over the course of ~2 months. This was followed eventually by STN.
Not all of my colonies were affected, the "busheir" speciemens were fine like milleporas and some others.
If you can setup a QT tank that would be great. Just follow Eric Borneman's procedure that you linked too.
I personally did the treatment based off of Dustin's intial recommendations before much info was posted about the bugs. Nuking the tank worked great and I found that copepods, baby snails etc repopulated my tank within weeks.
Whichever method you choose, I would do it ASAP. No need to allow your corals to stress if you can do something about it now.

 

[jski711]

Do whatever you want to do but the interceptor treatment works fine and can be done now before some corals decide to rtn or stn. Just forget about the pipefish unless you really do some research or else they usually just die.