# Red Bugs



## LegitFish (Nov 27, 2011)

So I was looking closely at my tank the other day, and I noticed these little reddish orange specs on a lot of my SPS corals. They look like bright copepods. I talked to my LFS, and the guy was saying that they are some type of Red Bugs. I'm not sure how to treat this problem, but he recommended putting a dragon pipefish in there to eat them...could this also be solved by putting in a mandarin goby? Any other solutions?


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## tike (Nov 10, 2008)

Most people treat the tank with interceptor, however it is only available through prescription from a vet. A dragon faced pipe fish will eat them but it will never eradicated them. here is more info Melevsreef.com - Interceptor | Red Bug treatment


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## LegitFish (Nov 27, 2011)

Ok, so I don't know what happened, but all the red bugs seemed to disappear from all my sps corals. I did not dose with anything, and haven't put a dragon pipe fish in either, as I have not been able to find any at my LFSs. Any ideas to what may have happened?


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## LegitFish (Nov 27, 2011)

I think i may have a suspect on what eradicated the red bugs out of my reef. I recently (the last 4-5 days) have been putting Phosphate-E by Brightwell Aquatics into my tank to reduce the phosphate level down from around .5. Around the 3rd day, I began seeing the numbers of red bugs reduce. By about the 5th day, I can no longer seem to see any red bugs! May this have done it? Could the phosphate remover killed all of the red bugs? If so, I may have found the cure!


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## yvr (Aug 16, 2011)

+1 on using Interceptor. But to help prevent a future infestation of I dip all my new corals in an iodine bath like Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure before introducing them into my tank. Understandably I get a bit paranoid about introducing things like flatworms etc into my display tanks.


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