Go at 4x strength and determine if you need to increase dosage.
www.reef2reef.com
Been battling them in one of my systems for just about 1 full year now. The strain I have originally started out by killing all of my collector torches. Next all other lps corals were picked apart and killed. In my case montipora and acros were 3rd in line for some reason and mushrooms and zoas havnt completely died yet but they are probably going to be dead within the next month I’m guessing. I literally bought a redseareefer with 100% new equipment new rock new sand new light lol idc I had 2 tanks ruined from whatever strain of black bugs I’ve been dealing with for this past year and I’m not risking anything with this new system I’m starting. I will be doing ZERO 0!! cross contamination within the hobby from here on out! It’s been a nightmare. It’s a shame to see corals drop dead the way that I have this year…. It makes me feel guilty but I can say for sure that I have done every possible thing I could have to try and reverse the damage and eliminate the black bug population. I do believe 100% that their are many different strains of black bugs. Unfortunately at this time not enough information is out pertaining toward this topic/ issue within the hobby. I have been trying my best to get more ppl involved with the thread I made just so all of the experiences / information can be documented in one place (for the most part) for the future. This is a huge problem, whatever kind I’m dealing with is absolutely impossible to get rid of and I’m not even just saying that. I have 2 1/2 bottles of dr.g’s in the system as we speak and it’s been in that system for weeks/ maybe over a month. The black bugs are still reproducing like crazy and corals are still dropping. I dip in between with bayer/ revive / iodine based dips/ I have even taken plugs with black bugs on them and placed them into scalding hot fresh water (literally the water was steaming) not too far off from boiling. Not even joking they stayed alive walking around the sink for 20/25 minutes before they stopped moving. That wasn’t even saltwater on top of the fact that it was deadly hot! That really made me understand that what I’m dealing with is much stronger than I had originally thought. (My back ground : I have been in the hobby for about 13-14 years now. I have battled many different pests over the years spent in the hobby , tank crashes, equipment failure, all sorts of issues that come with the hobby. This is BY FAR the worst experience I’ve had over the years. I feel terrible for the corals that were lost. I hate seeing 1 coral die let alone a whole entire collection! The amount of money that was lost during this is unbelievable… it’s just a shame that a pod could cause so much damage to a system. I hope anyone dealing with the bugs aren’t dealing with whatever strain I have been trying to eliminate. I’m literally back to square 1 now. I really didn’t have a choice my options were either stop keeping reef tanks or start over… so of course I’m starting over because even tho this has been insane and extremely frustrating to watch I still love the hobby. I’ll do this for as long as I’m able to. If this had happened when i first got into the hobby I’m not sure I’d continue doing this. I hope anyone just getting started out doesn’t have to experience this because it would really make it hard to want to continue on. Having a fresh start with this redseareefer xl system does feel good though. I have a very select group of vendors I will use and that’s it. I love supporting up in coming vendors that are trying to make their way into the business side of the industry but After this past year I’ve developed some trust issues lol I just can’t risk losing corals and money like that ever again. This costs way to much and requires way to much effort and time. The risks just aren’t worth it for me at this point. I’d rather pay a little bit more and know that the vendor I’ve chosen has really good quarantine procedures and tries their best to keep clean systems, and even cleaner frags. You may have saved a few bucks on some frags but I’ll tell you what I lost waaaaaaaaaaaay more in the end. When I spoke to the vendor I got the black bugs from and told them what’s going on they got ticked off at me denied any kind of money back guarantees that they promised and then blocked me on all platforms….. carful who you do business with.
