I got bugs.

I have a roscoe’s blue acropora (hard coral for those newbies out there) and it has been growing well, but it hasn’t been coloring up and I’ve seen no polyp extension on the colony at all. The lack of color is strange to me as all the other corals in my tank are full of color and have very full polyp extension. In other words, they are happy while this coral isn’t happy.

The other evening I was scoping my tank out with a flashlight as you can often spy cool nocturnal critters like copepods and other invertebrates. I scanned over the roscoe’s colony and something VERY small caught my eye. I looked again and I could see small, red, chigger like bugs on the coral. GREAT…red bugs.

Red bugs are a pest to smooth skinned acropora corals. They won’t kill a colony, but they will make it angry, which is why my roscoe’s colony had no polyp extension and was only brown. The treatment of red bugs is straightword thanks to the work of Dustin from ORA corals and involves using a medication called interceptor that is used for the treatment of heartworms in dogs.

I’ll be documenting (and filming) how I treat the pesky red bugs next week and how my tank responds afterwards.

Cross your fingers, battle zones everyone.

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