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 State
of the Tank: (cont.) |
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 There
was a bit more activity in the tank
this month in the form of three new
additions .
The first came about due to my informing
Jason, one of the managers of House
of Fins, of my search for a frag of
a certain acro I’d
seen on Reef Central. Rarely do I do
things like this because of the futility
involved but I know that Jason loves
a challenge and also has an appreciation
for exotic and unusual
specimens. So I figured
what the heck. This particular
coral, by the way, had light
yellow branches with outrageous
purple polyps on them and was
unlike anything I’d ever
seen. Now, I realize I might’ve
increased my chances somewhat
if I simply contacted the guy
who posted the
piece to begin with, but as someone
who has posted uncommon corals
on bulletin boards before, I
know what it’s like to be simply deluged with frag requests. Unless the colony grew like a weed, he probably couldn’t have fulfilled them all in several months! And, of course, if it DID grow like a weed, it wouldn’t have been considered unusual in the first place. So, instead I just let my search be known locally and let it go at that.
Well, amazingly, when I did hear back from Jason and not only had he known of the piece; he used to own some of it and the guy who posted HIS colony was a friend of his! The piece was local. But (‘And there’s always a but, right’?), this particular friend had been undergoing some red bug infestation problems of late and was currently treating the tank so it was going to |
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take a few weeks. Now, for those of you who don’t know what ‘red
bugs’ are, neither do I.
I DO know that they’re really
nasty and come in on new corals
from infested tanks through hobbyists,
LFS’s and even online vendors.
They’re extremely tiny, come
out mostly at night which is why
many hobbyists don’t even
know they have them, and in proper
numbers, they can devastate an ‘sps’ tank
by either feeding on or simply
irritating a coral to death. From
what I understand,
the most popular treatment for them
seems to be an ‘interceptor’ medicine,
available only from veterinarians and
then only by prescription. Originally,
it was designed to treat heartworms
in dogs
so whoever discovered that it can also
be used in reeftanks for red bugs is
either a genius or someone with waaaay
to much time on their hands. In any
event, several periodic ‘doses’ seem to be required and not all corals take well to it. Oh yeah, it may not be 100% effective 100% of the time either…and it’ll probably kill all of your pods and stuff. other than that...
So I’m thinking that the very BEST treatment against red bugs is not to get them in the first place and, so far, I’ve managed to accomplish this (knocking furiously on virtual wood here). Therefore, the acquisition of this coral had suddenly lost quite a bit of its luster. The phrase, “Be careful what you wish for”, kept echoing in my head and I hadn’t thought of THAT one since…well, let’s just say it’s been a while. Still |
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