Interceptor, Ivermectin, & Coral Boring Spionid Worms.

[Curiousbranching]

I use ivermectin 1% at a dose of 1ml/100L to treat redbug and aefw directly in the QT tank for 2 hours, then I just put in 1 bag of activated carbon and turn on the skimmer. The results were very good, after about 30 minutes I checked and saw that the pod under the sump didn't seem to be affected much, coral banded shrimp were not affected at all but redbugs and aefw were floating in the water, some flatworms were huge for the first time I saw them crawling in panic on the sand floor, even the feather dusters in the living rock fell out. The only thing worth noting is that gluttonous fish will be poisoned when they eat creatures contaminated with ivermectin and take a day to recover. I lost a finger-sized birdnose wrasse during treatment, the others lay breathing at the bottom of the tank but recovered the next day. So next time I will take all the fish out before starting treatment.

 

[Dburr1014]

Reviving the thread.

I'm going to give this a try. Full tank only because I'm upgrading and will have the means to put and the fish, crabs, shrimp, clam?, anenome?, snails in the new tank while treating the old tank with all the rocks and coral.
I can have new tank filled 3/4 full and just move over the rock after treatment. Maybe give it a quick rinse first?

What do we know about the dose size?
How many times? Sounds like one dose to me.
What else? How are the corals, bac, ect, post treatment?

Edit:
Tank won't be here for at least 2 months, plant of time to plan.

 

[Dburr1014]

So I did hear back from Adam. He said that the second dose did not appear to have the same effects as the first dose. He's not sure what he did differently. At this point, I think it’s safe to conclude that Interceptor doesn’t work to eradicate ”spionid worms” at least at the doses that were used. It does work well for other pests though.

Both Ivermectin (regular) and the Ivermectin-Plus (with praziquantel) were used w/o success for spionid.

Meanwhile…@JCOLE is gearing up to treat his entire 500 Gallon with Ivermectin. In-tank treatment!

Don’t miss it!!!!!


Here’s how it went for the other guy:

Ivermectin In-Tank Treatment


khiann
Posted July 9, 2014
*
I have been fighting with Red Bugs and AEFW for 8 months. Tried out of tank dipping with iodine, coral dip and garlic(pills and fresh squash). With these treatment, both bugs came off and sps recover for 1 - 2 weeks, however, they come back with even stronger number of army. Losses many precious species of SPS due do this. I found that I have 2 type of red-bug(one red, one slightly larger but grey in color) and AEFW. The one does the most damage is red bugs. SPS will have the polyps retract, discolored and bite marks shown very quickly.

One thing to take note for the community, if you are buying wild/cultured sps from the local LFS, I can almost assure you will get either one of it if you never do any quarantine/dip. You will think that the sps didn't manage to survive in your tank condition but, to me, 90% of my sps death is due to this. It will start with polyp retracted, might NOT get discolor or turn brown. The base of the SPS will start minor flesh retract. If you never notice close enough, you will have small white spots of bite mark when infestion is long enough.

I decided enough is enough, decided to try Ivermectin 1% with the tank since some of the document on internet show it is effective on "both" the bugs. I was having difficulty getting the med from local vet, until I get it from somewhere(pm me if you need). It is a water soluble based of ivermectin for horse injection. 1%. WARNING, this is a very strong chemical to both human and animals. It will KILL all brittle star, snails, prawn, even small fish and small clams. Good thing is, some of the unwanted pest worm also get killed in the action. I did the full tank treatment with xtreme care. I will not be responsible for naything happen to your tank.

Treatment for my 4x2x1.5 tank with 4x1.5x1.5 sump. with 22 species of sensitive and hardy sps. with 3 soft coral and a few zoas, one bubble anemone

6pm, I prepare fresh replacement salt water enough for 70% water change. Exact salinity, ca and KH, same temperature.

8pm, I dose 15ML of the ivermectin by mixing with the tank water in a container, then pour into the sump. Turn off both of my skimmer and tank out all carbon.

802pm, all my sps polyp retracted, including monti and BN. Clams shuts. Massive bubbles forms in the sumps area.

805pm. all snail, acro crab and some unknown bugs running for life, sps start to slimes

815pm. good amount of red bug and AEFW clinging on slimes string created on sps

830pm. all small snail and crab is no longer moving, all the pest worms and brittle stars floating around in the water. Try to remove as much as I can with fine hole net. My heart almost stop seeing the condition of the tank. No white cloud created in the water though.

9pm. similar, except the sps polyp came back and clams open slightly. Massive amount of pest dead. Small fish including little nemo stunt, laying but breathing on tank bottom.

10pm, turned on all skimmers and carbon. Skimmers immediately overflow like crazy, I drain the skimmers overflow directly into the toilet. Close monitor every 15 minutes and replace the water lost with fresh water.

11pm, SPS came back like magic with better than before polyp extension. soft and hard coral is not affected at all. anemone too.

2am, almost 1/4 of water over flown and replaced.

4am, skimmer come back to normal, went to sleep

8am, replace new carbon, clean skimmer neck, replace the remaining 20% of water. coral status quo

2nd day passed, slightly higher NO3 noticed, 10ppm higher, came down in a few days. SPS does not seems to be affected, Zero coral casualty. All crabs and worms are gone, together with the pest. notice zero of it on the coral

3rd day, clams and fish all recovered

8th day, 10ML dose with similar procedure. This time no more massive death occur, prob all dead in the first dose.

16th day, 8ML dose


One month passed, I have zero pest in the tank, including AEFW! The sps rebound with extremely fast growth and polyp extension, much better color too. Will take picture too.. just a sharing for the folks, becareful with the treatment though. I think the water change make a different and didn't lead the treatment to tank crash.

Just had another thought,

I can probably set up a tank or tote to dip my whole rock scape one by one. Just need a heater and a powerhead. Will this make them retreat by pulling the rock out of water to put it in the tote? Should the rock also be rinsed in clean water after treatment?

My local tractor supply has liquid ivermectin on the shelf. $30 for 250ml.

 

[Reefahholic]

Just had another thought,

I can probably set up a tank or tote to dip my whole rock scape one by one. Just need a heater and a powerhead. Will this make them retreat by pulling the rock out of water to put it in the tote? Should the rock also be rinsed in clean water after treatment?

My local tractor supply has liquid ivermectin on the shelf. $30 for 250ml.

They can retreat, but it won’t matter much as long as you have good flow.

Yes, definitely rinse the rock well. A lot of die off will occur. You want to minimize the amount of crap going back into the DT.

 

[Dburr1014]

Preparing myself for war.
For worms and blue clove polyps.
I will set up some dipping stations for that Ivermectin and I'll treat the blue clove polyps beforehand, I only have one rock really to dip.
My new tank will be here in about a month.

Connecticut right now you can buy the stuff that over the counter at Tractor Supply but until they run out because they're passing a law you will need a prescription.

 

[PeterErc]

Thanks for the effort and research

I had been pondering over the ivermectin and bought some. I read an article somewhere that it killed some snails. Took a rock out of the sump that had all kinds on boogers growing on it. Over a few days I increased the dose slowly, bristle worms, feather dusters, spaghetti, sponoids, and some other crud I don’t know what it was died. The vermetid are relentless. After three days I dosed .5ml on top of the other approx. .5ml that was dosed over three days.
Bucket was in garage with small pump for circulation and around 2g of water.
Complete fail, bucket was rancid when I got home from work. Vermetid still retracting but looked hurtin. Will do again with vermetid alone.
After that experiment no way would I try to dose the whole tank. I have way too much stuff to die and can’t see anything good coming out of it. That is my opinion on my system.

I did a one hour bath 10 drops per 500ml on acro and monti with coral boring bastads. No sign of them after and as stated above polyp extension is great.

On the bad news side, I threw in an acro frag with white bugs on it. Same bath same duration. White bugs are still alive, so that was a no go.

I

 

[mdpitts]

I’m going to throw this out there but I’m almost a total newb about saltwater. But I thought I read on here that you can kill worms that make a hard tube around themselves by supergluing the top. These might not be the same worms but you could try it.

 

[PeterErc]

I’m going to throw this out there but I’m almost a total newb about saltwater. But I thought I read on here that you can kill worms that make a hard tube around themselves by supergluing the top. These might not be the same worms but you could try it.

Yessir, you could also inject the tube with a kalkwasser slurry. That is what I use on the big ones. The little stinkers that spread like wildfire are a different story.

Epoxy, crush them, cut em off with bone cutters, other options as well.
An orange claw hermit is eating them in another tank. When weather warms up will get some more

 

[Dburr1014]

I’m going to throw this out there but I’m almost a total newb about saltwater. But I thought I read on here that you can kill worms that make a hard tube around themselves by supergluing the top. These might not be the same worms but you could try it.

Sure, but if you have hundreds or thousands, it would be futal.

 

[mdpitts]

True dat. I guess I always think small because I have a nano tank. I just did tried it on a meteor shower cyphastrea that had 3 places to seal off. It worked for me so far - been about a week.

 

[Dburr1014]

So, what do we know about ivermectin dose size for spionid worms? Did we nail it down yet? Or is the 3.2ml per gallon it?
I have a 50ml bottle so that's good for 15 gallons. Could I cut that to 25ml per 15 gallons?


Getting close to crunch time for me. New tank is a couple weeks away. I was thinking doing some reef scape then waiting a week to do another section to mitigate the die off.

@Reefahholic
@PeterErc
@Sisterlimonpot
@JCOLE

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

So, what do we know about ivermectin dose size for spionid worms? Did we nail it down yet? Or is the 3.2ml per gallon it?
I have a 50ml bottle so that's good for 15 gallons. Could I cut that to 25ml per 15 gallons?


Getting close to crunch time for me. New tank is a couple weeks away. I was thinking doing some reef scape then waiting a week to do another section to mitigate the die off.

@Reefahholic
@PeterErc
@Sisterlimonpot
@JCOLE

From my experience thus far. There isn't a viable in tank treatment that is going to be strong enough to kill 100% of the spoinids and keep the fish and inverts alive.

Even using ivermectin in a separate tank and then rinsing with new saltwater before putting them back in the main tank has caused issues with fish just by the residue left on the corals.

I think the treatment needs to involve a period of power heads and carbon before rinsing and putting them back in the main tank.

 

[Dburr1014]

From my experience thus far. There isn't a viable in tank treatment that is going to be strong enough to kill 100% of the spoinids and keep the fish and inverts alive.

I'm okay with that. My new tank will be in the same room as the old tank. So far, I think I can treat all of the sump rock now and let it all settle out with die off. The "in display" rock should handle the extra biology worms dying. From there, I have 2 main structures. If I do them a week apart, I think the system can handle that also.

Even using ivermectin in a separate tank and then rinsing with new saltwater before putting them back in the main tank has caused issues with fish just by the residue left on the corals.

Wow, okay. So treat in a separate vessel, rinse in a second vessel and place in a 3rd vessel with carbon. Sound right?

I think the treatment needs to involve a period of power heads and carbon before rinsing and putting them back in the main tank.

100% need powerheads. Maybe even move them around during treatment to get all the nooks and crannies. And also break all the tubes you can find during treatment.

But still the question is: how much 1% ivermectin per gallon and how long in the bath?
Does the ivermectin lose potency? If I leave the vessel up for 2 weeks will it not be useful for the last rock stage? (doing 100% of my rock in 3 stages, 1 week apart)

These questions I realize may not be known, just wanting to get a better understanding as a collective, to get a better idea what I should do.

 

[JCOLE]

So, what do we know about ivermectin dose size for spionid worms? Did we nail it down yet? Or is the 3.2ml per gallon it?
I have a 50ml bottle so that's good for 15 gallons. Could I cut that to 25ml per 15 gallons?


Getting close to crunch time for me. New tank is a couple weeks away. I was thinking doing some reef scape then waiting a week to do another section to mitigate the die off.

@Reefahholic
@PeterErc
@Sisterlimonpot
@JCOLE

I was going to hold off on posting here until I could finish going through everything with my system. I will do a later post after a couple of weeks and try to document it a little better.

I went nuclear on my system, and what I did, I do NOT recommend to anyone, and right now, I do not feel good about my decisions. Besides spinioids and a massive microbrittle star infestation, I found what appears to be white bugs on some of my acro's. I decided to treat my system with Interceptor and ordered 48 of the large Interceptor pills, which I am currently waiting on to come in.

Due to the cost of Interceptor and me being impatient, I decided to treat my system with Dylox(Trichlorfon) which is essentially Bayer(DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT RESEARCH AND YOU'RE CRAZY LIKE ME). I figured if I could kill the white bugs that way, then I could cancel the order of Interceptor, which wasn't cheap.

On Saturday 02/17, I removed all snails and hermits that I could find before treatment. I turned the return pumps off and turned all the power heads up to 100%. I dosed 2x the recommended dosage of Dylox to the system. Within 30 minutes, flat worms started floating around the tank(I will send videos and pictures later on). I don't know if they were AEFW or ghost flat worms. Either way, it seemed to eliminate them very effectively. I left the power heads running and the return pumps off for two hours. After two hours, I turned the return pumps back on and left the treatment going for about seven hours.

Seven hours of Dylox in the tank killed flatworms, and copepods. It did not phase the snails, crabs, worms, spinoids, or fish. I say the Dylox seemed to be a good in tank treatment.

Now, the crazy! After seven hours on Saturday, which at the that time was around 7:30pm I dosed my 500 gallon acropora DT with Ivermectin. I dosed the whole 50ml bottle, which comes out to 1ml per 12-14 gallons of system water.

Within 10 minutes after dosing the Ivermectin, the snails that were still in the tank fell off the rocks and appeared dead. Within 30 minutes, all the brittle stars and bristle worms were dead(Stunned - I'll explain more). What I can say is that the spinoid worms do appear dead. It did not kill any of the hermits, emerald crabs, or vermitid snails. Within an hour or so, most of the fish started acting weird. It was almost as if they were drunk.

The skimmer went NUTS! I have a recirculating external Reef Octopus 8000XP skimmer and could not run it at the lowest setting with the gate valve all the way open. I had the cup return the overflow back into the tank. However, the medication was coating the water so much that the bubbles were pushing the lid off the cup at the lowest setting, and this skimmer is a BEAST. I had no choice but to shut the skimmer down during treatment.

I left the skimmer off overnight. Sunday morning, I turned the skimmer on and started doing water changes via the skim mate to pull the medication out. I also set up two of the Aquamaxx large reactors with GAC. Skimmer started returning to normal after an hour or so. Unfortunately, one of my Foxfaces and a Sailfin Tang lost their color and were black. They were not doing well, and I ended up losing them Sunday evening.

Monday, the glass was DIRTY! I could not see through the glass. All the rock work had diatoms, or worse, what looked like dino's, from all the die off. I tested nutrients, and both NO3 and PO4 tested extremely low. NO3 tested around 0.02 and PO4 tested at 0. I imagine this is from all of the new algae growth consuming the nutrients.

Monday and Tuesday, I spent the evenings blowing off the rocks and sucking up dead brittle stars and bristle worms. Some of the worms and brittle stars are starting to move again. This is why I said stunned, instead of died. It seems to neurologically stun them like cyanide does to fish. It appears that when it wears off, they might come back if not removed? Only time will tell on this.

Things seem to be stable and looking okay. Fish are starting to eat again and look to pull through. My Gorgs, stylophora, pocillopora , and a couple stylocoeniella are stressed but look ok. I lost a tiny frag similar to Red Dragon. This was expected, as it was finiky in my system to begin with before all of this. Other than that, all Acropora look normal with PE. There are no signs of stress so far.

What I did wrong and regret is that I used 50ml instead of the planned 25ml. Also, I forgot to put some form of aeration in the tank after shutting the skimmer down. I had a large air pump with a large air stone that I planned on running but didn't turn on. I think this is the reason some of the fish didn't do well.

I also did not have enough RODI to make up for the number of water changes I needed. I ended up pulling the RO membranes off and running water through the sediment filter and two stages of carbon to speed up the process of getting the water i needed. I imagine this could have contributed to coral stress, diatoms, etc as my TDS measures around 60-65ppm after the carbon filters.

I also ran the treatment at night, which I would not recommend. This treatment needs to be done in the morning and supervised in case of an issue. I also treated the tank the same day as a pesticide, essentially, which wasn't a smart idea. In reality, I should have waited a couple of weeks before dosing the two in case the Dylox caused a major issue.

The question is, would I run this again? So far with the stress, no. However, if done correctly and planned out better, then I think it would be an option, but only for experienced hobbyists, as you have to be able to know how to correct things quickly if there are problems.

If anyone decides to try this as an in tank treatment, then I would recommend the following:

1. 1ml for every 25 Gallons.
2. Run treatment in the morning and perform water changes via the skimmer after two hours.
2. Remove fish before treatment, if possible.
3. Make sure you have enough aeration during treatment
4. Make sure you have enough make up for water changes
5. DON'T BE LIKE ME AND DOSE THIS THE SAME DAY AS A PESTICIDE!

I will update this thread with pictures later and try to clean up the timeline of events, etc. I will update as the process continues.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

how much 1% ivermectin per gallon and how long in the bath?

Keeping in mind this is still a work in progress and more experimentation will be necessary.

Regarding dosage I think it can be lower than 3 mL per quart. Honestly, I think maybe even 3 mL per gallon. And it could even be lower than that.

The other issue is if rocks are treated, they may really absorb a lot of ivermectin. I would think they would need quite a while in saltwater running a power filter with carbon. And doing regular water changes. It boils down to, how much risk a person willing to take, I would think that rock would need at least a month before reintroducing it to fish.

With fish, it's simply not an option at a level that would kill the worms.

Does the ivermectin lose potency? If I leave the vessel up for 2 weeks will it not be useful for the last rock stage? (doing 100% of my rock in 3 stages, 1 week apart)

That being said [and a huge word of caution] one other thing that I did on one coral before I realize how potent ivermectin is, was I took a 1 mL syringe and injected the dip water into a coral where I knew a worm was. I'm not 100% positive yet but I think it might have killed the worm and had no effect on the tank. I'm still observing to see if the worm pops back out. Of course you wouldn't be able to do very many of them at one time and I'm not sure how long the ivermectin lasts in the water. It very well could be a situation where it would build up to a toxic level to the fish if you did it over the course of several weeks.

 

[Dburr1014]

1. 1ml for every 25ml.

Thank you for the detailed update. This is crazy, your crazy!

Should this read:
1. 1ml for every 25 gallons?

 

[JCOLE]

Thank you for the detailed update. This is crazy, your crazy!

Should this read:
1. 1ml for every 25 gallons?

Yes. Thanks for the catch! That would have been bad!

 

[Dburr1014]

Regarding dosage I think it can be lower than 3 mL per quart. Honestly, I think maybe even 3 mL per gallon. And it could even be lower than that.

The other issue is if rocks are treated, they may really absorb a lot of ivermectin. I would think they would need quite a while in saltwater running a power filter with carbon. And doing regular water changes. It boils down to, how much risk a person willing to take, I would think that rock would need at least a month before reintroducing it to fish.

With fish, it's simply not an option at a level that would kill the worms.

Maybe 1ml per gallon. Maybe less. As JCOLE stated, 1ml per every 12-14 gallons he dosed but then recommended 1ml for every 25 gallons.
If the rock absorb the ivermectin then so does the sps. This might have to be inspect every rock, only dose the ones that have the worms. Or maybe dislodge every coral and reassemble after dosing. IDK.

 

[Dburr1014]

Yes. Thanks for the catch! That would have been bad!

1ml per 25 gallons seems less scary.
I may try this on a select few coral.
That would be 1 drop per gallon? 0.04ml

 

[Reefahholic]

@Battlecorals

#114