Interceptor treatment upcoming: Can I pull my macroalgae to salvage some pods?

[ScottB]

I will admit up front that I have been unable to find and ID specifically which bug (white/black/red) I am going after. Each time I dip frags & colonies, I kill dozens and dozens of what look to be different sized (shrimp shaped) pods. Nothing that looks quite like tegastes. I've read several times that KCl doesn't kill white/red/black bugs. I found that surprising given how fast and thoroughly it exterminates amphipods, but it does match my experience.

Finally to my question:

Do you think it is safe to remove & save my very large macroalgae so that I can repopulate my pods after treatment is over?

 

[ScottB]

bumpin and tagging a few stickheads

@jda
@SawCJack00
@SBB Corals
@watchguy123
@mfollen
@therman

I am rather attached to an old mandarin dragonette in my display and just pondering my risk of saving the pods in my macroalgae for her benefit.

 

[Xanthurum]

In my experience enough pods survive Interceptor treatments so I wouldn't worry about it. I've even done triple doses and had pods survive.

 

[jda]

Some larger pods will certainly suffer.

Why not move your macro to a different location for a day or two. Just keep it warm and oxygenated and everything should be fine.

I have seen longer damage done to populations of mini brittle stars than pods, which have seemed to come back, but I would save what you can.

FWIW - I have only done a standard dose treatment that Dustin from ORA recommended and it was a long time ago. Heavier doses can do more damage, of course. I did a 3x treatment at standard dose.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I was surprised how many amphipods survived 3-8x treatments

 

[john90009]

Leave the macro. If you pull it and end up adding the macro back in and the bugs just happen to be on there, you will kick yourself for having to redo it all over again.

 

[ScottB]

Thanks folks for the input.

Before nuking the whole tank, I have a handful of slightly battered colonies soaking in a bucket of Interceptor solution since yesterday afternoon. I'll take a magnified look at the kills this afternoon and report back.

 

[ScottB]

Well the results are in from my bucket treatment of 6 slightly battered frag/colonies. Not pretty. AEFW is back. Really surprised the Interceptor knocked them out but it did. Sadly, I am experienced with these buggers so I will address them. Poof! There goes another 20 hours of my life.

Can we talk about parasitic copepods? My treatment killed 100s of amphipods and a handful of these MUCH smaller copepods. Do I just kill them all and let God sort them out? Or do we think these are just your everyday copepod?

Anybody think this is red bug or white bug? This is 400X so these buggers are small, guessing maybe like 40-50 microns?




I would appreciate you thoughts.

 

[ScottB]

What? Not even a sympathy hug?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I’ve been a little preoccupied with the energy management disaster going on here in Houston. We were without power for 55 hours with record low Houston temps.

I would nuke the entire tank. The beneficial pods will return pretty quick. I did not experience any negatives using interceptor.

 

[ScottB]

I’ve been a little preoccupied with the energy management disaster going on here in Houston. We were without power for 55 hours with record low Houston temps.

I would nuke the entire tank. The beneficial pods will return pretty quick. I did not experience any negatives using interceptor.

Roger that. Absurdly cold down there. Who knew you couldn't fire a natural gas power plant in wicked cold?

My step-mom is in San Antonio (my hometown) and she's been getting 4hours ON, 12 hours OFF.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Roger that. Absurdly cold down there. Who knew you couldn't fire a natural gas power plant in wicked cold?

My step-mom is in San Antonio (my hometown) and she's been getting 4hours ON, 12 hours OFF.

It’s a mess. I’m hearing 8 hours on and 8 hours off around us but we went 54 hrs off through the worst. My generator saved my tanks and a portion of my sanity

 

[jda]

Are you guys kidding? It got to -14 in Colorado, but I guess that we know how to run a natural gas power plant in the cold around here.. everybody has power. I guess that we could have trouble if it ever got humid? In any case, good luck... that is scary stuff and way worse than red bugs, which are pretty easy to treat compared to Polar Vortexes or AEFW.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Are you guys kidding? It got to -14 in Colorado, but I guess that we know how to run a natural gas power plant in the cold around here.. everybody has power. I guess that we could have trouble if it ever got humid? In any case, good luck... that is scary stuff and way worse than red bugs, which are pretty easy to treat compared to Polar Vortexes or AEFW.

It’s a disaster down here. We get 7 months of 90+ Degrees , 100+ all of august with no problems. But the energy directors didn’t have any power reserves for a freak storm like this. Unacceptable.

 

[jda]

Saw people on the news complaining about government not working directly or doing enough to make sure (regulate) this problem. Then, find out that the people voted against more government or new taxes to do either. it does suck for the people who did have the foresight to see the need to have some reserve, but were in the minority. I thought that all of the dumb people on the news were from Florida, but I guess that they are everywhere.

Has anybody seen that Enron documentary called The Smartest Guys in the Room? Seems like mandatory watching if you are from Houston. I have had flashbacks of The Enron scam on the California Rolling Blackouts a few decades ago just for profit and I will always wonder if other companies are doing this now when I see all of this on the news. History does repeat it's self and so do greedy corporations. Maybe I am to cynical.

In any case, good luck. This sucks and I hope that you all come out of it OK.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Saw people on the news complaining about government not working directly or doing enough to make sure (regulate) this problem. Then, find out that the people voted against more government or new taxes to do either. it does suck for the people who did have the foresight to see the need to have some reserve, but were in the minority. I thought that all of the dumb people on the news were from Florida, but I guess that they are everywhere.

Has anybody seen that Enron documentary called The Smartest Guys in the Room? Seems like mandatory watching if you are from Houston. I have had flashbacks of The Enron scam on the California Rolling Blackouts a few decades ago just for profit and I will always wonder if other companies are doing this now when I see all of this on the news. History does repeat it's self and so do greedy corporations. Maybe I am to cynical.

In any case, good luck. This sucks and I hope that you all come out of it OK.

There’s a lot of blame to pass around. Tx is one of the largest producers of natural gas but we sell most of it to other states/grids. The main issue sounds like it was the failure of the actual power generators (gas, coal and wind). Our grids lack of federal regulation requires only voluntary inspections, which the institution did comply, but it was only done through zoom bc of the pandemic. Then the storm caused a lot more damage to these generators than expected. But now the generators are getting back up and running and we’re up to 95% power in Houston. The majority of us are not upset about the blackouts themselves, but we’re extremely ticked how they were managed. They decided to shut off power completely to 50% of the customers in Houston for 48+ hours. They claim they did this to prevent a catastrophic statewide blackout but they could done more spread out shorter blackouts. Plus there was zero communication about when we would get some power back. This is 2021 for gods sake. I get updates on new BRS videos but our multi billion dollar energy managers can’t alert their customers on what is going on? Very few ppl here are prepared in terms of clothing, experience driving on ice or snow or supplies to handle freezing temps for this long. Our houses/pipes are not engineered for temps like this, so pipes are busted all of the state. Our local media should of told everyone to turn our water off and drain the pipes instead of “wrapping” them with what turned out to be ice towels. I don’t know what I would of done without this hobby. I have a generator specifically for my tanks. I made styrofoam protectors for my faucets out of shipping boxes. I had extra hoses to siphon gas out of our vehicles for the generator (gas stations have no power, so no functional pumps). We were able to keep a couple neighbors with new borns warm and safe. This hobby made me look like a genius
Which is far from the truth

 

[ScottB]

There’s a lot of blame to pass around. Tx is one of the largest producers of natural gas but we sell most of it to other states/grids. The main issue sounds like it was the failure of the actual power generators (gas, coal and wind). Our grids lack of federal regulation requires only voluntary inspections, which the institution did comply, but it was only done through zoom bc of the pandemic. Then the storm caused a lot more damage to these generators than expected. But now the generators are getting back up and running and we’re up to 95% power in Houston. The majority of us are not upset about the blackouts themselves, but we’re extremely ticked how they were managed. They decided to shut off power completely to 50% of the customers in Houston for 48+ hours. They claim they did this to prevent a catastrophic statewide blackout but they could done more spread out shorter blackouts. Plus there was zero communication about when we would get some power back. This is 2021 for gods sake. I get updates on new BRS videos but our multi billion dollar energy managers can’t alert their customers on what is going on? Very few ppl here are prepared in terms of clothing, experience driving on ice or snow or supplies to handle freezing temps for this long. Our houses/pipes are not engineered for temps like this, so pipes are busted all of the state. Our local media should of told everyone to turn our water off and drain the pipes instead of “wrapping” them with what turned out to be ice towels. I don’t know what I would of done without this hobby. I have a generator specifically for my tanks. I made styrofoam protectors for my faucets out of shipping boxes. I had extra hoses to siphon gas out of our vehicles for the generator (gas stations have no power, so no functional pumps). We were able to keep a couple neighbors with new borns warm and safe. This hobby made me look like a genius
Which is far from the truth

Glad you made it through with most of your sanity and all of your animals. Where I live, power outages are increasingly common as the storms get more intense, and the trees keep growing. At some point, there has to be a payback on burying the power lines. My 30kw generator must run 2-3 days a year now on average. Ten straight days a couple years ago. Ironic, as I am only a 1 hour drive from NYC.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Glad you made it through with most of your sanity and all of your animals. Where I live, power outages are increasingly common as the storms get more intense, and the trees keep growing. At some point, there has to be a payback on burying the power lines. My 30kw generator must run 2-3 days a year now on average. Ten straight days a couple years ago. Ironic, as I am only a 1 hour drive from NYC.

That’s part of frustration here. There was very little line damage. Buried lines wouldn’t of helped. All of this was poor crisis management and could of been completely avoided, even with the bad cards that were dealt. We very rarely lose power, even when temps are in the 100’s for weeks and weeks. Hurricane Ike wiped out power at my house for 13 days in 2008 but that was from physical damage. I would be happy to pay higher taxes if I could get a guarantee that it would do some good, which it rarely does.

The entire state of Texas was hit by this storm. 2+ million were out of power for more than 24 hours at a time statewide, but 1.4 million of that 2+ million were in the Houston area. They cut 1/2 power off to the 4th largest city in the country. I’m a pretty open minded person but that just seems like the worst possible option to immediately go to.

 

[ScottB]

That’s part of frustration here. There was very little line damage. Buried lines wouldn’t of helped. All of this was poor crisis management and could of been completely avoided, even with the bad cards that were dealt. We very rarely lose power, even when temps are in the 100’s for weeks and weeks. Hurricane Ike wiped out power at my house for 13 days in 2008 but that was from physical damage. I would be happy to pay higher taxes if I could get a guarantee that it would do some good, which it rarely does.

The entire state of Texas was hit by this storm. 2+ million were out of power for more than 24 hours at a time statewide, but 1.4 million of that 2+ million were in the Houston area. They cut 1/2 power off to the 4th largest city in the country. I’m a pretty open minded person but that just seems like the worst possible option to immediately go to.

The load managers in other parts of the state seemed to do better, like in my stepmom's case in San Antonio. She was dark a lot, but not more than 12 hours at a time.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

The load managers in other parts of the state seemed to do better, like in my stepmom's case in San Antonio. She was dark a lot, but not more than 12 hours at a time.

It’s all the same load managers. Ercot. For now that is. Their P,VP, and CEO are not from or even live in Texas