After 6 hours, a 25% MINIMUM water change is performed and as much activated carbon as you can fit should be added to the tank. In the initial tests, crustaceans that were reintroduced to a tank after a 25% water change and carbon were unaffected by the medication.
24 hours later the water should be changed again and the carbon replaced.
There is no maximum for the water changes or carbon, the more you do the better.
The treatment needs to be peformed a MINIMUM of 3 times. We know it kills the bugs, but we don’t know enough about their lifecycle to determine if it kills them at every stage of their life. We have to assume that all of the most of the adults are killed in the first treatment. The goal of the second treatment is to clean up any left over adults, and any juveniles that have hatched out of eggs that might have been unaffected. The third treatment is a “just in case” treatment, its goal is to get any bugs that could have possibly survived the first two. I know that three treatments sounds scary, after the first one you will feel much more comfortable with it though.
The frequency of the treatments has yet to be fully determined. Some of the volunteers in the testing did the first two treatments 7 days apart with the 3rd treatment 14 days after the second. Some did 3 treatments 7 days apart. Personally, I have been doing 2 treatments 24 hours apart every 7 days. I will repeat this 4 times for a total of 8 treatments.
The medication seems to be fairly safe, since we dont know the life cycle of the bug its best to err on the side of caution and treat several times. Pretend its an antibiotic, if your going to use it once, make sure you do the whole treatment process at least 3 times!!!
Refer to this thread and read the whole thing before you begin the treatment.
http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=43945
Some things to remember.
1. The ENTIRE system has to be treated. There could be bugs or bug larvae anywhere in your system. Do not take your refugium offline. Do not turn any part of your filtration off that will trap water. For example, if your skimmer is shut off, but has 1/2 gallon of water in it, that water needs to be treated!
2. You will probably kill off a lot of your pods, shrimps and crabs.
3. This medication has not been tested for very long. The bugs might come back. Like anything you put in your tank it could be toxic a year down the road.
4. The
[hr]
are for Large dogs, 50-100lbs. The dose is 25mg/10gal/6hrs.
5. If the treatment is not successful and you still have bugs visible after the 1st treatment, make a slight adjustment to your dose and start over again. This was only necessary in 1 out of 7 systems tested. It was a very old, large and intricate system.
6. I am sure, someone, somewhere will overdose or do something wrong. I am sure that someone will blame a tank crash 6 months down the road on this medication. Remember, no one but yourself is responsible for that!!!!!
Quarantine
I have not been able to come up with an effective, quick kill dipping strength. Even at 100x strength, the bugs lasted over 30 minutes. The best way to keep them from getting back in your tank is to treat the coral for the full 6 hours, an increased dose seems to be safe for corals. You are only going to be treating your new coral once. If the bug lays its eggs on the corals (no one knows) they could hatch off a week later in your aquarium.
Some questions that people have posed online already:
Where do I get the medication?
I was able to get Interceptor by being honest with my local Vet and telling them what I was going to use it for. I would suggest trying this route first, several people have already been successful with this approach. If you can’t get from your local vet, there are Canadian mail order companies that will ship the medication without a prescription.
How important is it to use a scale that’s accurate down to .001 grams. Where do I find a scale like that.
In my opinion, its pretty important to measure out the medication accurately. I have tested corals at doses 10x and 100x higher, but I do not know what it would do in an aquarium.
I am sure if your patient and try hard enough you will find a scale you can use. Everyone knows someone who knows someone else that has access to a scale like this. Perhaps at a local school or university.
You can prepare all of your treatment when you go. Store the medication at room temperature, in the dark in an air tight container. Do not let it get cold.
So you are saying to use 25mg of Interceptor per 10 gallons. Not 25mg of Milbemycin Oxime. Is that correct?
That is correct, each large dog tablet contains 23mg of Milbemycin Oxime. The tablet weighs just under 1 gram. You will be using 25mg (0.025grams) per 10 gallons.
I used a flash light and they are only on that one coral I don't see any on the others yet anyways.
