Wrasses that Eat AEFW or Red Bugs
 

Heard that some wrassess CAN be effective at eating AEFW or Red Bugs. I say "CAN" because there are no hard rules when it comes to fish. Anybody had success using natural predators (wrasses or other fish) to control or eliminate these pests?

If you have a success story please share the specifics.

6 line or yellow but they will only eat a few if they find them. They won't control them if you have lots.

Thats for flat worms. I don't think they eat red bugs, but am not sure on that.

I had a pretty good outbreak of photosynthetic FW and my Halichoeres chrysus took care of them pretty good. I've heard they will clean up AEFW too so I gues they aren't too species specific about their FW prey. H. melanurus and H. iridis are supposed to be very good at this as well. Don't know about red bugs.

this is just me speculating now, but I also firmly believe that it is the smaller specimens who are most likely to eat such small prey; Many adult fish in general do something called resource partitioning. That is, the adults eat different prey than their juvenile forms so as not to compete for food with them and reduce their survival. It is a common behavioral strategy and I would not be surprised to see wrasses exhibiting this.

edit: also, you should not feed the tank much. If you stuff the fish full of easy to obtain prepared foods, there won't be any need for it to expend energy hunting for live food.

Red bugs
 

I don't know about natural predators for red bugs but Interceptor works great.
I have had them two separate times. "Bad frag trading practices" Both times only one dose was needed. Bad thing is it will also kill most of the other crabs and shrimp in your tank unless you remove them from the tank before you treat it.

There were a few guys on the ZEOvit forum who have used Six Lines to keep AEFW in check. Actually one of the guys hasn't had anymore at all since adding a few 6 lines. I think it was 6 of them. He didn't keep all the wrasses though.

He would blow the AEFW off the corals and the wrasse would follow him around eating them. It took a long time but eventually they went away.

Thanks. I do not have AEFW or red bugs but I am planning out my fishload for a new tank.
Any other experiences?

None. But, kudos for you for planning out your fish load.

The most interesting non-chemical AEFW treatment I've seen is using camel shrimp. Put a couple in a QT along with an infected colony. The shrimp will eat the AEFW first before the begin eating the polyps so you watch them carefully until all the AEFWs have been eaten before you quickly take the colony out.

I figure if you are choosing between 2 fish might as well add a the fish that could potentially control pests and help your reef rather than just contributing entertainment and "poop."