Every cussword imaginable.... AEFW *NEW PICS!*

[ErikH]

Well, I just found eggs tonight while checking on a colony. Not good. I pulled that colony, and every colony that has not been looking good. I dosed 3x the amount on Seachem reef dip. From what I can tell, no AEFW in it. I scraped the eggs away. Ive been on RC the last 4 hours, reading, reading, reading.

I have been reading this one...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=756327&page=10

I am going to try a large cold, fresh, SW dip on each and every rock in my tank. To say the least, I am irked. The good thing is, well, I don't really know.

I got up to go pee and after hours of looking at egg pictures, noticed something out of the corner of my eye. AEFW eggs. Can't believe I saw them. I took pics, will post tomorrow. The eggs are on my blue mille, which looks supremely healthy.

I guess this is going to be a each and every 5 day thing until I am ok with it. I am at a loss right now. I have seen long skinny pod like things on the affected corals, but they seem way to fast to be a flatworm, so I am assuming they're pods of some sort.

More tomorrow. Gotta keep on keepin' on. :bareteeth::Timeout::bareteeth:

[Europhyllia]

That sucks!

[Kenya]

Yeah I hate when bad stuff happen to our tanks. Spend all that time to make it perfect. Its a love hate relationship.

I feel your pain I recently lost all my coral due to a friend adding to much alkalinty buffer when I was out of town for 2 weeks. came back to find my sps burned to a crisp and now i just lost all (bout 15 fish) beside 2 green chromis due to one fish with ich. I even quarantined him for two weeks before putting him in. Fmylife... I hope you can fix it, just keep trying.

[cbianco]

:hypnotyized::hypnotyized::hypnotyized:

I hope your just seeing things! Otherwise, I'm coming along for this AEFW ride too.

Did you notice them on any other colony or frag? Might be time for me to go to my vetranarian. [I don't think Int. works on FWs, only red bugs.]

Christopher

[ErikH]

None of the frags on the right side of the tank seem affected. The left side is the ugly side. I managed to scrape all of the eggs away, then I blasted the rocks with a powerhead. Interestingly enough, I did not see any flatworms come flying off. I have some cold saltwater in my fridge that I made last night. Gonna dip the corals that I dipped in the seachem solution into the cold fresh saltwater. Apparently they love validas. They are not on my large BTV colony, so at this point, I am kinda happy. I am going to dip them in a black bowl to see what comes off. From what I have read, they do not like cold water one single bit. We will see.

[ErikH]

Here's a pic of the eggs underneath my blue mille. Stange thing is the mille is 100% healthy minus the edges looking frayed.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/AEFWeggs.jpg

[CoryDude]

Welcome to the crappiest club in reefing.

Your best bet is to take an affected piece and do a lugol's dip for about 10 mins in a white bowl. Shake them off in the lugols dip and see what comes off. But, those are definitely AEFW eggs.

I'm still sticking with the betadine dip on a 5 day rotation. I think the RTN I experienced on the frags was due to the corals being kept in a small qt, which caused a dominoe effect when 1 of the frags started to go south, which then caused the rest of the frags to do the same. Just to test, i returned 1 of the valida frags I had saved back to the qt and it died over night also. So I'm 99% sure it wasnt the betadine itself that caused the problems.

I just did my 3rd dip on Friday and returned the corals back to the dt. The corals looked stressed at first, but they were extending polyps after a few hours. On the plus side, the bite marks on the tort have healed over, and I didn't see any flatworms on my latest dip.

[ErikH]

As you can tell, they are insanely small. How I spotted them with the lights off is beyond me.

Are these AEFW? I see them hanging out in the same spot everyday.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/SomeTypeofFlatworm.jpg

[ErikH]

Welcome to the crappiest club in reefing.

Your best bet is to take an affected piece and do a lugol's dip for about 10 mins in a white bowl. Shake them off in the lugols dip and see what comes off. But, those are definitely AEFW eggs.

I'm still sticking with the betadine dip on a 5 day rotation. I think the RTN I experienced on the frags was due to the corals being kept in a small qt, which caused a dominoe effect when 1 of the frags started to go south, which then caused the rest of the frags to do the same. Just to test, i returned 1 of the valida frags I had saved back to the qt and it died over night also. So I'm 99% sure it wasnt the betadine itself that caused the problems.

I just did my 3rd dip on Friday and returned the corals back to the dt. The corals looked stressed at first, but they were extending polyps after a few hours. On the plus side, the bite marks on the tort have healed over, and I didn't see any flatworms on my latest dip.


See, I have validas, the purples are affected, but that's on both sides. The right side is only burnt tips, while the left side is complete patchy looking mess. I am about to rip a big colony from it's perch and dip it in cold SW to see what happens.

[fishypets]

Use a stong solution of tank water and Tropic Marin Reef Pro Cure to knock the AEFW off the colonys. This will not kill them but "stun" them so you can blast off with a turkey baster. If you're going to dip the colony in a cold s.w. solution you might as well just toss it in the trash, the stress from the aefw and the shock of the cold water would do the acro in.

It amazes me how many people are not dipping new sps additions. It's time to start dipping people!

[ErikH]

Can you tell me how much I would need for approximately 50 gallons? I plan on dipping entire rocks into a 100g rubbermaid tub filled halfway. I dipped a bad looking coral into the cold saltwater solution for 5 minutes and it seems to be ok back in the DT. Polyps are already extended again. I dipped three more colonies just to check. Did not see anything on them, before or after the dips. Nothing in my cold black bowl either. Let me know fishy! Thanks for the replies all.

[fishypets]

I don't remember what the directions say but for 50 gallons I would get at least 10 bottles of the stuff. You may want to go with 25 gallons vs 50 gallons so the dip is more concenterated. Here is a link to my old thread

http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?34132-Will-I-survive-Acro-Eating-Flat-Worms&highlight=AEFW

[txav8r]

Bummer... Good luck Bro! Hope it works out for 'ya.

[ErikH]

I'm on the horn with BlueZoo Aquatics since they have blue velvet nudibranchs in stock right now. Trying to figure out how many they have, hopefully 5. They can help with the red planaria plague going on, and hopefully the aefw. Fingers crossed. Oh and I picked up 2 wrasses and a candy hogfish. Hopefully I can get the aefw under control, and quickly.

[ErikH]

Ok I just ordered 6 blue velvets from Blue Zoo. I called them just to verify they had 6 in stock, and the gentlemen I spoke to was very polite, and insisted that if I had any questions or problems to please call them back. Very good first impression. They will be here thursday, and I am going to drop them in the affected areas after drip acclimation.

[Mr Cob]

Luck to you Erik. I hate seeing these threads.

[BIGBIRD123]

Erik, sorry to hear your woes. I admire your wanting to try anything. I wish you luck with the nudis and the wrasses because they have only been proven to keep them in check, not eradicate them. The really sad part is that the proven product to get rid of them is no longer on the market...Levasole, has been useful in Cancer research and has been removed from the market for that distinction. I am currently looking for another product to use before I run out of mine...

[phippsj]

Erik-
I had a blue velvet a couple of months ago, it crawled throught the crack in the powerhead and died. I LOVED it, it was my favorite. I would love to get another one and just keep it period. However, your powerheads will eat them up unless you have them screend off with a very, very fine mesh.

If you decide to get rid of yours for any reason, please keep me in mine. Those have to be one of my favorite critters!

[ErikH]

Phipps, I have so many red planaria I think they will be busy for awhile. :)

I am going to keep relocating the velvets around my sps colonies every time I am home. Since I work for myself and I remote in alot, I should be doing this often. The key is keeping them on them to fight the multiple egg hatchings that I cannot see. I wonder if they would eat the eggs. Unfortunately they hide their eggs on soft corals as well as SPS, which is why I want to keep them around each acro. If they have to eat acros to survive, at some point everything will die and I will let the system go fallow. Oh well... :) If they hit the two large colonies I will proceed with further action. I think the frigid coldwater dips on the entire rocks will help. I know it's sketchy, but what other choice do I have. I definitely cannot spend 8 million dollars quintuple dosing FWE for three months. :) I am armed to the teeth with flatworm info, I have been glued to my laptop and all over the internet researching. Some articles take several hours to read the posts.

If your acros ever get patchy, you sure better to inspect like mad. If the color fades, lack of PE on only that colony, etc... INSPECT.

I don't know what to do past this point. Purchasing corals from anyone is sketchy. There is such a lack of reliable info on the web about what really kills them. If you use chemicals, there is a chance that the AFEW will not uptake the chemicals at a high enough rate to kill them. This is why I am choosing cold water and nudis. What Would Nature Do? That's the question, and I wish I had some acro crabs. :)

[CoryDude]

There's also some info that redbugs may be a natural predator of these guys. I and a lot of other have reported seeing escalated problems once the redbugs have been killed off with interceptor.

I suspect that I've had mine for at least a year. The flatworms are stealthy enough to keep the coral just healthy enough to supply a constant food source. It's when they get greedy and and start killing off the host coral, that they become evident.

May I ask why you're choosing the cold water dip? I've seen a lot of European reefers swearing by the betadine route. That's why I chose it. Some group from Italy was even saying it would kill off the eggs, but I have no other info to support that.

[CoryDude]

If we both beat these things, we could be like Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber

[ErikH]

LOL.

What's the most annoying pest in the world?

AEFWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[ErikH]

Betadine is uber risky too. That's why I am going with the chilly method.

[CoryDude]

Let me know if it ends up working. That sounds like it would make a safe dip for new corals too.

[Europhyllia]

I really like Blue Zoo. In fact I am doing their double dipping technique on all corals that are going into my big tank.
Hopefully you get them under control and everything will be okay.

[ErikH]

I trashed the worst looking coral yesterday and am about to trash another. Gotta be proactive. I might just trash them all and start over, lol.

[CoryDude]

Can you get the clippers out and try to save a couple of branches? I feel yo' pain brutha.

[ErikH]

Got a positive ID tonight on two large FW.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/IEFW.jpg

I was staring at my blue mille, and just barely spotted this one. There is a line going from head to tail that is not clear. The rest of the FW is clear. I managed to spy the edge of the AEFW moving. INSANE.

I did a freshy dip and found the second one. Looks like I will be pulling out entire rocks and dipping them in fresh water. They do not seem to like it!

[CoryDude]

I was amazed when I shook my red milli and about 50 of them came off. I inspect my corals every night, and never once spotted a single one until then. They make my skin crawl. Die you fargin sneaky bastages.

[ErikH]

Well, today I see no signs of infestation after the killing of the two FWs. They were both from different colonies. Today those two corals show full PE, with no polyps recessed into the skeleton. I rinsed the mille in some cold tap yesterday for a quick second or two at high pressure. Last night it looked better, polyps were starting to show again. Today, it looks much better. Don't know if I got lucky, or if there are more on their way. I also believe the addition of the 3 sixlines (sometimes they school together around corals), the two wrasses, and the candy hogfish have been of great help. All of them pick, all day long. I will be posting the rest of this in my main thread from this point on. That thread can be found here : http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?59117-***-200g-FINALLY-AN-UPDATE!-***
(http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?59117-***-200g-FINALLY-AN-UPDATE%21-***)

[ErikH]

but first......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrOjKpSZ8PI

[ErikH]

Here is something I have not seen before in a picture. It's the AEFW actually on the coral. Can you see them? I know there are at least two in this pic, maybe more. This picture should show everyone just how hard they are to see on an infected coral. This coral is out of the water so they are a little bit easier to see.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/DSC_0395.jpg

[ErikH]

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/DSC_0401.jpg

Here's a cool pic.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/DSC_0400.jpg

[ErikH]

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/AEFWcircled.jpg

[ErikH]

Closer

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x315/erikharrison/Fish/Pests/AEFWonSPSZOOM.jpg

[BSJF]

I thought there was another one to the left of these. Maybe not. Are you dipping these? The flatworms I experienced a few years ago thanks to a sweet lfs in Utah (who knew he hand them and didn't tell me) ate FWE like it was candy (like 10 times the dose). I had to freshwater dip and siphon to get rid of them. That store lost most of their fish in their very large display tank (toxins released by the million flatworms that died while they were treating with FWE), very sad, as many of those fish had been with them for many years.

Hoping for complete kill and success! Hunt with a vengence!

[ErikH]

I am dipping in FW RO/DI. It worked like a cham-pi-on! There were about 30 in the bucket when all was said and done. The little ones probably imploded from the osmotic shock.

[BSJF]

Great!

[ErikH]

Ok so my corals are getting color back. The red mille still looks beat up, but the blue mille has a ton of polyp extension. I am keeping my fingers crossed, and am happy so that I have yet to see any more. It's nice to have not seen eggs!

[txg8gxp]

WooHoo....awesome :)

[BSJF]

Great!