Aefw

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jezzeaepi

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So it appears that I have AEFW. Whats the best way to approach this? Is there really a 100% effective method for eradicating them other then tossing everything and starting over? How long do they take to starve out? Do they go after all coral? or just certain sps? If I wanted to completly remove their food source, which corals would I need to take out? I don't have much left, just a dozen or so frags, so it wouldn't be that much of a loss for me to start over. The last 6 months of tank hell primed my corals for these AEFW to be the nail in the coffin =\

Peace,
Jesse
 
Good luck Jesse... let me know when you are ready to restock, if you go that route, and I'll see what I can do.
 
So far from my reading it seems that they only eat acros and ignore pocliporas and digitas. They can survive for about a week without food and have a 15 day egg cycle. The eggs can be laid anywhere. The best treatment looks like removing all acro, dipping them, inspecting them for eggs, then placing them in a seperate system for 6 weeks and dipping them weekly. The problem then it seems is being able to set up a temporary tank thats stable enough to house a lot of sps in a realtivley small enviroment. One would need a way of supplementing alk/calc in order to keep things stable enough to prevent stn. These stressed corals will also have to deal with the acclimating to a new nutrient level, flow, and lighting which could also cause STN. Finally the weekly dips will be taking their tolls as well.

It seems to me then, that possibly the best treatment is to just do bi weekly dips while leaving them in the display tank and hope for the best. In 6 weeks I should have either no corals or no AEFW's?
 
I'd Take them out & do enough WC's where you don't need to supplement them at all, no LR just water, flow & strong light. Not like they will suck all of your ca & alk by themselves, If you use RC your levels should be around 400ppm close enough. In a sterile environment after being dipped like that I think it would be their best chance.

JMO I never had to deal with them!
 
Don't know if this will help with the aefw, but I'll throw it our here. I recently bought some Springeri damsels from Premium Aquatics. They were sold as flatworm eaters. I was skeptical, but since they were pretty & cheap and described in Scott Michael's new Reef Fishes book as "peaceful and highly desirable" --I thought I'd give them a try. They do eat flatworms; however keep in mind I have red planaria not aefw
 
Thanks for the suggestions folks.

Really not sure where they came from. The first time I noticed them was on a single colony about a month ago. I dipped every sps in the tank but found them only on the one coral, so I inspected that coral, found the egg cluster and removed it. Before this the last coral addition was an ora birdsnest from 3 months back. I added some cleaner crew as well about a month before. Since they dont like birdsnest, and I can't invision a flatworm laying eggs on a moving invert, Im at a loss. Dipping alone doesn't seem to be enough to save yourself from these buggers.

After not seeing them for a month I saw some during an inspection the other day and my heart dropped =\ I dont know if they managed to remain unnoticed for a month, or if somehow the cleaner crew I added a week back could have anything to do with it. Either way, I think Scooter is right about the seperat tank appraoch. If I want to insure that every last one is out of my display Ill have to remove all food sources for atleast a month.
 
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Look at all the guys that keeps frags tanks, their basically sterile & sps do well in a nutrient free environment, no they may not grow well because you cut out any supplementation but they will stay healthier IMO because you can control the environment easier.
 
From what I can tell some poeple experimented with flat worm exit at 2.5 t 4 times the recomended dose and some success with killing the living AEFW but undoubtedly nuked a large amount of the biodiversity in their tank, and it does nothing for the eggs, meaning you 3-4+ treatments... No thanks hehe. I dont even know if it worked out for them in the end.. 25 pages was a little to much to read hehe and the negatives and high cost associated with such a proccess turned me off from researching further.
 
I hear that!!! I was wondering why it was just my tri color and my garf bonsai that was receding when everything else is doing great and then I read on RC that those are their favorite corals to attack 1st. Yeah it seems to be alot of work especially having over 40 plus different types of sps and the cost to treat. Although I only have a 40b it would'nt cost too much.
 
I never tried this but If you put them in a QT, could you take something like a turkey baster & blast them off the corals as your treating, to me the more you get off the better?
 
I plan on doing that Scooter. As far as I can see it is just my tri color and garf bonsai(my fav. coral:mad:) is receding from the bottom up. I really want to treat the whole tank some how.
 
i think people were experimenting with a pig dewormer to dip their acros in to kill them off. youll end up losing color on your sps though. the only thing is that the dosage is unknown, only a few people have done it and others have followed
 
Yeah the thing is, is there something that will treat the tank itself without having to dip each coral one by one? I wish I never looked for these guys but then it is good I caught it now before it got to plague proportions because I don't see much. I don't see them on the infected coral at all but on some parts of the LR. I just see the recession of the coral but no FW. I hope it is some different type of FW. What other FW are there besides the acro eating ones?
 
maybe if you got some type of wrasse like a yellow coris-- only thing ive heard is that they may end up ripping off the tissue trying to get the worms off :\
 
Well I did noticed that when I had a pipefish and a sixline wrass in there (before they got killed by a stupid hawkfish) I never saw them before so I'm wondering if they eat them suckers. I've also read on RC that spotted Mandarin goby eat them also so I will either put another pipefish or mandarin and sixline in there.
 
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