Acro Eating Flat Worms
- Thread starter DyM
- Start date
Sorry for your losses. Marsh actually has a member thats working on a treatment for AEFW. Apparently the first round of testing went very well. She has a couple WTB AEFW infested acros adds. Shes not telling a lot of details but she is working with one of the LFS and 3CC seems pretty positive about her results.
Her words:
"I'm also working on a different dip right now...it kills AEFW eggs. Still running a few tests, but I'm really excited about it so far. All thanks to 3CC letting me foster the affected acros
I want to see if it will also kill adult AEFW, but I can't find any to test it on LOL. Guess I cleaned the corals too well the first time around."
"Ah, yeah, believe it or not I'm waiting for more AEFW eggs...LOL! Even though my first round of tests clearly killed the larvae in the eggs, I want to run a second trial.
I have to admit, it was quite satisfying to watch the little...things...die, through my microscope..."
http://www.marsh-reef.org/3cc/38318-always-dip-2.html
http://www.marsh-reef.org/marine-reef-general-discussion/38898-wanted-aefw.html
http://www.marsh-reef.org/want-buy-wtb/39003-wanted-ugly-unwanted-acros.html
Her words:
"I'm also working on a different dip right now...it kills AEFW eggs. Still running a few tests, but I'm really excited about it so far. All thanks to 3CC letting me foster the affected acros
"Ah, yeah, believe it or not I'm waiting for more AEFW eggs...LOL! Even though my first round of tests clearly killed the larvae in the eggs, I want to run a second trial.
I have to admit, it was quite satisfying to watch the little...things...die, through my microscope..."
http://www.marsh-reef.org/3cc/38318-always-dip-2.html
http://www.marsh-reef.org/marine-reef-general-discussion/38898-wanted-aefw.html
http://www.marsh-reef.org/want-buy-wtb/39003-wanted-ugly-unwanted-acros.html
Someday for sure they will find an in-tank treatment. For now, I have one more treatment to go and happily have neither seen eggs after the second treatment, nor AEFWs since after the first treatment. I think the eggs got past my first inspection. It's easy to see why when you realize the eggs can be in the divots where branches come off the main stalk. If you look at all the pics online, they show how clumped and together egg batches are. Don't be fooled, now that several of the dead coral stalks are dried and white, it's easy to see the eggs in every nook and cranny. It's also easy to see how a tooth brush or other scraping may miss a few. And a few eggs turn into a lot of parasites. You clearly see all the eggs up the seam, but I circled others that were not easily seen. The covering the area with super glue is good, but can get out of hand depending on how many eggs you're talking about.
For all the frag plugs and rocks that were attached, for what it's worth, I never saw eggs off the actual coral. That's good news I think, but still not saying 100% AEFW's don't lay eggs elsewhere. I just didn't see any.
For all the frag plugs and rocks that were attached, for what it's worth, I never saw eggs off the actual coral. That's good news I think, but still not saying 100% AEFW's don't lay eggs elsewhere. I just didn't see any.
TODAY WAS THE LAST TREATMENT!!!!!!!!!
Now it's a waiting game..... ohhhh please let those little suckers be gone...... please.....
The last 8 weeks reminded me of how when we all first start off, we can't keep our hands out of the tank. Always fiddling and moving things. I just got my share of that... looking forward to not touching anything for awhile.
Now it's a waiting game..... ohhhh please let those little suckers be gone...... please.....
The last 8 weeks reminded me of how when we all first start off, we can't keep our hands out of the tank. Always fiddling and moving things. I just got my share of that... looking forward to not touching anything for awhile.
OK, 3 weeks after my last treatment, here's a report. I took all the acro's and dipped them again within the last hour, except this time with Coral RX at 1.5X strength....... and NO AEFW at all. phew..... The Coral RX is clear, where the Bayer in the treatment is milky and although adults are large, they can get quite small - I didn't want to miss any if they were there. I scrutinized the dip bucket, and also the first rinse container. Can't tell you how relieved I am. Next week I'll mount all my acro's back in their place.
Brother, I feel for you. It was by far the worse setback and challenge faced. Dipping large colonies was hard, tedious, with a lot of loses. In hind sight, I considered this a reboot phase. Good luck, feel free to ask any questions. On RC there was someone experimenting with an intank treatment, but it didn't pan out.
You can try Salifert Flatworm Exit and/or interceptor spectrum. Both of them have very high sucess rates of killing flatworms and interceptor spectrum will also kill red bugs if you have them too. Both methods can be treated in tank without removing fish (shrimp need to be removed for interceptor). You could dip highly infested colonies in Coral Rx, and use theother two treatments to get stragglers.