Aefw

iReefer · Oct 22, 2009

Hello guyz, I know many of you guyz here are expert sps keeper so here I come looking for your help
I recently got a colony from a friend tank about 8 days which got infected by AEFW. But instead of keeping a whole colony what i did is to cut off couple branches and throw away the base and the left over. Dipped all the frags with MELAFIX and put it in my frag tank. and yesturday I discovered a good 10+ baby Flatworm (some with a kinda like pointer tail and some were rounded shape and some were kinda brownish in colors crawling and running on the tank wall. and today I found couple patches of eggs on the base of one of my bonsai frag. Ofcource, i threw it away. So what I want to do now is moved all sps colony (about 5 small/med size colony or so cuz the system is fairly new about 2 months old) to a tempory holding system and left the tank with no sps in there. DO you think 6 weeks is long enough to starved those AEFW to death? completely gone in my system? any suggestion guy? thanks in advance

w0r1d5m1n3 · Oct 22, 2009

Melevsreef.com - AEFW | Acropora Eating Flatworms

sandbar · Oct 22, 2009

Flatworm exit from salifert smokes them,good luck

JR's Reef · Oct 22, 2009

sandbar said:
Flatworm exit from salifert smokes them,good luck

That works with the red/brown flatworms but not AEFW

tangdiver · Oct 22, 2009

I had this years ago, when we were pioneering these evil things. We went 8 weeks with out any acro tissue at all in the main tank...

We also used lavamisole, a pig dewormer, no it is a little easier but not much

Grant

pwoller · Oct 22, 2009

I got rid of mine by getting a whole herd of wrasses. Then I took each coral out and dipped it in a revive solution probably 2 times a week for around a month picking all the eggs off. Its been around 3 weeks since the last dip and I haven't seen any more. I'm hoping that I got the numbers down enough that the 6 line can take out any others. By far the worst pest I have had yet. I will be dipping all of my new corals from now on.

gflat65 · Oct 24, 2009

I've beat them before with a similar method to what you describe. I removed all acros and acro tissue from the tank. Cut off any non living tissue and inspected for eggs (throwing away whatever looked suspect) and covered all non tissue covered areas with super glue gel (into the tissue covered area). Then they all got dipped and placed in a system that has never had acros in it. I dipped every week for about four weeks (not on consistent intervals, but at least four times, maybe five times in those four weeks). I left them in that system for a month or two (just too lazy to move them and figured extra time for inspection and with nothing in the other tank for the AEFW's to eat-I can justify being lazy anytime;)). A few years later, I still hadn't seen signs. Then I lost all my SPS in a move... Sure way to make sure they don't come back...

I dip in tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure. It may not kill the AEFW's, but it will at least stun them so you can blast/swish/dip them off the corals. Eventually, they melt in the solution:). I tried Levamisole HCl my first time around and had dismal results. I didn't have a good established system to hold them in like with the TMPCC dips, but Levamisole seemed to be some pretty harsh stuff. It seemed to soak into the rocks and leach back out over the week between dipping (I didn't remove all the non tissue and rockwork, like I did the second time, either). TMPCC has done well for me, so I stick to a similar method for all incoming corals to try to prevent letting them in again. The same procedure worked for monti nudis, too. It's labor intensive, but the only way to know they are all gone (at one point in time, anyway;)).

aquafrags · Oct 24, 2009

revive is great for getting rid of aefw and it seems to be the easiest on the corals, 6-8 weeks is good, but make sure you remove any remaining tissue that encrusted to the rocks

one big thing is to make sure your tank that will be holding the frags be stable, because the corals will be going through stress while dipping