BREAKING NEWS! We Have Officially Eradicated AEFW's With A 100% Reef Safe IN TANK Treatment.

[UWC]

OK folks, I have yet to post here. I have been following since the beginning, but have kept silent. I am not one to endorse or bash a product...especially in the preliminary phases. I was one of the ones who got the first batch that clearly didn't work. Jeff has been great about listening to feedback and replacing bottles. To be honest, it was difficult for me to stick with this. I have a 300 gallon system(sps dominate) and doing weekly dosing, water changes, maintenance, etc. was not only tedious, it was expensive.

To be fair, I have been doing a reasonable amount of dipping during this whole process. I am four months in and have done three separate treatment regimens. The last of which were triple doses and finished last week.

Results - Treatments 1 and 2 did not work. There were clearly issues with the consistency and strength of the batches received. The third batch was thicker, smelled more potent and took longer to dissipate in the tank itself. The third batch appears to have worked! I dipped every coral and frag in my tank yesterday. Not a single worm. This will be the second week of a clear tank. In addition, no sign of stress, bite marks, eggs, etc. Color and PE are clearly returning. Too early to declare complete victory as I would like to go a full month with no interference.

Feedback - First and foremost you must treat this 4 week dosing regimen as something you need to participate in. It is not a "set it and forget it" type of treatment. You need to be proactive with basting, moving acro's, scraping infected rock, etc. The goal is to make these buggers as uncomfortable as possible. Squirt them off the acro's...move their homes to a different spot (where possible). Don't baby the process and be aggressive.

You must shake and re shake the bottles. To be honest, I believe this is the most difficult piece to the puzzle and probably where most of the breakdowns take place. I used a full 16 ounce bottle for each single dose. Just the way the math worked out. I can tell you that I would not have gotten similar consistency per dose if I had to use 1/4 bottle or 1/2 bottle each dose. In some cases. even after vigorous shaking, the bottom of the bottle had clumpy residuals still present. I would empty the whole bottle, then refill with tank water, shake and empty again. For those with smaller tanks, I just am not sure how you get consistent dosing parameters for each dose. One suggestions for UWC might be to sell multiple size bottles so one can use a full bottle for each dose even for smaller tanks. Even still, I believe there were some inconsistencies in the third batch of bottles I received. Some appeared thicker than others and some appeared to have more residuals on the bottom than others. Not sure if this had something to do with the shakedown process on my part...but I can tell you I vigorously shook each bottle. I have a sneaky suspicion that those having problems with the latest batch are having a problem with consistency?

You must test your water parameters during the entire treatment. Spikes happen...and it may not happen in the first dose. Could be the second or third, but you will almost certainly have to vary your dosing schedule during the month long treatment.

Lastly, those claiming Purge killed off their acro's or anything else are simply wrong. I have a complete mixed reef system. Did I lose a couple acro's, yes. Were they directly related to Purge...absolutely not. Anybody claiming otherwise probably did not take appropriate precautions. (ie checking parameters) Again, I have gone through three complete dosing regimens. The last of which were with the newest batch of bottles and I was TRIPLE dosing. My tank took longer than 24 hours to clear up. My entire house reeked of Purge even the day after treating. I actually felt bad for the fish in my tank! Yet, the treatments did not kill anything. Things like scoly's and plates actually opened up and ate during treatment.

Overall I believe this is a clear breakthrough in the fight against AEFW. This bug has claimed victory for decades and I now believe we have something to break the chain. I read some negative feedback from others about products like flatworm exit, etc. that would never be released if they were not 100% effective which literally made me laugh out loud. Some people need to get off their high horse and live in a glass half full world. This product was just created. There are bound to be hiccups. Those claiming others never had issues like this have no idea what it was like in the very beginning. There is always a trial and error process. I am guessing UWC doesn't have the manpower or finances for double and triple blind studies, etc. Likewise, I am sure there were getting hundreds of emails stating please release whatever you have as AEFW is killing my system. I know I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on something. Do I wish now that I waited...well yes, of course. I wasted dozens of hours and a crap load of money. However, I am a happy camper right now as I may finally have my display tank back and looking beautiful!(although I do reserve the right to get take all this back if I have AEFW in a few weeks!!)

Get the newest batch.
Make sure you shake each bottle way more than you think you need to.
Baste, scrape, move acro's. Don't let anything stay unsettled.
Test, test and re test your water parameters.
Don't be afraid to overdose. IMO more is better than less and it won't kill your inhabitants.

One more thing. For those who dip with just Bayer. Beware Beware Beware. Bayer does NOT kill all AEFW. I have tested this because I was so annoyed my tank got infected in the first place. Melafix does. Expell does. However, I will be double dipping going forward as I believe Bayer does kill things that perhaps the others do not. Just my opinion.

Thanks so much for the detailed review! Really sorry about the bothched bottles, but it is what it is and glad we figured it out as soon as we did so we could move forward, get people replacement bottles and watch as tank after tank come out AEFW free, which I think people are seeing now as a few more people are posting publicly

 

[Macdaddynick1]

Agree I was doing double dip first dip in Bayer 2nd on Melafix in the melafix dip saw a few flatworms doing their eradic swim when dying after these dips I started the purge treatment

That’s a good idea.
You dip in bayer and melafix one after another? Does this combo dip have any side effects and how long do you dip for?

 

[eamike261]

@UWC or anyone who might know...

How fast does AEFW spread and take over a tank?

9 days ago I discovered an acro frag with tons of bite marks (after the frag had been visibly declining for a few weeks). I promptly dipped it and started my Purge treatment 6 days ago. Since the dip and treatment the acro bite marks have recovered significantly and the frag overall is doing drastically better, which is great. I've inspected my 6 other acros and haven't seen any indication of AEFW or bite marks. Is it possible my ground zero frag was the only one infested after several weeks? Or would my tank surely have others by that time?

Either way I will be completing the Purge treatment in full, this isn't something I want to test for myself.

 

[Oshengems]

That’s a good idea.
You dip in bayer and melafix one after another? Does this combo dip have any side effects and how long do you dip for?

I had several containers to avoid leaching Bayer into my tank.... Container 1 Bayer 10mins, container 2 fresh tank water rinse, container 3 melafix 5min dip, container 3&4 fresh tank water rinse.... still managed to kill some of my shrimps smh the others are acting weird.

No I’ll effect On the corals that I saw one of the smaller frags of purple dragon did loose all of its zooxathellea it completely bleached out but recover better than before it

Edit:Container 4&5

 

[UWC]

@UWC or anyone who might know...

How fast does AEFW spread and take over a tank?

9 days ago I discovered an acro frag with tons of bite marks (after the frag had been visibly declining for a few weeks). I promptly dipped it and started my Purge treatment 6 days ago. Since the dip and treatment the acro bite marks have recovered significantly and the frag overall is doing drastically better, which is great. I've inspected my 6 other acros and haven't seen any indication of AEFW or bite marks. Is it possible my ground zero frag was the only one infested after several weeks? Or would my tank surely have others by that time?

Either way I will be completing the Purge treatment in full, this isn't something I want to test for myself.

Really hard question to answer. In general most people do not know they have them until the numbers are high enough to start causing noticeable damage. With that said, adult flatworms can lay A LOT of eggs in a 24 hour period... and they do it over and over and over, and that is just one single flatworm

There are generally acros in every tank that the worms prefer. I saw your other thread and saw it was a PC rainbow, which worms do tend to like.

The big question is if the worms were able to lay eggs or not or if a few younger worms just hitched a ride in on a new frag. I would baste your corals every day or every few days to look for actual flatworms and to see if in the coming weeks you have groups of eggs hatching and young flatworms present.

Good call on running the whole course of the treatment to ensure you nuke any hatchlings along the way

 

[eamike261]

Really hard question to answer. In general most people do not know they have them until the numbers are high enough to start causing noticeable damage. With that said, adult flatworms can lay A LOT of eggs in a 24 hour period... and they do it over and over and over, and that is just one single flatworm

There are generally acros in every tank that the worms prefer. I saw your other thread and saw it was a PC rainbow, which worms do tend to like.

The big question is if the worms were able to lay eggs or not or if a few younger worms just hitched a ride in on a new frag. I would baste your corals every day or every few days to look for actual flatworms and to see if in the coming weeks you have groups of eggs hatching and young flatworms present.

Good call on running the whole course of the treatment to ensure you nuke any hatchlings along the way

Interesting thanks for the info!

And by the way, UWC, on behalf of the whole reefing community I want to thank you personally. Your responsiveness on this post at all hours of the day, every day, really shows your dedication and enthusiasm to the hobby (and your products). I don't know how big your operation is or whether you personally are a scientist, spokesman, entrepreneur, or all of the above, but regardless I will absolutely remember this type of commitment for years to come when I'm purchasing products for my reefing needs. I hope others notice as well.

 

[UWC]

Thank you very much for the kind words! Have a fantastic Thanksgiving

 

[sebastianpolen]

@UWC Hi
I just received parcel from you
Thank you very much for new bottles and I'm starting to dose today ,I will give you feedback as soon I will finish treatment
Thanks one again
Sebastian

 

[dragon99]

Last dose (day 21) went in 3 days ago. Too soon for me to declare total victory, but I haven't seen an AEFW since the second week of treatment. The last two doses have been double, since I had plenty of Purge left.

Of course I spoke too soon.

 

[sebastianpolen]

Of course I spoke too soon.

it probably does not work :-(

 

[sebastianpolen]

Of course I spoke too soon.

Which batch you have ?

 

[wesman42]

Why would it matter which batch? If this was a fully researched and released product there shouldn't be a quality control problem

 

[UWC]

I don't think those things go hand in hand at all. There's a big difference between making up small batches for testing purposes and moving it to full scale bottling. If you've been following the thread, you've seen that this is a high viscosity, thick, almost sludge like material, which is totally different then mixing up just liquids that go into a bottle. Here is something that I shared with a user here recently which might help clear it up

So it’s really embarrassing to say, But, yes we believe the first few batches were partially botched. Basically we switched bottling companies as this stuff is really hard to bottle because it is so dense and has such a thick viscosity.

Not even really thinking about it as we were assured they would have no problem bottling it as they bottle products much thicker. We ended up opening up some bottles, shaking the hell out of them and they seemed “thinner” then it should be. So... we went back to the company and watched them bottle a small batch.

Because of the way the product will “settle”, basically it needs to be highly mixed at all times during the bottling, kind of like mixing up a big batch of saltwater in a 10 gallon bucket with say a mag drive 12 pump. Needs to really be spun around continuously.

They were doing this, but as it was pumping through their machine, the “particles” basically fell to the bottom and collected in the piston area of the machine. When we had them open up the machine, I could grab handfuls of the stuff, multiple handfuls actually. This should have been dispersed throughout the bottles

So.... it’s not that they were bad, it’s just they were weak. I’m guessing the first however many bottles from each batch were fine but as more bottles went through the machine, more stuff would collect and the bottles would get weaker and weaker as the batch ran.

 

[Brew12]

I don't think those things go hand in hand at all. There's a big difference between making up small batches for testing purposes and moving it to full scale bottling. If you've been following the thread, you've seen that this is a high viscosity, thick, almost sludge like material, which is totally different then mixing up just liquids that go into a bottle. Here is something that I shared with a user here recently which might help clear it up

So it’s really embarrassing to say, But, yes we believe the first few batches were partially botched. Basically we switched bottling companies as this stuff is really hard to bottle because it is so dense and has such a thick viscosity.

Not even really thinking about it as we were assured they would have no problem bottling it as they bottle products much thicker. We ended up opening up some bottles, shaking the hell out of them and they seemed “thinner” then it should be. So... we went back to the company and watched them bottle a small batch.

Because of the way the product will “settle”, basically it needs to be highly mixed at all times during the bottling, kind of like mixing up a big batch of saltwater in a 10 gallon bucket with say a mag drive 12 pump. Needs to really be spun around continuously.

They were doing this, but as it was pumping through their machine, the “particles” basically fell to the bottom and collected in the piston area of the machine. When we had them open up the machine, I could grab handfuls of the stuff, multiple handfuls actually. This should have been dispersed throughout the bottles

So.... it’s not that they were bad, it’s just they were weak. I’m guessing the first however many bottles from each batch were fine but as more bottles went through the machine, more stuff would collect and the bottles would get weaker and weaker as the batch ran.

Sounds like you guys should be selling this in a paint can so the end users can mix it up, too!

 

[UWC]

Ha!!

 

[Victoria M]

I don't think those things go hand in hand at all. There's a big difference between making up small batches for testing purposes and moving it to full scale bottling. If you've been following the thread, you've seen that this is a high viscosity, thick, almost sludge like material, which is totally different then mixing up just liquids that go into a bottle. Here is something that I shared with a user here recently which might help clear it up

So it’s really embarrassing to say, But, yes we believe the first few batches were partially botched. Basically we switched bottling companies as this stuff is really hard to bottle because it is so dense and has such a thick viscosity.

Not even really thinking about it as we were assured they would have no problem bottling it as they bottle products much thicker. We ended up opening up some bottles, shaking the hell out of them and they seemed “thinner” then it should be. So... we went back to the company and watched them bottle a small batch.

Because of the way the product will “settle”, basically it needs to be highly mixed at all times during the bottling, kind of like mixing up a big batch of saltwater in a 10 gallon bucket with say a mag drive 12 pump. Needs to really be spun around continuously.

They were doing this, but as it was pumping through their machine, the “particles” basically fell to the bottom and collected in the piston area of the machine. When we had them open up the machine, I could grab handfuls of the stuff, multiple handfuls actually. This should have been dispersed throughout the bottles

So.... it’s not that they were bad, it’s just they were weak. I’m guessing the first however many bottles from each batch were fine but as more bottles went through the machine, more stuff would collect and the bottles would get weaker and weaker as the batch ran.

Thank you for the transparency. It is very informative to us, the consumer, to help us understand what challenges you face as a company. And to see that you truly took criticisms as an opportunity for improvement.

 

[Makers Marc]

I had several containers to avoid leaching Bayer into my tank.... Container 1 Bayer 10mins, container 2 fresh tank water rinse, container 3 melafix 5min dip, container 3&4 fresh tank water rinse.... still managed to kill some of my shrimps smh the others are acting weird.

No I’ll effect On the corals that I saw one of the smaller frags of purple dragon did loose all of its zooxathellea it completely bleached out but recover better than before it

Edit:Container 4&5

How do yall temperature acclimate correctly while switching from one small container after another. The water gets cold quickly?

 

[Oshengems]

How do yall temperature acclimate correctly while switching from one small container after another. The water gets cold quickly?

I was taking water from the tank as I was going along the one that worried me was the first dip since it was 10mins but my apt is pretty warm even in winter I have to keep windows a bit cracked to keep it comfortable room temp but corals are hardier Than what we think one of those frags stood in the Bayer dip for about 15-20mins before I realized it absolutely nothing happened to it, it was the JF flame

 

[DMG Reef]

It's been a month since I completed the Purge treatment. I haven't added anything new even though I'm itching to do so. I guess I'm still a little traumatized from the whole experience. I've been inspecting my acros at night with a flashlight fearing I might have missed a batch of eggs.

That said, there are NO flatworms to be found. Acros are healthy and growing.

The product absolutely worked for me. I feel confident that UWC will eventually figure out why some systems are resistant. This is such a major breakthrough for acro lovers like myself.

During this Thanksgiving season, I'm so thankful for innovators like Jeff who make reef-keeping a little easier. Please keep up the good work!;Cat

 

[UWC]

Thank you for the kind words