Here it is! Fenbendazole use against hydroids

[Batts]

Yes all digitates & gsp are gone, I didn't have to treat it second time.
It took few weeks of waiting but it was really successful at the end.
I did 25% weekly wcs after the 36hrs treatment for a month and ran heaps of carbon in a reactor changed weekly.
Also added some polyfilter to the sump baffles to soak the excess ammonia from the die offs.

The following got killed by the treatment:
Digitates
Gsp
Turbo snails
Vermetids (when I went to crush some tubes they were empty but you never know these f$&kers)
Blue sympodium
Xenia type corals

The Stromb snail made it through.

Most of my nassarius snails were hunted by hermits so not sure if I have anymore, so can't comment if they were effected by the treatment. Haven't seen one for a long time.

Bristle worms population took a dent but there are survivors.

Hermits, fish, zoas, palys, sps, acans, floridas, Rhods &mushrooms , sun corals and aiptasia were completely unharmed.

Chemicals in a reef tank should be absolutely the last resort, but if the infestation is severe and there is no other option then I recommend this method.

As twiliard stated a few times, there are some consequences like not being able to have starfish or snails for a period of time, and be prepared for amonia spike after the treatment.

if you accept the risks then I would say go for it, it works.

 

[Guppy Slayer]

Yes all digitates & gsp are gone, I didn't have to treat it second time.
It took few weeks of waiting but it was really successful at the end.
I did 25% weekly wcs after the 36hrs treatment for a month and ran heaps of carbon in a reactor changed weekly.
Also added some polyfilter to the sump baffles to soak the excess ammonia from the die offs.

The following got killed by the treatment:
Digitates
Gsp
Turbo snails
Vermetids (when I went to crush some tubes they were empty but you never know these f$&kers)
Blue sympodium
Xenia type corals

The Stromb snail made it through.

Most of my nassarius snails were hunted by hermits so not sure if I have anymore, so can't comment if they were effected by the treatment. Haven't seen one for a long time.

Bristle worms population took a dent but there are survivors.

Hermits, fish, zoas, palys, sps, acans, floridas, Rhods &mushrooms , sun corals and aiptasia were completely unharmed.

Chemicals in a reef tank should be absolutely the last resort, but if the infestation is severe and there is no other option then I recommend this method.

As twiliard stated a few times, there are some consequences like not being able to have starfish or snails for a period of time, and be prepared for amonia spike after the treatment.

if you accept the risks then I would say go for it, it works.

Thanks for the response. I haven't treated my tank yet but will be taking note of what you did and I'm sure I will be doing it very soon. I have everything I need to do the treatment and am well stocked in carbon and polly filters for the clean up after.
I'm thinking I want to first do a quick freshwater dip of all of my rock to try and save some of the critters living in the rock and tossing them in my quarantine tank till all of the K9 dewormer has been removed from the display tank.

 

[Jay Ling]

I completed my treatment for digitate hydroids. It took a second round to knock off a few stragglers. I’ve done my water changes, running carbon, skimming, etc. I used the fish bendazole BTW. So, how long before I can add snails?

 

[Jay Ling]

It’s been about 10 days, since the treatment ended. Still wondering when I can add snails. The sand is looking punk :-(

Add “Nepthau Palau” leather coral to the list of stuff to pull before treatment. A few days after treatment it drooped and was all limp. A few days later it detached and went black. Bye Mr. Leather :-( Still, very happy that the hydroids are dead. Had I known about the leather I would have pulled it. Oh well.

 

[Jay Ling]

Oh, and I had colonial hydroids not the digitate type. Funny thing is they must have been stinging a candy cane coral. They were at the base of the rock the candy cane's are on. Those poor coral heads were not looking good for some time now. Right after treatment they plumped up and look great. So those ugly little things that look like feather dusters, but with a light green tinge to 'em, and bendy tubes (they don't snap off), those were apparently stinging the candy canes.

I know that with the Safeguard form of Fenben you have to wait 3 months before adding snails. Just wondering if the fishbendazole is less time? And how about pods? I'd like to re-stock those too. Anyone have a good timeline to re-stock CUC after Fish bendazole type treatment?

 

[Reef300]

Looking for a little guidance. I'm interested in using the fenbenzole to rid my tank of encrusting gorgonian amd gsp as it is starting to threaten my SPS in a 300 gallon. Will the fenbenzine do the trick or am I stuck trying to scrub it all off.

 

[Reefinny]

i treated yesterday, 24 ours later, a lot gone but alot more still there. For those that trwated how fast did you see results?

 

[Reefinny]

@twillard I dosed a few days ago. Some are gone. Many still there. I still have some gsp as well. I used the fish bendazole. I used 1 and half packets on a 320 gallon system. Should I dose again? If so how soon?

Everything in the tank seems to be in good shape.

 

[WallyB]

Ok. So I'm ready to treat. QT Experiment tank.
I posted before, but things got busy.

I took out a nice infested rock into a 10Gal QT tank. (15 Gallons total on system) SHOWN BELOW.


Haven't had time to treat so it's been brewing with Hydroids for a couple of months.
I have one BlueGreen Chromis in the QT so things have been fed.
The Colonial Hydroids have been spreading.
There is a green Star Polyp in there to prove treatment is working.
Some Zoa's, Mushroom to prove they will be ok.

This setup and state of things today.

At approx. 15 Gallon of Water.
I am using Pure Fish Fenbendzole Power.
so 15x1.5mg = 22.5 mg of Fenbendazole (NOT PODWER but substance) .

I say not powder since when I weight the power "that says 250mg per packet, on packaging" , the packet weighs around 2.5g or 2500 mg.
There must is a carrier substance in the packet. Kind of like an aspirin pill that weighs more then the amount of medicine you take.

That red scoop spoon is volume (0.05 ml / scoop).
I scooped out the packet into test tube, and it took approx. 40 scoops.

Each packet is 250mg, so I need approx. 1/10 of a packet to get 22.5 mg of Fenbendazole. (I will be over @ 25.0mg @ 1/10)

So 4 scoops will be around 250mg of power, or 25.0 mg of Fenbendazole which will be close to what I need to treat 15 Gallons (1.5 x 15 = 22 mg)

Does this sound correct?

4 scoops mixed with RO water. I'm even thinking of adding a bit of Polyp Booster in there since Hydroid love the food.

I will be running my WEBCAM timelapse mode at 1 frame per minute to capture the treatment effect.

 

[WallyB]

The hydroids have certainly been affected after 24 hours of treatment.

No fuzzy tips showing. A few hanging loosely.
No corals adversely affected.

 

[WallyB]

So my treatment is completed.

Since this isn't my display tank with Sump and tons of biodiversity, I did a 2nd treatment (1/2 dose, 2 scoops) before doing water change.
That should certainly take care of any resistant hydroids (pretending to be dead)..

I have now done a 50% water change and will observe the rocks and corals for any hydroid activity (for a couple of weeks) before considering rocks safe to reuse in DT.

 

[WallyB]

Something UNexpected. Lots of BrittleWorms alive (Post Double Treatment).

I started cleaning up the QT a bit, and when I remove some artifacts, I found lots of brittle worms alive underneath.


Another thing I noticed is an Aptiasia popped out of nowhere after treatment. I thought the stuff kills them too. Maybe not.

Appears the treatment dosage isn't that powerful to kill bigger worms, but I'll watch to see if they live long term.

 

[Reefinny]

I surprisingly had the same effects on my bristle worms, I am about to do another round of treatment. It got a lot of the hydroids but not all.

 

[HolisticBear]

Just adding that I also had a successful treatment. All of my Trochus snails and some or all of the Cerith snails survived.

Thank you to the people who did this research.

 

[Jay Ling]

I must have very tough colonial hydroids. I did two rounds of FishBendazole and still had stragglers. After the first round I could still see a few greenish heads. I ignored them thinking they were remnants that would die. They didn’t die and they did spread so I ran another round of FishBen. Again, there were stragglers. Before they had a chance to bloom again I smothered them in Red Sea Aiptasia X. So far this seems to be the end of them. I now know to never overlook a few here and there. Get ‘em before they get you! I hope this helps someone. Cheers!

 

[Jay Ling]

Looking for a little guidance. I'm interested in using the fenbenzole to rid my tank of encrusting gorgonian amd gsp as it is starting to threaten my SPS in a 300 gallon. Will the fenbenzine do the trick or am I stuck trying to scrub it all off.

I can say that it killed off the blue cloves, daisy cloves, and GSP (thankfully!). I didn’t have pink encrusting gorg in there but I know it is effected by this too. I moved a small rock from the treated tank (after water changes and carbon) into another tank with pink encrusting. The added rock was placed near the pink gorg and it retracted and died off of that side of the rock. So, yeah, give it a go.

 

[Slevin007]

Getting ready to treat, can you guys advise if the following will be safe

Button scoly
Acans
Blasto
Candy cane
Frogspawn
Hammer
Favias
Leather
Rock flower anemones
Mushrooms

Cleaner shrimp

Fish I'm sure will be fine based on reading this

Snails obviously are up in the air

Thanks for the help
Paul M.

 

[HolisticBear]

Getting ready to treat, can you guys advise if the following will be safe

Paul,

My acans, hammer, favias, and cynarina all did fine. All my corals did fine and I was a bit worried about the cynarina. You may have luck with your snails as there were some thoughts the snails were affected more by the other ingredients in the original source and switching to the pure fish version fixed that. All my Trochus did fine. The Cerith are hard to count, so I don't know if I lost a few or not.

Some tips on how it progressed thru my tank. During the first six hours, the hydroids were still active and I thought I might have gone with too low a dose (I did ~1.25mg rather than 1.5mg). At ~24 hours there were only 2-4 alive and they were moving slowly. I felt good and figured a second dose would wipe them out. When I did the water change at 36 hours, I couldn't find any. Now almost a month later, I haven't seen one. So don't judge progress by what you see in the first 12 hours. I had the digitate variants.

 

[Slevin007]

Thank you so much for the help this makes me feel about a million times better. I plan to start in the next week or so. I need to clear out a few days so I can really monitor everything.

If I ram call is it 1.5ml per gallon or per 10. I keep trying to run a search but I get a locked screen.

Thank you again for all of this help

 

[HolisticBear]

If I ram call is it 1.5ml per gallon or per 10. I keep trying to run a search but I get a locked screen.Thank you again for all of this help

It's 1.5mg of fenbendazole per gallon, I shouldn't have used ml. When you go thru the thread, you'll see most mention 1-2mg per gallon and a few people mentioned 1.5mg per 10 gallon (which seems to be a typo and clarified later). If you have an accurate scale you can separate out the amount you need. Since I had 3 packets, it was easier for me to empty an entire packet into a known amount of water (mix well) and then pull out the liquid (ml) I needed. I figured I'd never use all three packets, so I was fine throwing away 2/3 of the liquid.

I used my actual water volume (less than tank volume given rock,sand,etc) and did ~1.25mg per gallon because I do things on the conservative side. After 36 hours, did a large water change and added a carbon.