NowGlazeIT
Happy to help, Ask away.
Imo if you were able to see one and it wasn’t shriveled and dead looking then I can assume with confidence that there’s more and that your bayer dosage or length of exposer was ineffective
Oops, I released an AEFW - HELP
NowGlazeIT
Happy to help, Ask away.
Sorry to be blunt but these flatworms are no joke
Hey A4! I live in Roswell and I can tell you with certainty that most stores that have acros for sale in our area have AEFW. I have also found them on 3 out of 4 local purchases that I have made, the most shocking were from a beautiful tank that appeared to be full of healthy acros. As a rule, I cut off all plugs and dip in coral rx first. This will knock them off and alert you to their presence. Sometimes they are tiny and I ID with a microscope. I then soak the infected frags in Bayer for 10 minutes. I make it look like whole milk. Probably 25-30% Bayer to tank water. It is the most gentle of the dips that I have tried and it works. If I see exposed skeleton I cut it off or toss the frag. Sorry this happened to you but be glad it happened early on. Having a tank loaded with encrusted pieces would be a nightmare.
Scorpius
2500 Club Member
Dislike what I said all you want, but it only takes one of those turds to ruin an entire acropora collection. I had them and beat them by what I said in my previous post. Been AEFW free for 15 months now.
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A4goulet
Active Member
Hey jonj. Yeah I am glad it has happened early on with only 3 pieces encrusted and the rest are fracks I can pop right off the base rock. The shelf rock the 3 pieces are on will probably fit in a 5 gallon bucket so I will dip everything weekly while doing water changes for the next 5 weeks.
BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
Predators alone will not eliminate AEFW.
gig 'em
Valuable Member
Wrasses can help control AEFW, but they may not completely eradicate them. Those flatworms can hide in nooks and crannies that wrasses can't reach. I would prepare to do complete dipping attack. Break off all the acros in the tank and dip them every week for a few weeks. Don't leave ANY encrustments on the rocks in the tank that AEFW can survive on. That or set up a QT and dip the corals and put them in there while your tank is FOWLR.
rosshamsandwich
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Look up Joe Yaiullo and how he handled AEFW in his massive Long Island Tank. It can be done without tearing everything down. He blew them off with RODI water and it was a buffet for the wrasses and anthias.
ihavecrabs
2500 Club Member
I'm with Boom.
Weekly Bayer dips and killing any encrusted portion of the acro left on the rocks will break the lifecycle. Do it for 6 weeks, even if you don't see any. The last few dips, you are just detaching any aefw that just hatched so it will be unlikely that you see them in the milky mixture.
Since you have mostly frags that are not encrusted, this will likely go smoothly for you.
ihavecrabs
2500 Club Member
Do this if you want to have a turkey baster and a bucket of RODI every Sunday morning for an hour [emoji4]
Ashish Patel
2500 Club Member
if introduce early its much easier to get rid of them then say having a full blown sps dominant reef tank. You may have the record for finding them early :)Learn the life cycle of these things and go to WAR... its an adult it will lay tons of eggs immediately and they will spread or die looking for food. If your corals are healthy and doing well its easy to see the first sign of flatworms. Lack of PE towards the base is first sign along with browning coral and bleaching bases when all other corals look fine. I would say within 1-2 weeks you will notice this PE and color going.
I introduced them to my tank on a wild colony, Based on what i've see I only found flatworms, bite marks, or eggs on the original colony. I never glued it to the rockscape since it lost color relatively quickly. Based on my personal experience they won't start spreading until their host coral is overwhelmed. Its very risky for flatworms to move from acropora skin without being eaten, there adaptation is a camouflage! Babies Flatworms need to feed within 24hr and adults can go 7 days without food. They can reproduce 3 ways - (split, sexual and a-sexual), I also believe that my 2 scotter blennys, melanurus wrasse, 2 hermit crabs, bristle worm, and high flow made it more difficult for them to spread. I dipped all the acros weekly for 1 month and confident they are gone, however, only time will tell so lets see.
I introduced them to my tank on a wild colony, Based on what i've see I only found flatworms, bite marks, or eggs on the original colony. I never glued it to the rockscape since it lost color relatively quickly. Based on my personal experience they won't start spreading until their host coral is overwhelmed. Its very risky for flatworms to move from acropora skin without being eaten, there adaptation is a camouflage! Babies Flatworms need to feed within 24hr and adults can go 7 days without food. They can reproduce 3 ways - (split, sexual and a-sexual), I also believe that my 2 scotter blennys, melanurus wrasse, 2 hermit crabs, bristle worm, and high flow made it more difficult for them to spread. I dipped all the acros weekly for 1 month and confident they are gone, however, only time will tell so lets see.
Or pull everything and dip weekly
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OP
A4goulet
Active Member
I am in the process of doing the 6 weeks of pulling and dipping. I just performed my 2nd dip yesterday. My first dip, last week, didn't go so well. I had two fully encrusted acros on a piece of flat shelf rock that I didn't want to remove the acros from. The shelf rock and acros fit into a 5 gallon bucket so I dipped it without removing the acros. The shelf rock was very porous and apparently I didn't rinse it well because the next day my cleaner shrimp was dead and my pod population was non existent. So yesterday I removed the encrusted acros and tossed the piece of shelf rock they were on, which I should have done the first time. On a good note I have yet to see a flat worm. I do believe I will come out AEFW free at the end of this.
Lessons learned: There are no shortcuts in this hobby.
Lessons learned: There are no shortcuts in this hobby.
ihavecrabs
2500 Club Member
Ouch. Definitely did the right thing my removing it second time around.
I think you will end up flatworm free also. I also found growth took off and my acros really loved the Bayer dip for some reason. They always came out of the dips with polyps fully extended and happy.
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A4goulet
Active Member
I wouldn't say mine love the Bayer dip. But I haven't seen much of a negative effect. I'm been dipping 11-12ml of Bayer to cup of tank water. My next dip will be more around 15ml to cup of tank water. What strength solution are you dipping with?
Ashish Patel
2500 Club Member
This was the state of my tank when I introduced the AEFW colonie. The acro on the top in the middle I found had AEFW. It was in the tank 1 month before I fragged it onto a new plug. I noticed bite marks and first sign of eggs I removed it for good. I fragged and trashed many acros and inspected and dipped all the acropora for pest but nothing came off. The acros in my tank are currently doing very good and from what i've seen if frags become infested it won't take long for flatworms to destroy the frags. From the start i've inspected at night for flatworms and by doing this I think i found them before they spread. With that said I still cutt of there bases and dipped them. Now i am just waiting it out and if they return I will trash all acropora and start over. Fun stuff!
Ashish Patel
2500 Club Member
My valida was 7" away from the infested colony, apparently, their food of choice. I've never found flatworm signs or bite marks on it during my multiple dips on it and its held its color and growth well since i added the flatworms 4 months ago. Fingers crossed
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