bangai64
New member
I want to share my recent experience with AEF's, and what I believe may be the natural solution to my problem.
I have been battling AEF's now for quite some time. basically weekly dips/baths in Bayer trying to get ahead of the infestation. Just when thought I had it licked, another acro would fall victim to the little monsters. So after a few months of this, i began to think, after many battles, the war was lost, and I would just let them eat what they wanted, and when their food source was gone, I would wait for them to die off and start all over.
So one day, I noticed one of the acros I had put down on the sand bed had a couple of blue legs on it and they appeared to be picking something off and eating it. I couldn't tell what, but it didn't matter.I know their opportunisic feeders, and will eat whatever they find. So it gave me an idea. I took all my acros, mainly frags and put them down on the sand bed and bought more blue legs. It seem its easier for the crabs to maneuver on the bottom to get to the acros, versus on the rocks. Sure enough the next day I noticed a lot of the blue legs on the acros grazing away. Again not being able to see what were eating, but they were definitely eating something. Altogether, I stopped the bayer treatments and figured at this point what do i have to lose. I even went a step further and bought eggcrate and made racks for my acros nd transferred the below with about 100 blue legs. Added 300 to the main tank. You can get a good deal on these off of ebay from the keys. Its been about 7-8 weeks now with no Bayer treatments and all my acros are healthy and doing well. It seems the little guys have done the job for me. Not one acro is stressed or discolored, not the milli's or tri colors, which the flatworms seem to love. When i started this experiment I know that some of these acros ahad flatworms on them because they were sad looking, but ahve fully recovered and are now thriving again. The trick is, to make the acros as accessible as possible to the blue legs and make sure their hungry. Lol!
The milli in the first pic was about dead. Now it's happy again w/ good polyp extension. If you look closely, you can see a blue leg on it.
I have been battling AEF's now for quite some time. basically weekly dips/baths in Bayer trying to get ahead of the infestation. Just when thought I had it licked, another acro would fall victim to the little monsters. So after a few months of this, i began to think, after many battles, the war was lost, and I would just let them eat what they wanted, and when their food source was gone, I would wait for them to die off and start all over.
So one day, I noticed one of the acros I had put down on the sand bed had a couple of blue legs on it and they appeared to be picking something off and eating it. I couldn't tell what, but it didn't matter.I know their opportunisic feeders, and will eat whatever they find. So it gave me an idea. I took all my acros, mainly frags and put them down on the sand bed and bought more blue legs. It seem its easier for the crabs to maneuver on the bottom to get to the acros, versus on the rocks. Sure enough the next day I noticed a lot of the blue legs on the acros grazing away. Again not being able to see what were eating, but they were definitely eating something. Altogether, I stopped the bayer treatments and figured at this point what do i have to lose. I even went a step further and bought eggcrate and made racks for my acros nd transferred the below with about 100 blue legs. Added 300 to the main tank. You can get a good deal on these off of ebay from the keys. Its been about 7-8 weeks now with no Bayer treatments and all my acros are healthy and doing well. It seems the little guys have done the job for me. Not one acro is stressed or discolored, not the milli's or tri colors, which the flatworms seem to love. When i started this experiment I know that some of these acros ahad flatworms on them because they were sad looking, but ahve fully recovered and are now thriving again. The trick is, to make the acros as accessible as possible to the blue legs and make sure their hungry. Lol!
The milli in the first pic was about dead. Now it's happy again w/ good polyp extension. If you look closely, you can see a blue leg on it.
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