As many of you know that attended the last reef club meeting, I recently discovered some very distasteful pests in my tank. The name of this pests is acropora eating flatworms (AEFW). These aren't your garden variety flatworms. These flatworms love the colorful sticks in your tank and only the colorful sticks. Unfortnately for me, that is about 90% of the corals in my tank. In order to try and bring about something good from a bad situation, I thought I would document what I have learned so far and the steps I am going to take to eliminate these pests from my tank. Hopefully this thread can provide some useful information to others fighting this pest in their tank.
First off how can a person determine if they have AEFWs in their tank? The typical signs are lose of color, polyp recession, recession from the base upward, and bite marks. I first noticed the problem in my tank because of the lose in color of two of my millies. All of the other signs then began to show themselves. Initially I thought the lose in color was due to some nutrient issue in my tank, but after seeing recession from the base upward I started to wonder.
The best way to way confirm you have AEFW is to dip the suspect coral in Tropic Marine Pro Coral Cure (TMPCC), Revive, Fluke Tabs, or Levamisole. All of these dips have been shown to at least stun the worms causing them to fall from the coral. I used TMPCC to dip my coral and confirm I had the worms. I mixed the dip at roughly twice the dosage recommended. Identifying the worms while the coral is in the tank is almost impossible. The worms tend to hide from bright lights so the best time to inspect your corals is with a flashlight when your tank lights are out.
Here is what you are looking for:
I was actually very surprised to find these pests in my tank. I say this because everything that has entered my tank has been dipped in Interceptor followed by TMPCC. I believe the TMPCC did kill all the adult AEFWs but failed to kill the eggs. At this time, there is no known dip that will kill the eggs. You must manually remove the eggs befor placing the coral in your tank. I failed to do this, resulting in an infestation.
Here are what the eggs looks like:
Based on all the reading I have done and from speaking with several individuals who have dealt with/eliminated these worms from their systems you have three options.
1. Throw out all your acroporas and start over. As we all know, this is a very expensive option and it is unlikely this makes sense unless you only have a few sps corals.
2. Remove each acropora from your tank and dip it weekly for several weeks. This option isn't bad but will defintely not gaurantee you eliminate the worms from your system. This is because even though you remove the corals and dip them, the eggs could still remain on your live rock.
3. Move all acroporas from your display tank to a quaratine tank. Dip each acropora weekly for seven weeks. This option should give you the highest rate of success. The idea is to starve the AEFWs that remained behind in your display tank, while killing all those still on the corals via the dips.
I have chose option three mainly because I love trading/selling my sps corals and would never feel comfortable doing so unless I knew that I had zero AEFWs in my tank. In the following posts I will try to provide instructions and pictures on exactly the coarse of action I take.
First off how can a person determine if they have AEFWs in their tank? The typical signs are lose of color, polyp recession, recession from the base upward, and bite marks. I first noticed the problem in my tank because of the lose in color of two of my millies. All of the other signs then began to show themselves. Initially I thought the lose in color was due to some nutrient issue in my tank, but after seeing recession from the base upward I started to wonder.
The best way to way confirm you have AEFW is to dip the suspect coral in Tropic Marine Pro Coral Cure (TMPCC), Revive, Fluke Tabs, or Levamisole. All of these dips have been shown to at least stun the worms causing them to fall from the coral. I used TMPCC to dip my coral and confirm I had the worms. I mixed the dip at roughly twice the dosage recommended. Identifying the worms while the coral is in the tank is almost impossible. The worms tend to hide from bright lights so the best time to inspect your corals is with a flashlight when your tank lights are out.
Here is what you are looking for:
I was actually very surprised to find these pests in my tank. I say this because everything that has entered my tank has been dipped in Interceptor followed by TMPCC. I believe the TMPCC did kill all the adult AEFWs but failed to kill the eggs. At this time, there is no known dip that will kill the eggs. You must manually remove the eggs befor placing the coral in your tank. I failed to do this, resulting in an infestation.
Here are what the eggs looks like:
Based on all the reading I have done and from speaking with several individuals who have dealt with/eliminated these worms from their systems you have three options.
1. Throw out all your acroporas and start over. As we all know, this is a very expensive option and it is unlikely this makes sense unless you only have a few sps corals.
2. Remove each acropora from your tank and dip it weekly for several weeks. This option isn't bad but will defintely not gaurantee you eliminate the worms from your system. This is because even though you remove the corals and dip them, the eggs could still remain on your live rock.
3. Move all acroporas from your display tank to a quaratine tank. Dip each acropora weekly for seven weeks. This option should give you the highest rate of success. The idea is to starve the AEFWs that remained behind in your display tank, while killing all those still on the corals via the dips.
I have chose option three mainly because I love trading/selling my sps corals and would never feel comfortable doing so unless I knew that I had zero AEFWs in my tank. In the following posts I will try to provide instructions and pictures on exactly the coarse of action I take.
