AEFW Chronicle

[Gondore]

A couple updates on my progress. I decided not to dip tonight because the eggs still have not hatched. I plan to dip tomorrow night. Instead of dipping tonight I performed testing for all parameters. What I found is what I feared. The alk reading on my QT is 6 and my PH at 7.4! I thought I could maintain alk and ca by doing weekly water changes in the tank but it appears this is not the case. My ca reading and all other parameters look good on both tanks. The thing that sucks is that I just completed the automation of 2-part on my display tank so it's going to make it hard to dose my QT.

Anyone know where the 2 gallon jugs like the ones that BulkReefSupply sends in their starter kit can be purchased locally?

 

[Fireworm]

Look at place like Gordons, or cleaning supply store of some sort. worst case call bulk reef and see if they can sell you a couple of them. would be nice to have a extra 2 on hand from time to time

 

[melev]

If you have a Sally's Beauty Supply in your area, they may sell them with the plungers. They seem to carry anything you can imagine, and since they tend to be nationwide, you might get lucky.

 

[Gondore]

Thanks for the replies. I will take a look at those places to see what I can find. Since I wanted to get the Alkalinity back up as soon as possible I mixed up another batch of two part in some old milk jugs last night that I washed out thoroughly. I then dosed 24 ml out of the 64 ml needed to raise the alk from 6 to 9 with a volume of 30 gallons. My poor corals are probably stressed to the max.

 

[Fireworm]

PM sent

 

[Gondore]

I managed to get my second dip completed last night. It was another two hour long process. I have managed to streamline it a bit though. Based on my observations it appears that it takes the eggs about 9-10 days to hatch. The number of worms which fell off the coral during this series of dips was significantly reduced. I think there were about 4-5 adult worms that fell off. I did still find a significant number of eggs. I would estimate about 8 different egg sacs total.

The corals overall seem to be doing alright. I haven't lost any of them yet. The fast majority of them have started to brown out though, which doesn't surprise me. I did initially have an issue with the corals that I placed on the bottom of the tank because they kept coming into contact with each other and as a result several of them have sting marks. I fixed this problem by creating another larger frag rack which has done a really good job at keeping them in place. As I posted a couple days ago I also had an issue with my alk dropping, which resulted in burnt tips on a few of the corals. I believe I have this issue under control now thanks to two part.

I plan to post a couple pictures I took of last nights dipping as soon as I get home from work.

 

[Gondore]

Here are the pictures I promised:

Dipping station

Worms from dipping all the corals

Corals day after the second dip

Frag rack that I threw together

Earlier Christmas present for my corals

 

[JCR's Reef]

David- Did you happen to pick up the Coral Magazine at the Coral Reef Aquarium. In there they suggest a water pick-the kind for dental that shoots water with a holding tank. You could blast all the eggs off instead of waiting for them to hatch and possibly lay more. Just a suggestion.

 

[Gondore]

I actually did see that device Josh. It would be really nice for removing the eggs. I currently use a toothpick to remove them. This seems to work pretty well but is time consuming. I basically scrap the eggs off with the toothpick and then swish the coral around in some tank water and continue this until all the eggs that I can see under the magnifying glass are gone.

 

[Dejavu]

Dave, Are you still looking for Levamisole? last time we talked I thought you had found some.

 

[Gondore]

No, I wasn't able to locate any.

 

[JCR's Reef]

I thought the water pick was a good thought b/c you could mix other stuff in the water your spraying it with to help with healing.

 

[LornaS]

On a side note, if anyone is looking......gallon jugs like the ones used by bulk reef supply are just like gallon vinegar jugs....I probably have a bunch laying around from the last time I soaked all my pumps to clean them......

 

[Fireworm]

It would be nice if we could find the pump heads like the ones from BRS.

 

[Dejavu]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13927090#post13927090 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Gondore
No, I wasn't able to locate any.

I will check this week then.

 

[smokenax]

aefw

aefw

one thing i did find ,is that acro crabs take care of these little suckers. i had this abomination before and all the colonys with acro crabs had none on them.see if you could borrow a few from of the local reefers.

 

[Gondore]

Re: aefw

Re: aefw

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13943166#post13943166 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by smokenax
one thing i did find ,is that acro crabs take care of these little suckers. i had this abomination before and all the colonys with acro crabs had none on them.see if you could borrow a few from of the local reefers.

I have heard this theory before from someone else. Even if the crabs do eat the worms it would take a lot of them to eliminate all the worms from a tank.

 

[Gondore]

Well, I just completed dip number three and I must say I am not happy with the results. I found roughly 6-7 sacs of eggs and roughly 8 flat worms dead in the dipping containers. I was hoping by this point and time I would be seeing very few eggs or worms. I am considering upping the dips to twice a week to kill this devils before they lay eggs. What are your thoughts on this Dejavue? Where you still seeing this number of eggs/worms when you dipped for your third time?

 

[Dejavu]

I didn't see any eggs after the first dip. After the second dip I never seen any AEFW's. I did use Levimasole for the first dip, which seems to work better, but much more harsh on the corals.

Have you tried ant other dipping agent? Maybe revive, I have heard good things about it. I will cheach ffr so Levimasole. I havn't yet seeing how we have got 4' of snow in the last three day .

The eggs do suprise me though. And seeing more worms doesn't say much for TMPCC .

 

[Gondore]

I've honestly been pretty depressed about my situation with the worms lately. I checked my QT last night and seen that my Purple Monster just RTN'ed. This is my first lose and of coarse it would have to be my most expensive frag. I think it was caused by the temperature swing that occured when I lost power for 6 hours until I got the generator. The temperature dropped about 9 degrees, that plus the recent stress from all the dipping and a new environment was just too much I think.

I might try a few more things to get the Levamisole but I honestly believe nobody is manufacturing it until sometime in January. I will probably also order some Revive and use it for my next dip.