AEFW experiments and study

If anyone has AEFW or knows someone who does, I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me a few or even just eggs. I would like to gather AEFW from as many sources as possible to compare their reaction to experiments like the starvation one I'm doing now. I've already come across one strain that was ridiculously hardy, but don't currently have any in my system. A few people have mentioned getting some that look different than the regular ones, it would be interesting to see if there may even be more than one species of AEFW plaguing hobbyists.
 
very interesting thread!
subscribed..
i have heard that extremely high potassium levels will kill both adults and embryos when the host acro is dipped for up to 30 minute.. usually doesn't hurt the acro but will basically sterilize the coral..
not sure if you have experimented with this..
ill be waiting on every entry on this thread..
 
tektite said:
If anyone has AEFW or knows someone who does, I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me a few or even just eggs. I would like to gather AEFW from as many sources as possible to compare their reaction to experiments like the starvation one I'm doing now. I've already come across one strain that was ridiculously hardy, but don't currently have any in my system. A few people have mentioned getting some that look different than the regular ones, it would be interesting to see if there may even be more than one species of AEFW plaguing hobbyists.
Click to expand...

... Buying AEFW... I can do $5/AEFW , I got a really nice one that I call the terminator... he just really goes to town on the acros.. ill let him go for $10..

just kidding, and sorry for not adding any knowledge to the thread, but I could resist, but I am following the thread, and its great! :) keep it up.
 
Just playing with ideas here:
As AEFW ingest the coral flesh could they possibly take on some of the zooxanthellae making them partially photosynthetic and able to survive periods without a host?
Perhaps the young ones didn't have chance to build up ample numbers of zoo?

I know this kind of adaptation is quite common in nudi's , no?
 
reef bloke said:
Just playing with ideas here:
As AEFW ingest the coral flesh could they possibly take on some of the zooxanthellae making them partially photosynthetic and able to survive periods without a host?
Perhaps the young ones didn't have chance to build up ample numbers of zoo?

I know this kind of adaptation is quite common in nudi's , no?
Click to expand...

I was curious about that, as part of one of my original questions I intended to answer. If AEFW from healthy corals that are the normal brown mottled color are healthier than AEFW from sick pale white acros that lack zooxanthellae. During this experiment though, I didn't see much difference as some of the AEFW were brown and from healthy hosts, others pale white from white acros. They all appeared to die at similar rates, though the brown ones lost their color and became white over the course of the experiment.
 
Day 11, Experiment 1 (Nov 15th)

Compartment 1: No change (16 total egg clusters to date), all remaining 5 AEFW present
Compartment 2: No change (10 total egg clusters to date), all remaining 6 AEFW present
Compartment 3: 1 AEFW dead (10 total egg clusters to date), 9 AEFW remaining
Compartment 4: No change (1 egg cluster to date), 1 remaining AEFW
Compartment 5: All dead


Notes:

As this experiment has progressed, the AEFW have all became white. No more brown mottled color on them like they were when removed from healthy acros. AEFW from the most pale acro frags were pretty white to begin with.

Waterchange performed at 10am and 10pm
 
Day 12, Experiment 1 (Nov 16th)

Compartment 1: 1 AEFW dead (16 total egg clusters to date), 4 AEFW remaining
Compartment 2: 2 AEFW dead (10 total egg clusters to date), 4 AEFW remaining
Compartment 3: 4 AEFW dead in morning, 3 died during the day, 2 AEFW remaining
Compartment 4: 1 AEFW dead, all AEFW dead
Compartment 5: All dead


Notes:

AEFW dying fast. All 1-4mm size (Compartments 4 and 5) are dead. 4-6mm size (compartment 3) dying very fast, 4 dead in the morning, and 3 more during the day. The 6-12mm sizes (compartments 1 and 2) are looking very bad. AEFW all extremely pale and almost motionless, their size half what they were when removed from the acros.

Waterchange performed at 10am and 10pm
 
Day 13, Experiment 1 (Nov 17th)

Compartment 1: No change, 4 AEFW remaining
Compartment 2: 2 AEFW died midday, 2 AEFW died by evening, all AEFW dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 3: 2 AEFW dead, all AEFW dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 4: All dead. Total of 1 egg cluster laid.
Compartment 5: All dead


Notes:

Only remaining AEFW are the 4 in compartment 1. They were the largest AEFW of the experiment. All look extremely bad, stark white, thin, almost motionless, half their original size.

Waterchange performed at 10am and 10pm
 
Day 14, Experiment 1 (Nov 18th)

Compartment 1: 3 AEFW died during the night, 1 remaining sickly one
Compartment 2: All dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 3: All dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 4: All dead. Total of 1 egg cluster laid.
Compartment 5: All dead.


Notes:

This morning only 1 AEFW remained

Waterchange performed at 10am and 10pm
 
Day 15, Experiment 1 (Nov 19th)

Compartment 1: All dead. Total of 16 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 2: All dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 3: All dead. Total of 10 egg clusters laid.
Compartment 4: All dead. Total of 1 egg cluster laid.
Compartment 5: All dead.


Notes:

ALL DEAD! End of experiment 1, run 1.
 
Summary of Experiment 1, observations and results:

AEFW are nocturnal.

AEFW are capable of laying a lot of eggs, even laying them up to 9 days with no food. In the 3 compartments that had consistent egg laying (compartments 1, 2, and 3), egg laying remained fairly constant through day 7. The number of eggs per cluster decreased over that time period, but not the number of egg clusters.

As one cluster of eggs was laid in the 2-4mm compartment, AEFW may reach sexual maturity pretty quickly.

The coloration of the AEFW quickly faded from their normal mottled brown color to white, as the experiment progressed. Their size also shrunk considerably, ending at about half their original size, with a third to a quarter of their original body mass (rough visual estimate only).

As far as size vs. life expectancy, the majority of the 1-4mm size died on days 9-10, the 4-10mm on days 12-13, the 8-12mm on days 14-15. The largest ones lived about 30% longer than the smallest ones.


Conclusions that I am NOT drawing from this experiment:

AEFW will die in ~2 weeks with no food.

This was just the first run of this experiment. I want to run multiple identical experiments to compare results. I am also trying to get AEFW from other sources, to compare the results of my population to others, to find out what variation of results occurs in different populations of AEFW.


Side experiment I thought of: find out when the point of no return is. As the AEFW decline in health, is there a marked point before death that they are not able to recover even when put back on Acropora?


And because I like charts :) AEFW populations and egg-laying graphed by day:









 
As I desperately needed some more acros to keep a steady supply of AEFW without killing their hosts in order to continue these experiments, I bought a box of maricultured colonies. My own tiny collection of acros are about ready to die after months of predation, they desperately need a break. The new colonies are all different species. Acropora abrotanoides, caroliniana, divaricata, delsawii, formosa, millepora, hoeksemai, horrida, humilis, hyacinthus, loripes, papillare, parilis, plana, robusta, suharsonoi, tenuis, turaki, valida, and yongei. My AEFW will be in heaven! The corals look so nice it is really hard for me to deliberately infest them :(

HUGE thanks to Brian at my LFS 3rd Coast Corals for ordering them for me and driving TWICE to the airport to pick them up, due to errors on the airport's side, at 11pm and 4am! And then delivering them to me, an hour's drive away, at 5am in the morning.
 
tektite said:
As I desperately needed some more acros to keep a steady supply of AEFW without killing their hosts in order to continue these experiments, I bought a box of maricultured colonies. My own tiny collection of acros are about ready to die after months of predation, they desperately need a break. The new colonies are all different species. Acropora abrotanoides, caroliniana, divaricata, delsawii, formosa, millepora, hoeksemai, horrida, humilis, hyacinthus, loripes, papillare, parilis, plana, robusta, suharsonoi, tenuis, turaki, valida, and yongei. My AEFW will be in heaven! The corals look so nice it is really hard for me to deliberately infest them :(

HUGE thanks to Brian at my LFS 3rd Coast Corals for ordering them for me and driving TWICE to the airport to pick them up, due to errors on the airport's side, at 11pm and 4am! And then delivering them to me, an hour's drive away, at 5am in the morning.
Click to expand...


I would just try frags of the acro and not to full colony. It's a shame that you would infest healthy colonies but like I suggested cut frags of them and feed them to the AEFW and enjoy the healthy colonies.
Just my advice
 
I need too many AEFW :) the colonies are for them. Frags won't be enough lol. The colonies will have rest periods where they will be able to recover from predation, I'll keep them as healthy as possible.
 
I too would be curious of the following if you haven't dumped your experiments down the drain yet

1. How long till eggs hatch (you mentioned 3 weeks as a source, but is that for your breed of aefw also?)
2. How long will newborns live without food, ie, how long after they hatch till dead with no food source.
 
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