AEFW new info and photos

[Travis]

I don't remember if it was mentioned in this thread but Eric Borneman is doing some experiments on the AEFW's. Haven't heard an update on his progress in a little while but I'm sure he has been busy working on it. If anyone has any FW's he would like if you could send some to him.

 

[SERVO]

Matt (Dolt) was supposed to send Eric some of his worms. He wanted to be able to determine if there truly is a different organism/species.

I'll press hard on Matt here; he has yet to follow thru with his confimation to mail the damn things out.

 

[ddr]

A couple of Macros

This is how hard they are to see on the coral, it was a little easier with the naked eye, but still not easy by any means.

Here is a close up of the eggs.

& a FW top down

& a pic of the bottom of the FW with its mouth etc.

 

[hollback]

Would it be possible to irradicate these AEFW without a dip?

Since they seem to come off with some turkey basting would it be possible to just QT all acros, then every three or four days just shake them really hard in a 5 gal bucket? Wouldn't this just continue to knock off the FW that have hatched? As long as the shaking is occuring every few days wouldn't that keep the FW from maturing and laying more eggs?

Just a thought.

 

[Sparkss]

Short answer is "No"

It has been reported in several threads that the "blasting" of the corals is less than 100% effective at dislodging AEFWs, not to mention what about any AEFWs that are in your QT setup but not on any acros ? (again, this has been reported in multiple AEFW threads).

 

[SERVO]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7540016#post7540016 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dolt
here is a photo but it does not really do it justice but you might get the idea

I don't know about you guys, but this scares the S*&^ out of me. Any large holding system can possibly have the flagallated mobile larvae migrate from tank to tank to infect virtually every coral in a system; directly eating acros and laying egges on anything.

 

[raddogz]

Yep, tis true this seems to be a big problem until we find some kind of miracle solution like we did with red bugs.

I just did my weekly dips on all my sps - lots of fun (not)

 

[pwhitby]

I was wondering........ Typically when my orals have RTNed in the past I have noticed a bad smell. DO you get the same from a coral being eaten? Anyone notice this...or care to comment

 

[Sparkss]

I never really noticed any difference between corals that died (with no AEFW evidence) or died from the stress of being eaten. I think I know the smell you are referring to (but I could be mistaken).

 

[dolt]

I'm back from the dead! actually due to a crazy work schedule and a sense of helplesness from my plague I was not able to work much on my problem - oddly enough during the time I neglected my tank a little it seems that lately my colonies have seemed to start doing better - for awhile I thought that my problem worms had taken population crash like the other planaria do - but no such luck - when I pulled out a few colonies to examine them I unfortunately found that the little guys were still there
Just a little update on my problems - as above for whatever reason there seems to be some improvement in the way my colonies are tolerating the continued infestation - don't get me wrong, they are still not looking back to normal and some are actually doing worse and nearing death - I'm not sure why there is such variation - I had a chance to talk to a few people at MACNA about this and see fernando nastropour 's (sp?) lecture - he had some good basic information but no treatment info - at this point my plan is to get a dissecting microscope and work further on testing different treatment options - in fernando nastrapour's lecture he mentioned that there is some concern that the worms may be able to tolerate living off of SPS for some time and survive on the ingested zooxanthellae - this again worries me that unless we come up with an in tank treatment, we may not be able to eradicate them - it seems that the best candidate continues to be praziquantel, but in my earlier trials with this, I had no success - levamisole is not safe to use in tank at needed doses - I was curious if anyone out there had any further experience with the smaller species of worm that I have? - I still suspect that many have it and do not know it as they are so incredibly tiny - they do seem to be structurally similar to the larger species, that F. nastropour said were of the genus Apidioplana, when examined under the microscope - I still have not noticed any of the larger ones I initially found leading me to believe that the smaller ones I have found are not likely to be juveniles of the larger ones

 

[CarlC]

Could it be that with the neglect to the tank the corals have been able to absorb higher amounts of nutrients (food) that you normally would have been removing with water changes, skimmer cleanings and such.

Carl

 

[dolt]

actually I think it is more likely the opposite - my nutrient levels are high - I am having more problems with nuisance algae etc - I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it but it is one possibility

 

[SERVO]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7901673#post7901673 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sparkss
Short answer is "No"

It has been reported in several threads that the "blasting" of the corals is less than 100% effective at dislodging AEFWs, not to mention what about any AEFWs that are in your QT setup but not on any acros ? (again, this has been reported in multiple AEFW threads).

The MACNA lecture explained why you can't blow off the worms. Since they eat the zoozanthellae, there strong muscular jaws burrow through the superficial layer of the acros while they suck the deeper zoozanthellae from the coral.

But; Matt doesn't have the large mobile AEFW's that everyone else has identified. :eek1: Cilliated free swimming micrometer sized acro eating inverts with no effective treatment is a frightening scenario.

 

[dolt]

one other intereting thing is, I think it was easttn had a thread in which it linked an article that supported the free swimming phase of these organisms which is consistent with what I witnessed and as servo states, very concerning
-and I did make a mistake on the spelling of the name of the lecturer at macna - it is Fernando Nasratpour - sorry about that - he provided some good info such as what servo mentioned above and that is they have this extrudable mouth that burrows deep into the coral to extract the zooxanthellae and tends to make them difficult to remove unless they are stunned with meds

 

[SaraB]

dolt - glad to see you are back from the dead and working on these nasty pests again!

 

[barrierreefcf]

My observations and questions

My observations and questions

Hi All,

So I've read almost 50 of the pages on AEFW today after we found them in one of our maintenance account tanks. The search function doesn't work for me (non-premium member) so please forgive me if I ask something that has been stated. There is a lot of info...some conflicting so this gets confusing to follow.

1. I haven't yet seen the dosage concentration for Levamisole or the duration. Is there a different concentration for a short dip vs. treating the QT tank?

2. Are we 100% positive they only eat Acros?

Here is what I observed today. At the maintenance acct I took 3 green slimer cuttings and 3 heads of frogspawn. I put 1 slimer frag into the jar that contained the frogspawn for 5 minutes while I got the jar for the slimers ready. I then moved the slimer into its own container with the other 2 frags. When I got back to our prop facility I dipped the slimers in TMPCC for 15 minutes at the rec dose. Meanwhile I began gluing the Frogspawn to plugs. Just as I was about to place them in the prop tank I saw about 40 AEFW in the jar the frogspawn had come out of. Keep in mind up to this point I had no idea there was a problem in the tank they had come from. We had a couple acros with a little death around the bases but we thought it was from lack of current and never found any AEFW during many intensive searches.

I saw no evidence of dead AEFW in the TMPCC dip but the water was brown and it was hard to see anything at all. I did notice that the tissue at the bases of the frogspawn was not healthy and appeared to have the same bite marks as I've seen posted on suffering Acros. Scary but nothing proven yet I know.

So now I'm freaking out because I almost put AEFW in our main prop tank. I prepared 2 gallons of water w/ 2 dissolved Fluke tabs. I read somewhere four tabs per 5 gallons for 20 minutes would kill them. I put the frogs and the slimers in this for 45 minutes and then swished all the corals. The AEFW were cruising around everywhere...not dead. Probably about 100 of them.

Completely at a loss and not wanting to kill the frags outright by tossing them I dipped them in freshwater (cool and not Ph adjusted RO/DI) and the AEFW shriveled and dropped off within 15 seconds. Scoured everything for eggs. Never found any. I then put the frags in QT.

Because I wanted to see what would happen I carefully poured the water out of the bucket I used for the dip leaving behind most of the worms. I then took the hose and put in about 1/4" of tapwater in. The worms shriveled up and got smaller and smaller until they were gone completely. There did not appear to be any residue of any sort in the bucket.

I know the FW dip was probably not the best thing but I am considering launching massive testing on Acro's and their ability to withstand FW dips (temp and Ph adjusted for future dips). Watching the frogpawn and green slimer over the next few days will tell me a little but does anyone know of any info on Acros and FW dips?? I am also going to do some tests with the frogspawn and AEFW in a small QT tank and see how long the FW's live. I really hope I don't find them eating the Euphyllia!

This is all the more confusing because at MACNA it was pointed out that Green Slimer appeared immune to AEFW possibly because of its slime. In this case they were either on the slimer or the Euphyllia (forgspawn).

Sorry for the long post that provides no difinitive info other than the fluke tabs didn't work. Dolt and Servo...too bad I missed you at MACNA. It would have been nice to meet some fellow RC’ers. Seems like we should all use our screen names rather than our real ones at the conferences

 

[Tutmos]

That's pretty interesting about the fluke tabs and pretty contradictory to Stoney's results. I'd be interested in seeing you do further testing with the fluke tabs, same brand etc? The AP brand in the red box? Did you have some kind of a pump to circulate water in the dip container to keep the meds in suspension?

I could have told you last year that green slimers aren't immune. I had a number of them being chomped on.

Kevin W.

 

[Neptune777]

Are you sure it was AEFW's.......and not ordinary planaria that can be everywhere in your system?

 

[dolt]

barrierreefcf- interesting - if you had photos that would be great - I to was at the macna lecture and heard that about the green slimer but mine is definitely infected, but again I seem to have a different AEFW than what people traditionally have been reporting - as far as the frogspawn, that is also interesting - as far as I am aware I have not seen any reports of them damaging anything but acros and especially never any LPS stuff - again if you have photos of the damage that would be great - interesting stuff - as neptune pointed out it could be normal planaria, but I am assuming that you are aware of what the traditional planaria look like?
as far as the levamisole dose and duration, I do not have the link but maybe someone else can jump in with that - I believe it was 40 ppm for one hour but don't quote me on that

 

[barrierreefcf]

Its definately AEFW. I've looked at the pics and saw the lecture at MACNA. I have the larger clearish ones with the zooxanthellae colored striated gut. We threw a H. melanarus wrasse in many months ago as a preventative and he ate all the regular planaria at that time.

Can someone please provide me with a link to Stoney's fluke tab tests? And also levamisole directions? I did not use a pump to keep it in suspension. I manually stirred it about every five minutes. I have 98 Aquarium Products fluke tabs left and if they work I want to get the treatment regime correct rather than add to the confusion.

I don't have pics. My fiance has my camera and I won't get it back until monday. Maybe I can get my business partner out there with his this weekend. I will post pics and results of the Euphyllia QT'd with AEFW. I will just need a few days to get back to the maint acct to get more AEFW and then time to set up the seperate QT for that pair of organisms. Based on current info the AEFW should die around the 5 day mark if they are not eating the Euphyllia sp.

Thanks,
Cy