AEFW, some questions.

rovster

rovster

New member
Hi all. I had some general questions about AEFW. Recently I've noticed that some of my acros and millis look beat up. I started to suspect AEFW. Most of the pieces I have I've had for a while with no signs of anything negative. I added a couple of frags 3-4 months ago, which I dipped in bayer. One looked great, one was a rescue freebie. Both look great and are growing and coloring up. These "newer" frags show no signs of what I'm concerned about. Last frags I added before this recent batch was about 8 months ago.

Anyway, I started noticing that some of the acros were looking kind of shoddy, and recently have areas of necrosis. At first I thought it was some STN from a recent interceptor treatment (2-3 months ago), or just normal flucutations of my nano.

Tank is 14 gallons. Salinity 35ppt, Cal 420, Alk 8ish, Mag 1400, Nitrate 0ish, Phos 0.03. This is of last weekend.

Anyway, my questions are:

1. How visible are AEFW after a dip? How big are the adults? Can you see them with the naked eye? I was going to dip the most suspect piece and see what comes off. I dip everything in Bayer.

2. If I do confirm its AEFW, how long does the tank need to remain without acros before its safe to add again? I'm in the middle of an upgrade and had planned on transferring my livestock, but if its AEFW, I will just ditch the acros and keep all the other corals. I have no intention of fighting this.

Thanks in advance. I don't have my macro lens on me, but will try and take some pics this week sometime.
 
Some of the AEFW will be large (1/4") and brownish in color, juveniles can be 1/8 or 1/16 and more whitish. When you dip do it in a colored bucket black works best but blue is ok too so that they will show up better against the darker background.

You need to break the cycle and keep your DT free of acro's for at least 2 months just to be sure that any eggs that were previously laid have time to incubate, hatch and die from starvation. I waited 2 or 3, its been awhile since i treated everything.

Dont just ditch the corals this infestation is the worst of all the pests in my opinion but its not unbeatable or even that hard to beat. I had a 180 gallon with over 20 mature acro's some of which wouldnt fit in a 5 gallon bucket for dipping (i used 20gal rubbermaids) and a 150gallon QT tank and i beat them. And from that day forward nothing new will be added to my tank because i dont want to go through that ever again.
 
hey rovster, just google aefw pictures and you'll get more than you ever wanted. You can see the scale in them too.
I've found that once I know what I'm looking for I can actually see the larger ones on the coral. They are pretty much always on the underside in the darker areas. The bite marks are very apparent too once you've seen an example. If you can see 2 or 3 large ones, you probably have 10+ tiny ones running around you can't see.

I also dipped every coral I got but I suspect that an egg patch snuck in somewhere along the way. I tried just dipping the corals I knew had it but found that to be a very temporary solution. Some corals seem to be more resistant and it's a long time before you see bite marks and such. I think I probably had them a while but once I got a couple nice juicy milli's they jumped on them like stink on a monkey. It's like cheesecake to them.
Good luck with your endeavor, i'm fighting the battle myself now. The real question is if everything will survive my shoddy QT system.
 
Thanks. Confirmed I have them. In the process of an upgrade. I need to tear down ny nano which is jam packed. I have a larger fish qt that is well cycled. I was thinking of transferring the contents of my nano to that tank, and set up a few racks and do weekly dips of all the acros for a couple of months while I get the big tank up and running. The bigger qt will give me more room to work and allow easy removal and replacement of frags.

I confirmed by dipping my most ragged colony. I just threw out the coral, but in retrospect, should have kept it for my experiment.
 
Thanks, I had already read that link. I plan on somehting similar, but instead of a QT tank, I will use the temporary display. I don't have huge colonies, more like frags and some minicolonies so should be manageable. Just gotta make sure I really rinse things out extra good before going back in the display.
 
Good call on the magnifying glass. I have a nice big scope used for strain gauge work that is perfect for inspecting the dip water and corals too.
The eggs are perfectly visible to the naked eye and can just be super glued over.
 
3 weeks straight of dipping in bayer. Polyp extension is great, color not so great. Many of the "eaten" areas are starting to encrust back over. No signs of bite marks. Plan is to continue for 6-8 weeks straight! I expect color will only return after I've finished dips and they've been left alone for a while.
 
Been experiencing some wacky nutrient problems, but overall, I looked at all my SPS closely today and most have grown a bit. Some are a little brown, but some are showing signs of colors I've never seen before:D. Is the consensus that 8 straight weeks is the best course, or is 6 enough? Have not seen any aefw in the dips. Millie's look great today. Is it too early to be optimistic?
 
I'm happy to report that I'm still clear of the little buggers. I still look for the bite marks on sps at night about every week. I ended up dipping for eight weeks, and glad I did.
 
I think my wacky nutrients are a bad nitrate kit. Polyp extension is better than before, and colors are also coming back. My slimer looks like a glow stick! I've notices some bleaching or paleness in some acros, so I'll be adding more fish this Friday to increase the poop factor. Will post pics this weekend.
 
After you stop treatments everything will color up again. Some of my colonies took 6 months to get back to where they were before the infestation.
Im glad you had the same success that I did. Its amazing how much better the corals look once the attacks have stopped.
 
I missed one week of dips, but will dip tomorrow. Polyps still out, and dead areas almost grown back in.
 
I did a total of 6 treatments and I think I'm going to stop there. All of my acros and milles are looking better, and most of the "eaten" areas have healed or are almost healed. Biggest difference has been with the Milles, which were the hardest hit. They went from almost no polyp extension and ragged tissue, to starting to color a little and good (but not yet excellent) polyp extension.

Crappy pic of my treatment rack.....
 
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