Cubed & Squared

[sahin]

Thanks a ton guys :thumbsup:

I need to do more research. I've dipped some of the corals already, found a few bunches of eggs on a couple. So it's definitely bad. The problem is, time!

I feel guilty about it, but I just don't know if I can commit that much time right now. I'm not comfortable setting another tank (QT), and transferring the corals immediately. I need to be comfortable with it's workings before I risk shifting the corals.

Thanks for all the support at this crappy time, I appreciate it

I prescribe this thread for you: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2243991&page=2

Mammothreefer has done a phenomenal job in maintaining that 65G tank full of SPS and keeping the Acro alive whilst basting the corals every few days to control AEFW's.

You might want to PM him for further info. That 65G Radium tank was TOTM as well...so just goes to show...all is possible.

 

[Bello]

There's hope

Thanks for the link Sahin... Mammothreefer has a wonderful TOTM tank, and perhaps I could baste away for a few months, and get lucky.... it's about time I get a run of good luck.

I guess I'm just nervous, since a lot of the corals are growing well, with good color... and I hate the idea of disrupting that. Time for some :reading:

 

[markalot]

Hi Bello,

sorry to hear about the AEFW again. I tossed all my acros except my green slimer. Slimer has never showed any symptoms, but it could be a carrier I suppose. It's my biggest coral and I can't stand the idea of chopping it up.

Do you have a PAR reading for that Forest Fire digitata? I cannot get any green skin on mine and I'm not sure if it's too little light, too much light, or not enough nutrients. PAR for mine is 250 on the bottom of my tank.

Thanks!

 

[troubadour11]

Awww... sorry to hear that the AEFW pests are back. I'd love to help you out with some wisdom, but unfortunately I haven't much research on eradicating them. Hopefully I'll never have to. But it makes me want figure out a way to QT corals coming into the system too. Right now we are only QTing fish.

If it helps, your tank still looks top notch to me, despite the AEFW headache. :thumbsup:

 

[biggles]

Having no experience with AEFW i can't really offer you any solid advice mate but long term i think you will need to bite the bullet at some point and make one of your tanks completely free of the bastards, really guts me to see this happen just when things were finally heading the right way for you Bello.
Don't forget that boiling RO will take care of anything including eggs and the acro tissue just encrusts back over the burnt spots, you know i'm always 'treating' that green acro of mine that encrusts like crazy.

 

[MHG]

so where are the cubes? I'm just messing with ya. Very nice set up....

 

[Fail_sh3d]

There's hope

Thanks for the link Sahin... Mammothreefer has a wonderful TOTM tank, and perhaps I could baste away for a few months, and get lucky.... it's about time I get a run of good luck.

I guess I'm just nervous, since a lot of the corals are growing well, with good color... and I hate the idea of disrupting that. Time for some :reading:

My disruption was only a month. Things started coloring right back after the final dip.

You'll be fine, buddy.

 

[Bello]

Hi Bello,

sorry to hear about the AEFW again. I tossed all my acros except my green slimer. Slimer has never showed any symptoms, but it could be a carrier I suppose. It's my biggest coral and I can't stand the idea of chopping it up.

Do you have a PAR reading for that Forest Fire digitata? I cannot get any green skin on mine and I'm not sure if it's too little light, too much light, or not enough nutrients. PAR for mine is 250 on the bottom of my tank.

Thanks!

Thanks Mark, I've just got too much coral here. I didn't think I had much, but once you start dipping, you realize it's a lot!

The Forest fire, when I first received it didn't have the green coloration at the tip. Since I had tank problems at the time, I gave it a friend for safe keeping. It thrived there, and grew and colored up very well. I know that at that time, he was feeding his tank a lot! So when he gave me a frag back, it already had the green tips. I've had it for about 3 weeks, and it still has the tips. It's placed 2 inches off the sandbed. I don't have a PAR meter, if I notice any changes, I'll update. Wish I could offer more help, it's a stunner when its achieves that green contrast

Awww... sorry to hear that the AEFW pests are back. I'd love to help you out with some wisdom, but unfortunately I haven't much research on eradicating them. Hopefully I'll never have to. But it makes me want figure out a way to QT corals coming into the system too. Right now we are only QTing fish.

If it helps, your tank still looks top notch to me, despite the AEFW headache. :thumbsup:

Thanks for the vote of confidence Troub , I really hope you'll never have to. But chances are, with buying aquacultured and mari acros, you probably have to dip/qt. BTW, seems that my dipping wasn't effective enough, so if you do decide to go acro, seems that QT is a must have. I hope to set one up soon, although I won't be buying many more acros.

Having no experience with AEFW i can't really offer you any solid advice mate but long term i think you will need to bite the bullet at some point and make one of your tanks completely free of the bastards, really guts me to see this happen just when things were finally heading the right way for you Bello.
Don't forget that boiling RO will take care of anything including eggs and the acro tissue just encrusts back over the burnt spots, you know i'm always 'treating' that green acro of mine that encrusts like crazy.

I really tried biggles . But nothing short of going nuclear is going to work. I dipped 80% of the acros already, found a bunch of FW's and eggs. But I'm pretty sure they're not out of the system. I will give the basting method a try.

My humilis looked unhappy, and upon basting, a lil FW popped up into the water coloumn, and I was aghast, wondering "How I'm gonna this little thing?"...2 seconds later, the old Regal, saw, ate, and declared "Yummy"! So I'll at least give the baste method a go. If not, then nuclear it is.

I gave away 3 mari colonies (not great ones), to a friend with no acros. Hopefully, they'll be fine.

so where are the cubes? I'm just messing with ya. Very nice set up....

Thanks MHG, so cuboidal it is? :lol:

My disruption was only a month. Things started coloring right back after the final dip.

You'll be fine, buddy.

Thanks buddy, I'll still give the baste method a go for 3 months max. If not, I have no other option, than nuclear.

I guess a lot of it is my fault, if I'd observed the corals better, I'd have caught on earlier before they could do much damage. Hopefully, with the basting, it won't be as bad. I've also rearranged a lot of the pieces, so I'll have access to baste easily and along coral sides.:headwally:



Thanks a lot guys, I really appreciate the support :thumbsup:

 

[martinphillip03]

Bello, How hard was it to dip all the corals? Could you do it once a week for four weeks?

Marty

 

[Bello]

Bello, How hard was it to dip all the corals? Could you do it once a week for four weeks?

Marty

I see your point Marty. I guess I was too chicken and afraid of losing the colors I'd achieved thus far. I still hope that I'm able to keep them at bay with the basting. Another point I considered, was that I have about 9 acro crabs in the colonies, most very small. The thought of removing each one for every dip, just made me tired.

It seems that I'd have to do the nuclear thing for about 2 months to be sure. I will be out of town in March on a much needed holiday, and thought about doing it when I get back, so I could observe and remedy situations as needed.

I know it's a long shot, but let's see...the dipping and re placing of acros took me about 2 full days. Hopefully.......

 

[biggles]

It sounds like you have some pain in the arse work ahead of you mate but it will all be worth it in the end. In the good old days fresh water dips were the preferred treatment for eggs of any kind as osmosis would damage the cases from memory. If i ever went the route of dipping that's all i'd use as i've helped friends dip acros and no corals ever died from the process.

 

[Bello]

This sounds very interesting biggles, I've never heard of this.

Would you mind sharing how? I'd guess you'd need to have matching pH...what about the duration? I don't know if I'd have the nuts to do it, but would love to learn the process :thumbsup:

 

[biggles]

The time i helped a mate all he did was mix 25% tank water with 75% RO that he'd added alk to in order to raise the pH. He had a container floating in the sump with the water in it to keep temp stable and he just plonked them in it for 10 mins and then chucked them back in the display. The idea was that the eggs contain high salt content compared to the dip water so they absorb the water as the salinity equates and this bursts or damages the egg cases. It's the same thing that happens if you drop a sea snail in RO, they swell up as their bodies absorb the water in an effort to equalise the salt content between their bodies and the low salt water they find themselves in. The reverse happens to garden slugs in salt water, they shrivel as they expel water to increase the bodies salt level in comparison to the high salt content of the environment they are suddenly subjected to.
That's the basics from my cloudy old farts memory.............

 

[Bello]

That's awesome :thumbsup:

Spent some time thinking about it, and the logic seems rather sound. Was wondering if the acro could tolerate that abuse for the 10min, but it seems that I've often underestimated the toughness of acros, especially when the stimuli is for a short period. I haven't found any eggs in the last couple days (really wanted to burn the eggs when I found them:furious, so I'll give this a go, with a frag...., I'm more curious to see the acro reaction to the RO.

Very cool, biggles :thumbsup:

 

[martinphillip03]

How did the acros respond to the dip?

Marty

 

[Bello]

Hi Marty,

Well, I'd already dipped all the corals I could in Revive. Threw away the eggs too. So I wasn't able to test the theory yet.

I did tell my friend about it (the one with sps, and backups of most of mine), and he very enthusiastically decided to give it a go. His tank has redbugs and possibly AEFW at the moment. His results,

First frag -> 10min -> 80-90% of redbugs dead -> no aefw seen -> some PE on return
Second frag -> 15min -> 80-90% of redbugs dead -> no aefw seen -> some PE on return

It's only been a couple hours, so too early to tell....but so far, biggles is right :thumbsup:

 

[troubadour11]

This fresh water RO dip is really interesting to hear about. I'm really curious to hear the observations when it's tested on a piece that you find eggs on.

Interesting stuff to hear about and it sounds like some good potential solutions at least.

 

[biggles]

I'm glad your mate gave it a try Bello, the acros don't like it one bit but they will survive depending on the particular 'touchiness' of the piece. Less RO and longer times will always be better if you're experimenting btw as you want to give the osmosis process as much time as possible to expand and stress the egg cases.
From what i've seen reading others reefers posts with AEFW it's the bloody eggs that are making the eradication process near impossible so hopefully you guys will find a way to kill the things, i'm just making a suggestions that's all. You could also try adding a smaller amount of poison to the mix just to take care of the 10-20% of bugs that seemed to tolerate the dip - just throwing out some ideas for you guys to consider :reading:
I would always test a frag of the colony to be dipped as not everything puts up with our helpful interventions as well as others.....

 

[Bello]

This fresh water RO dip is really interesting to hear about. I'm really curious to hear the observations when it's tested on a piece that you find eggs on.

Interesting stuff to hear about and it sounds like some good potential solutions at least.

I wish I still had the eggs, at least for testing purposes.....But hey, hopefully I'll never see them again .... Definitely a cool tip, but I fear that my friend's gone a bit nutty over it :lol:

I'm glad your mate gave it a try Bello, the acros don't like it one bit but they will survive depending on the particular 'touchiness' of the piece. Less RO and longer times will always be better if you're experimenting btw as you want to give the osmosis process as much time as possible to expand and stress the egg cases.
From what i've seen reading others reefers posts with AEFW it's the bloody eggs that are making the eradication process near impossible so hopefully you guys will find a way to kill the things, i'm just making a suggestions that's all. You could also try adding a smaller amount of poison to the mix just to take care of the 10-20% of bugs that seemed to tolerate the dip - just throwing out some ideas for you guys to consider :reading:
I would always test a frag of the colony to be dipped as not everything puts up with our helpful interventions as well as others.....

That's a good tip as well biggles, better the frag than the colony :thumbsup:

You're right about the eggs being the worst. I did dip every single acro that I added to the tank, guess I missed some eggs somewhere . Revive/ CoralRx does a fair job with the adults, its just the eggs. Next time I find eggs (hope i never do ), I'll be trying your idea.

My friend didn't have too much luck removing redbugs with Revive/CoralRx, so he was pretty stoked with the results he saw with the RO. I'll update as he continues with more experiments, as I'm sure he will. Dunno if he still has AEFW, but redbugs...yep. He did try adding some CoralRx (poison) in the second dip, but it didn't seem to make more of an impact than already observed. Think he wants to try a 30min dip, :lol:

Thanks for the tips, biggles....Your Experience shows :thumbsup:

 

[biggles]

That's a great idea letting your mate take the risks before you give it a try Bello, once Troub comes to his senses and goes stick crazy i'm going to use him to test a few of my more radical theories - keep that between us, you know how he touchy he is........ :worried:
30 mins sounds like a long time but as i always say, acros will surprise you with what they can put up with.
I hope you don't see any more eggs mate and i'm glad your mate is killing lots of pests with the RO lol. :beer: