help me with my plans to beat pests.

[Allmost]

Hello,
so I took down all my tanks this weekend, to prepare for my moving this week.

I moved all my fish and SPS to an LFS ... and will pick them up when tank is cycled in new place ... in 2-3 weeks.

as many know, I have AEFW and Red bugs .... what are my best actions to prevent introducing them to my new reef ?

I was thinking of going to the LFS once a week in the coming weeks, and dip all pieces there. and dip an additional time when I take them home .... do you think this will beat them ?

can anyone advice me a better method ?

 

[bobkill]

i think once a week dipping would be a great idea, then cut off any dead tissue or plugs or anything eggs could sneak in on. i just decided to rip apart my DT bc of AEFW, and it sucks. Set up a 20g qt and hav ebeen dipping weekly for 4 weeks and then going to let my DT set empty for 12 weeks or so ( i know prob longer than needed)
I would dip Bayer
and good luck, that has to be stressful

i included a shot of a red planet who was getting KOed but those suckers

 

[jda]

Prevention can include a reef quality QT tank always running Bayer, or the like. Wrasses and Pipefish can really help in the display in case a few slip by - they can sometimes get them before they get out of hand.

The best thing to do is to only buy/trade from trusted sources that dip themselves.

 

[karsseboom]

I think if you take every single acro out of the tanks and dip them weekly for 5-6 weeks you should be good. Make sure there is no other acro still stuck to your live rock when moving, any encrusting acro could screw it all up so be sharp. Also I would use bayor as it seems to be the best for repeated drippings.

 

[Acronic]

Unfortunately us Canadians dont have the luxury of Bayer pesticides.

Though I hear its the bees knees.

 

[Allmost]

coral RX works well too. I think 3 weeks, dipping once a week would be enough. to let all eggs hatch.

thanks guys for the opinions.

 

[xxxduke62xxx]

Keep thinking 3 weeks will be enough. At least 8 week period of dipping once per week and if it were me i would do 12 weeks. Why chance it and do it all over? Get a powerful magnifying glass or good macro lens and look at every part of the acro after every dip to look for eggs. Any hollow spot in the acro cut it off and re-glue. I tried the QT thing and just stressed the living daylights out of my acros and lost a bunch so the remaining 15 acro i had left i put in my frag tank that was attached to my DT but my DT was empty of all acros so if a bugger got through it would either starve in the DT or eaten by my wrasses, I dipped them for 3 months once per week checked them every time and put them back in. Havent seen a bite since. I took a chance with keeping them in a tank attached to my DT but it worked and they has little stress from being in a good quality system. Oh and i switched up my dips every week. I did bayer one week,revive another then melafix the next

 

[Piper27]

Keep thinking 3 weeks will be enough. At least 8 week period of dipping once per week and if it were me i would do 12 weeks. Why chance it and do it all over? Get a powerful magnifying glass or good macro lens and look at every part of the acro after every dip to look for eggs. Any hollow spot in the acro cut it off and re-glue. I tried the QT thing and just stressed the living daylights out of my acros and lost a bunch so the remaining 15 acro i had left i put in my frag tank that was attached to my DT but my DT was empty of all acros so if a bugger got through it would either starve in the DT or eaten by my wrasses, I dipped them for 3 months once per week checked them every time and put them back in. Havent seen a bite since. I took a chance with keeping them in a tank attached to my DT but it worked and they has little stress from being in a good quality system. Oh and i switched up my dips every week. I did bayer one week,revive another then melafix the next

Good advice, I did the same thing and havnt seen them since. I had the same experience with rushing a qt for my acros. I would do 8 dips if I got them again. I switched dips a few times revive and melafix worked just fine.

 

[Allmost]

Keep thinking 3 weeks will be enough. At least 8 week period of dipping once per week and if it were me i would do 12 weeks. Why chance it and do it all over? Get a powerful magnifying glass or good macro lens and look at every part of the acro after every dip to look for eggs. Any hollow spot in the acro cut it off and re-glue. I tried the QT thing and just stressed the living daylights out of my acros and lost a bunch so the remaining 15 acro i had left i put in my frag tank that was attached to my DT but my DT was empty of all acros so if a bugger got through it would either starve in the DT or eaten by my wrasses, I dipped them for 3 months once per week checked them every time and put them back in. Havent seen a bite since. I took a chance with keeping them in a tank attached to my DT but it worked and they has little stress from being in a good quality system. Oh and i switched up my dips every week. I did bayer one week,revive another then melafix the next

do you have info on AEFW Eggs ? how long do they take to hatch ? how old should a worm be before it can lay eggs and so on ?

I appreciate your comment, but please back it up with something to help us all

 

[xxxduke62xxx]

There is mixxed reviews on how long the incubated eggs last. Why take a chance on going by the early estimate. Safest bet is always the longest time frame which i go by. Did alot of research when i got the AEFW and like i said mixed reviews on incubation period. But its your tank do what you wish

 

[Dave & Monica]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2263491&highlight=aefw

I found this to be really helpful, it's not easy to overcome - but be persistent and you can overcome it.

 

[Piper27]

There is mixxed reviews on how long the incubated eggs last. Why take a chance on going by the early estimate. Safest bet is always the longest time frame which i go by. Did alot of research when i got the AEFW and like i said mixed reviews on incubation period. But its your tank do what you wish

Yea I didn't do 8 days but it was not based on any writeup or anything. I did it because I tried for a year doing short dipping procedures. I am not sure how many acros you have that you need to dip or how big they are but is missing one worm or egg worth starting over again? Especially since your moving tanks, I would say its worth the extra effort

I actually ran out of dip after the second week, and didn't dip for 11 or 12 days. I found eggs on a stag and started over. So I really dipped for 11 weeks with the exception of one week.

 

[UTCReefer]

I beat the AEFW by setting up a QT tank to house all my Acro's and did weekly dips with bayer for a month, then every two weeks for a month, then one more time for good measure before moving them back. All in all it took 3 months before I moved them all back to my DT which had been completely acro free for the quarantine period.
Also I recommend super gluing over any eggs you see before your first dip.
What i noticed when dipping was that the first dip had hundreds of FW at the bottom of the bucket, the second just a handful and by the end of the first month there really werent any falling off the corals anymore. The last two months were to starve out the rest of them in the DT and to make sure the cycle was completely broken.

To prevent this from happening again ive personally stopped adding any corals or live rock thats not completely dried out to my tank . Well mostly anyways. If there is something i just cant live without I only take fresh cut frags which I dip in coral RX then spend some time inspecting both the coral and dip water under a 40x scope with lots of light for any signs of the AEFW or any other pests before adding it to my tank. If I find ANYTHING its not going in my tank. Its just not worth it for the trouble of getting rid of an AEFW infestation.