How to kill AEFW
- Thread starter Elite
- Start date
.. I know there is a big thread on SPS forum but it would take me days to read all those. Anyone has experience dealing with these?? Where can I get the medication. If you got stuff from me lately, please let me know. This is only infected my small SPS tank. 
otterpop510
New member
talk to sparkss about the latest sense of how to deal with aefw..
northbay-reefer
New member
Prodman, what is TMPCC ?
TMPCC = Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure
It is an iodine based medication. There are several online vendors that sell it. I think that we get it at the best price from thatfishplace.com
We had a long conversation with Ming a couple os weeks ago about AEFWs, dips, etc and he said what I have been saying for amost a year.. he doesn't put any colonies into any of his show tanks without first removing the bases and any dead coal tissue, then dipping the heck out of the coral.
There have been several different species of AEFWs "identified" by hobbyist, at least 2 of which will lay eggs. These eggs can and will survive any dip that you do (hence the nature of an egg shell, to protect the embryo from almost anything). They lay their eggs on dead areas of the coral, which includes rock bases and as someone else mentioned, rocks "near" the acros. There was even some reports of finding AEFW eggs on a neighboring rock of zoas.
For now, the best advice I can give is to take out and inspect all colonies, frag any bases or dead portions of the skeletons (the eggs can hide amazingly well, and almost anywhere). Dip hte remaining in tMPCC (the one iodine treatment so far proven to be pretty much 100% effective) then QT all of your left over acro frags in a separate tank, leaving your main SPS tank fallow of acros for at least 4 weeks. Here are the timelines that have been speculated/observed by hobbyists (at least the last time I checked) :
AEFWs can only surviv for 5 days without food
AEFW eggs take aprox 14 days to hatch
So, if you remove all of your acros, INCLUDING any flesh encrusted on rocks that they can get to and eat to survive, then here is what is suspected :
Day 1 remove all acros
Day 5 Last day an AEFW can lay eggs
Day 5/6 AEFWs die of starvation
Day 20 AEFW eggs hatch
Day 25 newly hatched AEFWs die of starvation
It was theorized (and supported by biological science for other species) that the AEFWs will not lay eggs except near a food source for their youg. They will keep searching for a food source for their babies to feed on when they hatch. That is why the newly hatched AEFWs don't lay any eggs on Day 21 - Day 25, because if you followed through, then there would be no more acros in the tank for them to eat.
There has been moderate success using fluke tabs, but I have also read about massive losses using it also. We tried it when we had AEFWs last year and after an hour in teh solution we could still see them moving around (using a magnifying glass). So it appears to only work on certain AEFWs, not all. Personally (and I emphasis personally, not scietifically, just my opinion) I would not recommend Levamisole nor fluke tabs. With levi the treatment is worse than the disease (we lost monumentally more corals to the treatment than to AEFWs). and IMHO fluke tabs are just not 100%.
One other thing, and this was a point that Ming and I agreed upon whole heartedly -- dip everything.. and I mean EVERYTHING, that you get in. Even though they dip all of their corals there at ATL, he highly recommends that everyone dip everything that they get from his store. I have always maintained that we dip everything we get, regardless of the source. We have inadvertantly offended a fellow reefer by stating that we had to get going so that we could acclimate and dip the corals that we picked up from him. His response was "You don't need to dip my corals. does it look like there is anything wrong with our tank ?!?!?!?!", to which we replied that we dipped everything, no matter who it came from. But I could tell that they were offended (which made me wonder about their dip/QT protocols for new additions
).
I would also ask Raddogz, seems like I saw her avatar sig to read "AEFW assassinator" or something like that
It is an iodine based medication. There are several online vendors that sell it. I think that we get it at the best price from thatfishplace.com
We had a long conversation with Ming a couple os weeks ago about AEFWs, dips, etc and he said what I have been saying for amost a year.. he doesn't put any colonies into any of his show tanks without first removing the bases and any dead coal tissue, then dipping the heck out of the coral.
There have been several different species of AEFWs "identified" by hobbyist, at least 2 of which will lay eggs. These eggs can and will survive any dip that you do (hence the nature of an egg shell, to protect the embryo from almost anything). They lay their eggs on dead areas of the coral, which includes rock bases and as someone else mentioned, rocks "near" the acros. There was even some reports of finding AEFW eggs on a neighboring rock of zoas.
For now, the best advice I can give is to take out and inspect all colonies, frag any bases or dead portions of the skeletons (the eggs can hide amazingly well, and almost anywhere). Dip hte remaining in tMPCC (the one iodine treatment so far proven to be pretty much 100% effective) then QT all of your left over acro frags in a separate tank, leaving your main SPS tank fallow of acros for at least 4 weeks. Here are the timelines that have been speculated/observed by hobbyists (at least the last time I checked) :
AEFWs can only surviv for 5 days without food
AEFW eggs take aprox 14 days to hatch
So, if you remove all of your acros, INCLUDING any flesh encrusted on rocks that they can get to and eat to survive, then here is what is suspected :
Day 1 remove all acros
Day 5 Last day an AEFW can lay eggs
Day 5/6 AEFWs die of starvation
Day 20 AEFW eggs hatch
Day 25 newly hatched AEFWs die of starvation
It was theorized (and supported by biological science for other species) that the AEFWs will not lay eggs except near a food source for their youg. They will keep searching for a food source for their babies to feed on when they hatch. That is why the newly hatched AEFWs don't lay any eggs on Day 21 - Day 25, because if you followed through, then there would be no more acros in the tank for them to eat.
There has been moderate success using fluke tabs, but I have also read about massive losses using it also. We tried it when we had AEFWs last year and after an hour in teh solution we could still see them moving around (using a magnifying glass). So it appears to only work on certain AEFWs, not all. Personally (and I emphasis personally, not scietifically, just my opinion) I would not recommend Levamisole nor fluke tabs. With levi the treatment is worse than the disease (we lost monumentally more corals to the treatment than to AEFWs). and IMHO fluke tabs are just not 100%.
One other thing, and this was a point that Ming and I agreed upon whole heartedly -- dip everything.. and I mean EVERYTHING, that you get in. Even though they dip all of their corals there at ATL, he highly recommends that everyone dip everything that they get from his store. I have always maintained that we dip everything we get, regardless of the source. We have inadvertantly offended a fellow reefer by stating that we had to get going so that we could acclimate and dip the corals that we picked up from him. His response was "You don't need to dip my corals. does it look like there is anything wrong with our tank ?!?!?!?!", to which we replied that we dipped everything, no matter who it came from. But I could tell that they were offended (which made me wonder about their dip/QT protocols for new additions
).I would also ask Raddogz, seems like I saw her avatar sig to read "AEFW assassinator" or something like that
Elite
New member
I do dip everything before it goes into the tank and I dip them in an extremely strong TMPCC mix. I don't have a QT but I will set that up soon. Thanks for the info. I will let you guy know how it goes.
Now I just need redbug and nudi so I can see what they look like in real life :lol: ..
Now I just need redbug and nudi so I can see what they look like in real life :lol: ..
sfsuphysics
Active member
You might dip everything but from what I've ready TMPCC doesn't do squat for AEFW eggs.
Exactly.
That is why we cut off any dead sections and any bases (rock, plugs, anything) that might be attached. We lose a fair bit of the coral in doing that, but the majority of any colony will survive and so will the rest of your tank. Typically speaking we strongly prefer frags over colonies (or over mini colonies), for that very reason.
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