May have found a new "reef-safe" way of killing off Xeniids

GroktheCube

New member
Two days ago I let a Magnificent Foxface out of QT and into my 120 mixed reef. Later that day, he started showing signs of internal parasites (isn't that always how it goes?).

I soaked some Nori and Mysis in febendazole + prazi + focus, feeding 1/4th sheet nori and one decent sized pinch of mysis (12ish shrimp). About 10 minutes after the first feeding, all of my Anthelia (which had been growing to plague proportions over the past couple months despite vigorous physical removal) had shrunk down to the point that it looked like tiny purplish dots on the rock. As of this morning, it has almost completely disappeared.

Everything else in my tank, including Nepthea, zoas, motile inverts, and unfortunately Aiptasia is completely unaffected. I've heard of people dosing the whole tank with fenbendazole to kill off soft corals and hydroids, but it looks like Xeniids may be vulnerable to even very small doses of it.

For my next experiment, I'm going to try getting some Aiptasia to swallow either fenbendazole soaked mysis, or pieces of shrimp that have had some of it injected into them, as I know sea horse folks do use it to kill Aiptasia.

Just wanted to report my initial results. I'll update over the next week if I see any changes. I'm going to continue feeding the de-worming food for three more days, though I'm fairly confident at this point that the Foxface is clean. Surprisingly, both my Tang and male McCosker's also passed dead worms after eating the food, despite neither ever showing any symptoms. I think I'll be integrating this into my QT procedure in the future.
 
This is why I started purchasing my fish from Divers Den. Since then I haven't had any issues. When I was trying to get a bunch of anthias in my system I must have had a 50% infection rate with wholesale fish. I doubt most places do an adequate QT and general treatment. I found fluke tabs to work really well.

I once overdosed my system with ozone... and it killed all the Anthellia overnight :)
 
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