My experience with AEFWs

[Duality]

Little back story.
I've had a 300 gallon setup for about 2 years. Around a year and a half ago I found reef AIDS (AEFWs) on my sps.

This is a red planet that was my first coral that showed signs of AEFWs. I'm not a very anal guy and it really wasn't the death of the tank for me. I just let it be and wouldn't let anyone have anything from my tank. I didn't want to b the spreader of the AIDS.
Ok I lived with the AEFWs for a while and wasn't even trying to get rid of them.
But about 5 months ago my tank was having some big issues and I started loosing all my stag sps. At first I thought I was having alk issues or parameter issues but after a few weeks of constantly texting it wasn't parameters. Well around the same time I lost a few smaller fish. I ever lost all my crabs and shrimp and my snails stopped eating and even stopped moving around. I lost about half my snail when all said and done. At first I really didn't think these issues would come down to the same problem but know that I look back at it I truly think it was all connected. Back in the first week of November 2015 I found a leaking magnet in my tank. The magnet wasn't like all super corroded and nasty. I actually only had a pin size hole in the epoxy surrounding

I believe it was releasing small amounts of the materials in to the tank causing the corals and live stock to slowly get sick and die. Well after I pulled the magnet out and running lots of carbon and doing a few water changes the corals started coming back a week or so later they even started encrusting and heal from me cutting the dead stuff off.
After about a month after taking to magnet out I really started to notice that I wasn't seeing any AEFW bite marks anymore. Even 4 months now I still yet to see any bite marks. Also I've checked every piece and can't find eggs either. But here's the kicker I going to end up tearing the tank down cause I still can keep crabs, shrimp, or snails alive and I believe it's cause of the heavy metals that go locked in the live rock and are slowly leaching out. Cause my fish just aren't as healthy as they were and corals still don't look as good as they were so I don't think my solution to AEFWs was very successful. But I'll leave u with a few pics of my red planet that was shown in the second pic

Here's the under side to show no bite marks

 

[stephenhall1987]

I'd keep up the water changes to refresh the water column. You could use poly filter to help absorb any heavy metals. I can't remember what it's called, but there's a liquid that will bind the heavy metals and make them non toxic. If you wanted to spend the money, you could send a water sample off to a lab (triton) to be tested.

 

[TNT32D]

I would think it would be the other way around. Please keep posted. Thanks

 

[JRR1285]

You can run a poly filter as mentioned above and it might change colors and indicate what kind of problem you could be having. I would run cuprisorb if it does turn blue indicating copper. It will bring your copper levels down lower than a poly filter can.

These notes are from Marine Depot:

General maintenance comments:
Poly-Filter turns color when removing medications.
Aqua to Dark Blue: Copper or Copper salts.
Orange: Iron.
Bright Red: Aluminum.
Bright Yellow: Ammonia, Amines or Solvents.

 

[Duality]

I've used 6 polypads on the tank and non did anything.

So here's the deal with the tank. It hasn't been the same for the last few months. No polyp extension in my sps. Snails do not move or eat. I'm afraid that the heavy metals may have got locked into the rock and know there slowly leeching out. So I've decided to break the tank down and start over with fresh rock