chrisaggie
Premium Member
double post
My own AEFW (Acro Eating Flatworms) images
- Thread starter melev
- Start date
Stoney Mahony
New member
It's 36"L x 18"W x 12"H ~33.7 Gallons. Probably add another 5g for the sump 
melev
Well-known member
I've not seen any signs of the flatworms since. I'm probably just being optimistic, but I've looked at the rest of the corals and they seem to be doing fine. I did lose a couple of small frags, but the rest seem fine.
I have a Scripps acro that is bleaching at the base, but it is in the rear of the tank, the area is shaded by live coral, and mushrooms may be the cause due to contact. I don't really want to pull it out to inspect it closer, but if it continues to travel, I may have to.
I have a Scripps acro that is bleaching at the base, but it is in the rear of the tank, the area is shaded by live coral, and mushrooms may be the cause due to contact. I don't really want to pull it out to inspect it closer, but if it continues to travel, I may have to.
zapata41
In Memoriam
ok read through a ton of pages and couldnt finish the last 5, so hopefully this hasnt been addressed but if it has my appologies. has anyone mustered up the courage to try the display tank treatment followed by a huge water change and lots of carbon and wet skimming. i have a system for someone that need treament, it is about 300 total gallons and has well over a 100 sps in there that have been ecrusting and growing for well over a year. so it is really not feasable to pull the colonies and dip since it would be an astronomical process. so maybe this could be the first display treatment, much like someone's tank had to be for the first interceptor treatment. 30min of the fluke in the display would kill the fish, the display did just go through a rb treament a few days ago so killing of pods and what not would not be a issue ATM.
so what do you guys think. should the 4 large tangs be pulled or will they handle the treatment fine. also from the rb treatment i did notice that the sole fire shrimp and hermit crab servived, the interceptor treatment was 3 - 23mg tabs for 300g for 12hrs.
ok well stoney, let me know what you think about this, as long as it wont hurt his tangs then i think he will be all game.
Tim
so what do you guys think. should the 4 large tangs be pulled or will they handle the treatment fine. also from the rb treatment i did notice that the sole fire shrimp and hermit crab servived, the interceptor treatment was 3 - 23mg tabs for 300g for 12hrs.
ok well stoney, let me know what you think about this, as long as it wont hurt his tangs then i think he will be all game.
Tim
blstravler
Member
Though treating the tank may be possible. The one thing I would say is unless you have a 360 degree view of all of the corlas in the tank you would never be able to see if there are any eggs on them.
Stoney Mahony
New member
Hey Zapata, sorry to hear you got the little basterds. Like melev said, it could be alot easier to pull a few specific infected corals out and dip them if it is a minor infestation. On the other hand, if the tank is starting to get over run with them(say 1/4 or more of the acros are infected), I would either do the massive pulling and dipping or try an intank treatment.
As for if anyone has tried it yet, Fishypets and the dudester tried an intank treatment and lost everything. They took there corals out of the display and put them in a large qt tank, tried a few dips and then did an intank treatment. They said that everything was fine until the intank treatment and then everything started to RTN.
Now......this does not mean that it wont work for you, but it did not work for them. I would definately not give the intank treatment the scarlet letter yet b/c as far as I know, that was the first and only attempt at an in-tank treatment with fluke tabs. The reason I say this is b/c I have personally had corals in the fluke dip for over 2 hours and they were perfectly fine so I can not wrap my mind around what could have caused the rtn in there attempt at the in-tank treatment...from the pics and thread and write up, it looks like it should have worked
. There just hasn't been enough testing. Im sure in a year we will know a lot more but were gonna have to have a few failed experiments before we hit the nail on the head As for fish, I would call aquarium products directly and see what they say about that dosage rate and fish respiration/o2 levels in the water. It's made for fish, but not at 4x the dose so I would definately call them and check first. As a matter of fact, I have a techs name/# over there and I can call on monday for you and I will see what he says. Better to get it the info directly from the manufacturer. In about 2 months I am going to be setting up a small lab just for studying these puppies so hopefully I can help come up with a final end-all cure, easy as pie, dump it in and "fogetabout it" . I hate AEFW.
As for what bluestravler said, he's right..your not gonna get the eggs on the first treatment but you can kill all the AEFW, then wait 2 weeks and treat again. The eggs will hatch out over the 2 weeks, but will not have time to reproduce or lay new eggs so on the second treatment, you should be eliminating the rest. I have a 6"+ tri-color Azurea colony that was super infected and had 100's of eggs in the deep inner branches where I could not reach. I left that colony in my display for an extra week, and all the eggs hatched. Then I dipped it and moved it to my QT tank with the rest of my corals. As for tissue, it took about 2 months to 100% recover and regrow all tissue that it had lost. The purple tips on the coral are fighting to come back now but most color has come back.
I think it could work, but it's a very big could........100's of SPS big!!! I don't know that I could do it on that large of a system quite yet...... I would try isolated dips first, if fully infested, go for it.
As for if anyone has tried it yet, Fishypets and the dudester tried an intank treatment and lost everything. They took there corals out of the display and put them in a large qt tank, tried a few dips and then did an intank treatment. They said that everything was fine until the intank treatment and then everything started to RTN.
Now......this does not mean that it wont work for you, but it did not work for them. I would definately not give the intank treatment the scarlet letter yet b/c as far as I know, that was the first and only attempt at an in-tank treatment with fluke tabs. The reason I say this is b/c I have personally had corals in the fluke dip for over 2 hours and they were perfectly fine so I can not wrap my mind around what could have caused the rtn in there attempt at the in-tank treatment...from the pics and thread and write up, it looks like it should have worked
. There just hasn't been enough testing. Im sure in a year we will know a lot more but were gonna have to have a few failed experiments before we hit the nail on the head As for fish, I would call aquarium products directly and see what they say about that dosage rate and fish respiration/o2 levels in the water. It's made for fish, but not at 4x the dose so I would definately call them and check first. As a matter of fact, I have a techs name/# over there and I can call on monday for you and I will see what he says. Better to get it the info directly from the manufacturer. In about 2 months I am going to be setting up a small lab just for studying these puppies so hopefully I can help come up with a final end-all cure, easy as pie, dump it in and "fogetabout it" . I hate AEFW.As for what bluestravler said, he's right..your not gonna get the eggs on the first treatment but you can kill all the AEFW, then wait 2 weeks and treat again. The eggs will hatch out over the 2 weeks, but will not have time to reproduce or lay new eggs so on the second treatment, you should be eliminating the rest. I have a 6"+ tri-color Azurea colony that was super infected and had 100's of eggs in the deep inner branches where I could not reach. I left that colony in my display for an extra week, and all the eggs hatched. Then I dipped it and moved it to my QT tank with the rest of my corals. As for tissue, it took about 2 months to 100% recover and regrow all tissue that it had lost. The purple tips on the coral are fighting to come back now but most color has come back.
I think it could work, but it's a very big could........100's of SPS big!!! I don't know that I could do it on that large of a system quite yet...... I would try isolated dips first, if fully infested, go for it.
zapata41
In Memoriam
well it is not my tank, luckily, but i have been pondering it for the whole day. stoney, if you could call them and see what they say then that would be great. Not all of the acros, maybe 1/6th of them are visibly infected, but i am sure lots more are, just not showing full blown signs of it yet. depending on what they mfc says about there product then i might give it a shot. I read the others guys' thread and thought that they left the corals in the tainted water for long peroids, then did a water change, to me it seemed like a very very long dip. That and all the corals came with elevated stress levels from the display, then some were bagged in interceptor, then all corals were added to a newly established tank with different lighting & flow patterns, as well as totally different bacteria levels in the tank. My reasoning for wanting to attempt this is that i feel the corals will bounce back just fine since they will have really no added stress from being moved ino a qt. the fish should be strong as hell and make it, a 50% water change and a heap load of activated carbon and i am thinking that all should be well. As a trial though, next week i a gonna build a small tank, like 10g, taint the water and put in a fish like a chromis, then follow the same plan of action that i would for water change and chemical filtration like a plan to do on the larger tank.
Well i will keep ya updaed on how this goes.
Tim
Well i will keep ya updaed on how this goes.
Tim
Tim - I would be very interested to see the results of in-tank testing - as someone a while back mentioned, they had called the mfr and they said it was designed for fish systems and should be safe - but of course this would be at a higher dose than recommended - it will be interesting to see what they say about this - I too am in a similar situation with a large established system and really would like to do an in-tank treatment - I too believe as you said that if they are on a few pieces, it is safe to assume they are infecting many more - it has also been posted in several threads and mentioned at macna that these guys can also move on rocks etc in between colonies and there is also some evidence that at least some species have a free-swimming motile form - so treating only removed colonies has always seemed risky to me (up to this point has been the only option, but not necessarily an ideal one for the above mentioned reasons)
wentreefgirl
New member
In the tanks that all died, could the fluke tab be too high of a dose???
blstravler
Member
I assume AEFW are some where in the family of Nematodes, if so I wonder if Pyrantel pamoate would work? It is over the counter and used to treat Pinworm infections in children. From what I have read Pinworms are similar to AEFW in that the have a 2 week reproduction period (egg to worm). Though I am not sure what it would do to coral or fish...
zapata41
In Memoriam
ok well i am making up the water right now to do the in-tank treatment. i figure a 120-150 g water treatment following a 30min soak at 3-4x dosage should do the trick. heck someone has got to be the test dummy on the fluke tabs. so the dosage again was 1 pill for 10g, so 4 pills for 10g or 108pills for 270g.
Tim
Tim
melev
Well-known member
Tim, is there any way I can talk you out of this? Whenever I have problems with corals, I try to think of it as if they were the absolute last of the species on earth. I'll do whatever I can as if they were irreplaceable, rather than the "oh well, I'll get new ones if I have to."
Please, this isn't an attack on your husbandry so don't take it that way. I'd just prefer to see someone that is going to do an in-tank treatment try it with a much smaller system. There is no information on what will occur with the sand bed infauna nor the LR bacteria.
The best test is a tiny one, rather than a 270g reef.
Please, this isn't an attack on your husbandry so don't take it that way. I'd just prefer to see someone that is going to do an in-tank treatment try it with a much smaller system. There is no information on what will occur with the sand bed infauna nor the LR bacteria.
The best test is a tiny one, rather than a 270g reef.
Stoney Mahony
New member
Sorry guys but I caught a major flu and didnt make it to work today, nor do I think I will make it tommorrow. I appologize, but I wont be able to contact AP until Wed when I am back in. I would call from my house, but my guys name and # are at work. Sorry again, I hope you can hold out a few more days or just give them a call. The # might be on the box but I threw my last one away so I don't have a clue.
zapata41
In Memoriam
well i dont have any sand bed to worry about. i am gonna wait a few days though got a nice little flu myself here. I do agree that i try to do whatever i can before resorting to last ditch efforts. i am not gonna tear the entire tank apart though. please dont take me in the way that i have the attitude that if everything dies then i can just go buy mroe stuff as i am way too atached to the corals to just throw them away. I will do some small scale tests first though before i try it on the larger tank.
TIm
TIm
wentreefgirl
New member
Oh shoot, make that 3 flues now. Damm thanksgiving and family fun.lol.
