My own AEFW (Acro Eating Flatworms) images

[Neptune777]

Melev,
I read your post....I feel your pain! After reading your post I pulled a small milli colony from my tank that didn't look too hot and guess what I found after hitting it with lugols and a TB? Grrrrrrrrrr.......

I purchased some TMPCC today and will begin treatment this weekend.....

I will be setting up a 30gal cube for quarantine, pulling all colonies and frags and doing the initial TMPCC trial. I plan on doing a treatment weekly until I feel satisfied all is OK....

 

[melev]

Now you guys have me thinking I should set up my quarantine / prop tank. Ugh.

 

[TCU Reefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7872478#post7872478 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
My tank tends to have incoming and outgoing corals on a regular basis, for whatever reason. For example, in the past 30 days:

I took pictures of one guy's gorgeous SPS tank. In return, I got 6 frags.

A LFS contacted me to pick up corals that he was throwing out, so I could save them possibly.

A local reefer brought me a frag of his RTNing coral. It didn't survive 24 hours.

The month before:

Club frag swap - I brought home a few pieces.

A bunch of zoanthids were placed in my prop section, donated by another reefer in the area.

AEFW could have come in on any of that stuff. How long they remain dormant, nor how long it takes for them to travel to the actual coral they want to eat - no idea.

Geez Marc, your tank is like a brothel for corals. Coming in, going out... It was just a matter of time before AEFW's were transmitted.

 

[Michael Mota]

Marc, please don't take offense to this but I was under the impression that you always quarantine stuff? This has turned out to be shocking to me. It reminds me of the reefers who spend thousands on their reef tanks and but yet don't have a plan for emergencies such as a electrical outage. Marc set a good example, just kidding around

 

[raddogz]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7874460#post7874460 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TCU Reefer
Geez Marc, your tank is like a brothel for corals. Coming in, going out... It was just a matter of time before AEFW's were transmitted.

LOL

On a serious note I just received a flyer in regards to MACNA and noticed that Fernando Nostratpour will be speaking. If you go to MACNA make sure you attend his talk!

It was from his speaking engagement at a local club did I go home and try out the turker baster on a suspicious acro. Yep, it confirmed my suspicions - AEFW.

Yes, have a quarentine tank sucks - but at the risk of a mass kill off of sps - trust me its worth it!

 

[cward]

I'm sorry to hear that Marc. Please keep us informed on what treatment you decide to go with.

 

[PITSTOP]

I fear the same in my 120 reef.

Let me know if this a workable procedure for identifying the presence of AEFWs...

1. Remove my A. Valida colony, placing it into a white bowl

2. Fill bowl with enough tank water to cover coral

3. Stir in 5 drops Lugols iodine solution

4. Use a pipette/baster to blast the coral with the seawater/iodine solution.

5. Perform a close (compound microscope) inspection of the detritus that collects at the bottom of the bowl.

IS THIS CORRECT?

There are now a small collection of established SPS systems subscribed to this thread concerning AEFWs; we could loosely coordinate our treatments to perhaps determine which one approach or combination produces best results.

Quasi-scientific at best, however so much of what we do in this hobby is quasi-scientific...

During the summertime I am away from my reef for 8-10 days stretches (my reef is in my classroom - pics in my galllery). Consequently, daily feedings are limited to several rounds of flakes delivered via an Eheim Feedair.

My observation is that my fish population is forced to feed off the reef to an extreme. The grazers feed off the reef structure and my opportunistic feeders (6-line wrasse for example) continually inspect the corals for any potential tid-bits of food.

Are AEFWs temperature sensitive? Could temperature change limit population growth/hasten stabilization. Or, do these devils exhibit J-curve growth eating themselves out of house and home only to perish in a devastating and cataclismic population crash?

AEFWs are mean; I do not like them very much at all.

 

[melev]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7874818#post7874818 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by PITSTOP
I fear the same in my 120 reef.

Let me know if this a workable procedure for identifying the presence of AEFWs...

1. Remove my A. Valida colony, placing it into a white bowl

2. Fill bowl with enough tank water to cover coral

3. Stir in 5 drops Lugols iodine solution

4. Use a pipette/baster to blast the coral with the seawater/iodine solution.

5. Perform a close (compound microscope) inspection of the detritus that collects at the bottom of the bowl.

IS THIS CORRECT?

That is pretty much what I did. You don't need a microscope to see these guys, as they aren't that small. Some were about the size of the "T" on the penny I took a picture of, others smaller and a few were quite large.

As regards quarantining corals... I tend to always quarantine fish so they can be healthy before adding them to the reef, but not corals. I inspect them visually, and put them in the prop section to get used to the water, and a few days or weeks later they go into the tank.

I'll have to change my approach now. It's too bad, really. But apparently necessary.

 

[raddogz]

Marc - I hope this goes into a ReefCast episode.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Don't fret over setting up a quarantine tank, just call it a frag grow out tank

 

[humboldt reefer]

Well afer reading this thread I decided it was high time I checked out that crappy looking tricolor in my tank. When I picked him up and looked at its underside I saw hundreds of little circular patches of missing tissue. So I didnt bother with the iodine just dipped it in fresh water. HUNDREDS of the little bastards came off. So I guess my garf tri color and purple bonsai will be next.

 

[Sparkss]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7869016#post7869016 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Bryan89
TMPCC= Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure. It took out all the FW from the corals, but does not kill the eggs. It also allegedly works on red bugs, but I have never had to test it (knock on wood). The TMPCC is a dip.

Also from what I read FW exit will not work, but I did read someone had sucess at 2x normal dosing levels. We'll see how it goes.

Bryan

Do yourself a huge favor and read up on AEFWs. There are several very good threads with lots of information to help you avoid wasting your money, time and possibly livestock. As for useing FWE at 2X... we went up to somewhere between 8 and 10 X dosages. It ws very expensive, hard on the fish and even after repeated such treatments still did not erradicate the AEFWs, but all of this is well documented here on RC in just a couple of good threads.

As for TMPCC, while it is stated to work against red bugs, I was told by a coral farmer that it was somewhat less than 100% effective against the LRBs.

 

[tangdiver]

IMO you need to treat all corals, and expect losses like Travis said. It sucks but they will be everywhere. Also IMO do not cover eggs. Either scrape or toss. I have a theroy on they can get out at a later time, like being encapselated for a different time. Sounds weird, but we know nothing about this thing yet. COuld be like brine shrimp. Yes, why listen to the new guy, well I pass my info that I get from some more intellegent people in the aquarium trade. Just my thougths.

You could look at more losses than the treatments but on a slower basis. Seeing 1 by 1 drop to these critters would suck.

Good luck and following along. Have gone through it also like Travis, used levamsole.

Grant

 

[gflat65]

I went through the Levamisole treatments around the same time or just before Travis and had similar results. I had higher loses than most others for some reason but haven't figured it out. No signs of them on anything now. Everythign gets a TMPCC dip several weeks in a row before going in the display now...

 

[melev]

Where are you shopping for Levamisole?

 

[gflat65]

I got mine from a local farmers CO-OP. It is a pig wormer. Mine came in a big plastic bottle (~1000mL) with very little powder. Doesn't take much (still have some and have even done more treatments on my montis (with only one partial loss...). I paid ~$14 for the bottle

 

[Jeffie]

Fleet Farms in MN. has it... Also sold as a cattle de-wormer.

 

[Sparkss]

barnstocker.com is where we got ours, but that was last year sometime. Right around the time we learned our lesson that "one dip was just not enough".

 

[gflat65]

It was the single most laborious thing I've had to do with tanks. Watching losses pile up only made it worse. I completely drained the tank each time and washed the tank and equipment out of paranoia for the ba$tards. I think the worst part was that the time to clean and swish everything always came at around 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning... What made it looks good, though.

 

[clkwrk]

Sorry they had such an impact with your tank. I was able to make it thru with minimal loses maybe a hand full if that . I think I lost more to the TMPCC dip than AEFW's themselves.