w3bbo
Member
...but don't know how I did it.
Long story short, I accidentally infected my tank with AEFW last summer. Tell tale bite marks started to appear on Acros. I dipped a couple of prime candidates and sure enough, off popped a few AEFW. It took them about a week to munch there way through the valida despite me dipping that one. Next up they moved on to a Mille. 7 or 8 half eaten colonies later and I as losing the will to live.
I could have used the tried and tested method by removing all the acros and dipping but as my tank is rammed full and I simply wouldn't have had space to do it. So I did the following:
Started dosing Flatworm stop.
Stocked up on a variety of halichores Wrasse and a Spotted Mandarin (Synchiropus picturatus) in the hope of some form of natural control. While
i do believe these helped, I doubt these were the reason for the annihilation of the AEFW.
Because the corals were stressed I think this led to some form a bacterial outbreak as a few healthy corals started going a very palid tan/grey and would then begin to STN. Never saw anything like this as the STN would only be one branch at a time. Vibrio perhaps? Who knows. I did lots of daily waterchanges and increased the water temp from 25.5-27c. I have since kept the temperature to 27c.
I also found a couple of polyclad flatworms in the sump (yeah I had a few problems in 2016!). So threw caution to the wind and dosed the tank with 3 (separate) doses of Prazi Pro (recommended dosage).
During this period I also found a broken glass heater so that was also replaced.
All these problems meant my tank looked shocking. The corals were half dead with zero PE, some STN, some RTN only the fish looked normal - everything looked like it was going to die. As the Prazipro makes your skimmer go wild i turned this off which meant my ph plummetted at night down to 7.65.
After a few weeks of daily 10% waterchanges the tank started to recover. I almost forgot about the AEFW given the other more immediate issues I encountered. Still I continued to dip a colony that had dropped a few off last time I dipped and I couldn't find any. There were however a few eggs near the base so I scraped these off and put it back in the DT.
The tank continued to improve week on week to the point it has never looked better than it does now. I have yet to find any eggs or AEFW for 3 months. I have bought a valida frag, a few tenius and a couple of smooth skins to try and get some signs of any existing infestation but nada, zip, nothing. I've dipped a few colonies that I know were infected and there's no signs whatsoever with the corals now healed and basing out where previously it had been munched.
I've been holding back making this post and tempting fate but I'm now 99.99% confident that my reef tank is now clear of these pests. I only wish I knew what the key to eradicating them was so I could help others? As far as I can see I've done nothing that hasn't been tried and tested (and failed) before.
Long story short, I accidentally infected my tank with AEFW last summer. Tell tale bite marks started to appear on Acros. I dipped a couple of prime candidates and sure enough, off popped a few AEFW. It took them about a week to munch there way through the valida despite me dipping that one. Next up they moved on to a Mille. 7 or 8 half eaten colonies later and I as losing the will to live.
I could have used the tried and tested method by removing all the acros and dipping but as my tank is rammed full and I simply wouldn't have had space to do it. So I did the following:
Started dosing Flatworm stop.
Stocked up on a variety of halichores Wrasse and a Spotted Mandarin (Synchiropus picturatus) in the hope of some form of natural control. While
i do believe these helped, I doubt these were the reason for the annihilation of the AEFW.
Because the corals were stressed I think this led to some form a bacterial outbreak as a few healthy corals started going a very palid tan/grey and would then begin to STN. Never saw anything like this as the STN would only be one branch at a time. Vibrio perhaps? Who knows. I did lots of daily waterchanges and increased the water temp from 25.5-27c. I have since kept the temperature to 27c.
I also found a couple of polyclad flatworms in the sump (yeah I had a few problems in 2016!). So threw caution to the wind and dosed the tank with 3 (separate) doses of Prazi Pro (recommended dosage).
During this period I also found a broken glass heater so that was also replaced.
All these problems meant my tank looked shocking. The corals were half dead with zero PE, some STN, some RTN only the fish looked normal - everything looked like it was going to die. As the Prazipro makes your skimmer go wild i turned this off which meant my ph plummetted at night down to 7.65.
After a few weeks of daily 10% waterchanges the tank started to recover. I almost forgot about the AEFW given the other more immediate issues I encountered. Still I continued to dip a colony that had dropped a few off last time I dipped and I couldn't find any. There were however a few eggs near the base so I scraped these off and put it back in the DT.
The tank continued to improve week on week to the point it has never looked better than it does now. I have yet to find any eggs or AEFW for 3 months. I have bought a valida frag, a few tenius and a couple of smooth skins to try and get some signs of any existing infestation but nada, zip, nothing. I've dipped a few colonies that I know were infected and there's no signs whatsoever with the corals now healed and basing out where previously it had been munched.
I've been holding back making this post and tempting fate but I'm now 99.99% confident that my reef tank is now clear of these pests. I only wish I knew what the key to eradicating them was so I could help others? As far as I can see I've done nothing that hasn't been tried and tested (and failed) before.
