Vermetid Snail ELIMINATION - In tank Treatments

[rc1626]

I have a small fighting conch and a few nassarius snails I am going to need to pull out and put in a holding tank. Anyone know if they can survive without a sand bed for a few weeks? I thought of putting a couple of large zip lock containers on the bottom of the holding tank filled with some DT sand for them to live in. What do you think would be my best option?
Thanks.

 

[ReefKeeper64]

People keep snails in bare bottom tanks all the time. They will happily clean the glass even if there is no sand. Just put a little fish food in the holding tank so you get a little build up of algae on the glass.

Make sure your snails aren’t carrying any vermetid snails or their eggs with them. You should have plenty of time to find out while they are In your holding tank. If you see signs of pests/vermetid snails or webs in your holding tank, chuck em or put them back in the ocean if you live are near one.

When your treatment is over, your tank will still be fully cycled and 100% pest free. That is, no aptasia, no vermetids, no ick, no velvet, no red bugs, no worms, nothing but healthy fish.

 

[rc1626]

Thank you. My above sand snails are all getting a good look over with a shell brushing. Just wasn't sure about my sand sifters. Holding tank is pretty well established with plenty of algae so I'm assuming they will be ok.

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

chuck em or put them back in the ocean if you live are near one.

No, never do this! Even with something apparently heathy you can introduce non-native species or diseases to the wild - and especially in this example, when you already know you are dealing with an invasive pest!



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[ReefKeeper64]

No, never do this! Even with something apparently heathy you can introduce non-native species or diseases to the wild - and especially in this example, when you already know you are dealing with an invasive pest!



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In my case, I'd chuck em in the garbage but you just know that the minute I said that, someone would accuse me of being a snail killer!

 

[tkeracer619]

I finished removing the coral and snails last night from my 600gal display. It's currently fishless.

Going to start dosing CP tonight. Going after flatworms that I haven't been able to kill with levamisole or FWE, Vermatids, Aptasia, and hopefully bubble algae.

I have a massive skimmer and no fish so I am not sure I need to worry too much about an ammonia spike. My plan is to dose 20mg/gal tonight and do an additional dose of 20mg/gal once my resupply of CP arrives on Monday.

I was planning on doing a second 40mg/gal dose around day 10 just to be sure. My display started fallow on Nov 25th so I wasn't planning on adding fish back until Feb 11th and corals/inverts back until mid March. Thinking that should allow plenty of time for the CP to be removed from the system.

 

[ReefKeeper64]

I finished removing the coral and snails last night from my 600gal display. It's currently fishless.

Going to start dosing CP tonight. Going after flatworms that I haven't been able to kill with levamisole or FWE, Vermatids, Aptasia, and hopefully bubble algae.

I have a massive skimmer and no fish so I am not sure I need to worry too much about an ammonia spike. My plan is to dose 20mg/gal tonight and do an additional dose of 20mg/gal once my resupply of CP arrives on Monday.

I was planning on doing a second 40mg/gal dose around day 10 just to be sure. My display started fallow on Nov 25th so I wasn't planning on adding fish back until Feb 11th and corals/inverts back until mid March. Thinking that should allow plenty of time for the CP to be removed from the system.

This sounds like a solid plan. The only suggestion is you may be able to start adding fish earlier than Feb 11th if you want to. Just monitor for ammonia a week after you have started your CP treatment. If your ammonia is 0, then your biological filtration is working well. You'll be able to treat your fish with CP at the same time as you are treating your tank. This is what I did and it was a home run. Again, only if you want to.

 

[rc1626]

I finished removing the coral and snails last night from my 600gal display. It's currently fishless.

Going to start dosing CP tonight. Going after flatworms that I haven't been able to kill with levamisole or FWE, Vermatids, Aptasia, and hopefully bubble algae.

I have a massive skimmer and no fish so I am not sure I need to worry too much about an ammonia spike. My plan is to dose 20mg/gal tonight and do an additional dose of 20mg/gal once my resupply of CP arrives on Monday.

I was planning on doing a second 40mg/gal dose around day 10 just to be sure. My display started fallow on Nov 25th so I wasn't planning on adding fish back until Feb 11th and corals/inverts back until mid March. Thinking that should allow plenty of time for the CP to be removed from the system.

Over the past couple of nights I've been doing the move as well. Last night was the CUC. I will look for any stragglers tonight along with removing my skunk cleaner. After that I'll be ready to go. Probably start tomorrow night if all looks good.

Good luck to you tkeracer619
Hope all goes well.

 

[tkeracer619]

Good luck to you as well.

I'm an hour in, no trace of flatworms. 3x fwe at 1.5x dose and two levamisole treatments couldn't do that. There was still a few hanging out. I feel bad for all the pods and microlife but it had to be done.

I did have to turn my skimmer down. It started to freak out.

 

[tastyfish]

We usually use CP purchased from fishman chemical dot com. Lately I've switched to the off the shelf version since we have it in stock. Its called new life spectrum called ick shield powder. You can read the ingredients online. new life spectrum is reputable and uses a form of CP that has been proven to work just as effectively as fishman's. My last use of it was to cure a powder blue tang of ick. It worked fine and the power blue has been healthy for a few months now. I wouldn't go to the bother with the cost of getting a vet prescription for CP unless I had a buddy who could write a prescription for free. If you go with the over the counter version, just follow the instructions on the bottle and use the 10% per week formula based off of that. I would not go to 100% over 10 weeks unless you still have Vsnails in your tank. I doubt you will need to go beyond 5 weeks but I've never gone that slow so I don't really know for sure. Plus again, every tank is unique. It will be safe and will work. I'm only going into this much detail because I had a case of vermetid snails years ago and would have paid dearly for such a simple method to get rid of them. Figured I'd pass on what I know now. Good luck again.

Yeah, unfortunately because of medicine licensing and control, we can't get this in the UK (no one is willing to pay the £10,000 licensing/certification costs to import).

I use Avloclor, from an on-line pharmacist (for my up coming trip to the Dominican Republic, of course. :lmao: )

Should point out, if it hasn't been said already, to remove any algae bed from the system as chloroquine will likely kill it.

Do you have any info on the breakdown time for Chloroquine from your testing with the spectrometer? That would be really useful!

 

[pisanoal]

Sorry for my long absence, but I'm glad people have taken this over. Life has been busy, and I have temporary lost interest in this research. I will probably take it back up again at some point but here is my current dilemma and why I haven't pursued further. Right now, after a long battle, my tank is finally doing well. My SPS are colored up and growing. I feel that anything I do in the tank to kill vermetids will likely decimate my microfauna population, and i'm not sure I want to do that since i've fought so long to stabilize this tank.

The CP conversation is interesting, and a good alternative if you can keep from reintroducing them on the backs of your snails and frags. Be VERY wary of both situations, and even if you don't see them, there could be some in hard to see places, especially on LPS skeletons. Anything like a branching torch or hammer or sps with dead skeleton underneath where these things could be hiding should go under STRICT extended QT. Inspect/remove any vermetids manually until you are vermetid free for at least 4 weeks. Id consider 3 months.

If possible frag them and reintroduce only living flesh on fresh frag plugs.

One tip: A good spot removal method for QT is to remove them from the water, place a drop of concentrated HCl on them and dissolve the base. That way you are sure not to spread any unseen juveniles/eggs. CAUTION: chemical gloves and goggles are highly recommended for this. Use an eye dropper, not a turkey baster if you attempt this.

 

[rc1626]

Update:
I'm in a week now with CP treatment. CP was purchased on Ebay. After moving all inverts from my tank I started dosing. I went a little more aggressive then suggested. Instead of the suggested 10% of suggested dose I dosed equally over 4 days to get my tank up to the recommended dose of 40mg/gal.

Over the first couple of days I did not notice much happening as the CP levels increased. All algae looked unaffected and a margarita snail I missed had appeared and looked okay. Fish were unaffected. Even my six line wrasse was fine. I've read that wrasses may be affected by CP. When I fed or gently stirred the sand I did notice a few webs from some vermetids.

By Day 5 I started to notice the coralline algae slightly starting to whiten in some spots. Some hair algae on my power heads still remained green as well as a small patch of turf algae I have on a rock. I also noticed that while stirring the sand gently and feeding I was not noticing anymore webs. At this point my ammonia had started to creep up to .25ppm (API). Amquel was added.

Now on day 7 of treatment (no more CP has been added) much of my purple coralline is still colored although it continues to whiten slowly across the rocks. Still no webs present when feeding and stirring the sand. Ammonia has gone up to ~ .50 so more Amquel added. All fish look unaffected and are eating great. Margarita snail I believe is dead. It is off the rock it was on and now sits in the sand and hasn't moved since day 6. Haven't pulled it yet to inspect and smell.

Tank has a slight cloudiness to it. Skimmer was shut down at the onset. I tried running it a day ago but it was foaming over enough that it was a problem even when the wedge pipe was fully open so I shut it down. Typically I run it at about 50% open. I'm running 4 T5's for 6 hours out of the day with my Mitras led's only running a 2200k spectrum at about 15% for 12hrs. 6 of them with the T5's.

Not sure how long to run it at this concentration. That's if it even still sits at 40mg/gal.(my original dose) due to chemical breakdown. I will continue to monitor for vermetids for at least another week or two and go from there. If algae starts to show itself on the glass I will probably dose again. How much, not sure. I will cross that bridge if and when it presents itself.

HTH

Current fish List for reference:
Rock Beauty Angel
Flame Angel
Potters Angel
Bangai Cardinal
Pair Ocellaris Clownfish
Orchid Dottyback
Blue Green Chromis
Talbots Damsel
Yellow Tang
Flame Hawkfish
Six Line Wrasse
Royal Gramma

 

[ReefKeeper64]

Update:
I'm in a week now with CP treatment. CP was purchased on Ebay. After moving all inverts from my tank I started dosing. I went a little more aggressive then suggested. Instead of the suggested 10% of suggested dose I dosed equally over 4 days to get my tank up to the recommended dose of 40mg/gal.

Over the first couple of days I did not notice much happening as the CP levels increased. All algae looked unaffected and a margarita snail I missed had appeared and looked okay. Fish were unaffected. Even my six line wrasse was fine. I've read that wrasses may be affected by CP. When I fed or gently stirred the sand I did notice a few webs from some vermetids.

By Day 5 I started to notice the coralline algae slightly starting to whiten in some spots. Some hair algae on my power heads still remained green as well as a small patch of turf algae I have on a rock. I also noticed that while stirring the sand gently and feeding I was not noticing anymore webs. At this point my ammonia had started to creep up to .25ppm (API). Amquel was added.

Now on day 7 of treatment (no more CP has been added) much of my purple coralline is still colored although it continues to whiten slowly across the rocks. Still no webs present when feeding and stirring the sand. Ammonia has gone up to ~ .50 so more Amquel added. All fish look unaffected and are eating great. Margarita snail I believe is dead. It is off the rock it was on and now sits in the sand and hasn't moved since day 6. Haven't pulled it yet to inspect and smell.

Tank has a slight cloudiness to it. Skimmer was shut down at the onset. I tried running it a day ago but it was foaming over enough that it was a problem even when the wedge pipe was fully open so I shut it down. Typically I run it at about 50% open. I'm running 4 T5's for 6 hours out of the day with my Mitras led's only running a 2200k spectrum at about 15% for 12hrs. 6 of them with the T5's.

Not sure how long to run it at this concentration. That's if it even still sits at 40mg/gal.(my original dose) due to chemical breakdown. I will continue to monitor for vermetids for at least another week or two and go from there. If algae starts to show itself on the glass I will probably dose again. How much, not sure. I will cross that bridge if and when it presents itself.

HTH

Current fish List for reference:
Rock Beauty Angel
Flame Angel
Potters Angel
Bangai Cardinal
Pair Ocellaris Clownfish
Orchid Dottyback
Blue Green Chromis
Talbots Damsel
Yellow Tang
Flame Hawkfish
Six Line Wrasse
Royal Gramma

You didn't want to compress the ammonia introduction into such a tight time frame like that. The ammonia level you are seeing is your big concern now as a result of compressing time like that. Raise your skimmer out of the water an inch or so and get it working. Wet skimming is a good idea.

Remember that by introducing Amquel, you are reducing the oxygen level in the water that is available to your fish. A little Amquel is safe but you can only add so much. This is especially of concern if your water is starting to cloud up. If you have an extra pump, put it in your DT facing to the surface to maximize circulation and oxygenation for your fish.

 

[rc1626]

Daring, impatient, stupid are all ways to describe how I went about this. I will say I was "prepared" and maybe you can add on some of the others.
I've raised my skimmer as you suggested reefkeeper64 and say thank you as I was unaware that Amquel had the effect of limiting o2. Always learning!
My ammonia seems to be on the decline as I tested at 1:00 pm today and the color is somewhere between 0 and .25ppm. Pic attached.
I'm going to continue monitoring ammonia and I have a 50 Gallon batch of fresh saltwater ready to go for a water change if needed.
Thank you again reefkeeper64. Hopefully there won't be a next time but if there is I will heed your advice and certainly take it a little slower.
So far all is looking good.

 

[tkeracer619]

I'm also a week in but I have no fish in the tank so I haven't measured ammonia.

Don't see webs but I haven't really been paying much attention and my lights are off. My skimmer is all the way down and I reduced the feed to it, it's running but not really producing anything but a small amount of very dry skim.

No flatworms visible since day one. Worms are piled up in a corner from the mp60 I have running. Water is a little cloudy in the 8ft dimension.

I am picking up a 40watt emperor aquatics UV to help break down the CP once this is all over.

Some bubble algae and surprisingly some pods are still hanging in there.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Bubble Algae I can understand being the hard shell.
Would popping them be better?

 

[ReefKeeper64]

Daring, impatient, stupid are all ways to describe how I went about this. I will say I was "prepared" and maybe you can add on some of the others.
I've raised my skimmer as you suggested reefkeeper64 and say thank you as I was unaware that Amquel had the effect of limiting o2. Always learning!
My ammonia seems to be on the decline as I tested at 1:00 pm today and the color is somewhere between 0 and .25ppm. Pic attached.
I'm going to continue monitoring ammonia and I have a 50 Gallon batch of fresh saltwater ready to go for a water change if needed.
Thank you again reefkeeper64. Hopefully there won't be a next time but if there is I will head your advice and certainly take it a little slower.
So far all is looking good.

From the picture I'd say your ammonia level looks to be very much on the safe side. I've seen much darker API results with Amquel in the mix and all of the fish were fine. We all are always learning so its all good.

More advice that you didn't ask for...

Keep the skimmer skimming wet. I mean really wet. This will get the dead stuff out faster.​

Keep a ton of flow going in your display tank. If you need to, buy a spare powerhead. Corals grow faster with better flow anyways so you'll be glad you have it in the long run. Oxygenation is key.​

If you see any dead bristle worms or dead other stuff, remove them with a net.​

If your water is still cloudy, put that 50 gallon batch of water to use right away. Start with no more than a 20% water change per day. You don't want to make too many changes too fast but smaller water changes per day are healthy.​

Even with all of the above, your tank will continue to be medicated for weeks to come. As soon as the ammonia concerns are completely put to rest, you can kick back and enjoy your vermetid free tank!

 

[rc1626]

From the picture I'd say your ammonia level looks to be very much on the safe side. I've seen much darker API results with Amquel in the mix and all of the fish were fine. We all are always learning so its all good.

More advice that you didn't ask for...

Keep the skimmer skimming wet. I mean really wet. This will get the dead stuff out faster.​

Keep a ton of flow going in your display tank. If you need to, buy a spare powerhead. Corals grow faster with better flow anyways so you'll be glad you have it in the long run. Oxygenation is key.​

If you see any dead bristle worms or dead other stuff, remove them with a net.​

If your water is still cloudy, put that 50 gallon batch of water to use right away. Start with no more than a 20% water change per day. You don't want to make too many changes too fast but smaller water changes per day are healthy.​

Even with all of the above, your tank will continue to be medicated for weeks to come. As soon as the ammonia concerns are completely put to rest, you can kick back and enjoy your vermetid free tank!

Whether I ask for advice or not it is always welcome. Thanks for just putting it out there. Flow thankfully is not an issue in my tank or sump. Plenty of powerheads to go around. Skimmer is skimming away. Did a water change today and still everything is looking good. I will do another ammonia test later and go from there.
Thank you.

 

[tkeracer619]

2 weeks in, did another dose of 40mg/gal

Sponge - dead
Vermatids - dead
Flatworms - dead
Aptasia - dead
Coralline algae - severely impacted
Bristle worms - severely impacted
Amphipods - large population
Bubble algae - fine

Will post updates as I have them.

 

[ReefKeeper64]

Do you have any progression pictures to share?