AEFW
 

As I was preparing for my exam tonight I received a call from a fellow refer... " I have some very bad news... your tank may be infested with acropora eating flatworms." I was in shock. Every coral that I put in gets dipped and I have always inspected the dipped water and coral once more before adding the frag or colony to the tank. Somehow, I missed one and now I have flatworms.

My initial reaction was "no... This can't be happening..." at this point I had dropped my books and started to pull out the bottle of revive, the suspected colony and dipped it. Sure enough, flatworms started to release themselves from the coral. I had then pulled out more containers and dipped more frags and colonies...starting with the validas and shortcakes. Whew... Nothing. I dipped more... Now the samentosas... I have three... Two frags and one colony... One of the frag passed but the other and the colony didn't. I broke more colonies off the rocks and dipped them along with other frags... Nothing. Then hair acros were next... Nothing. Why the samentosas and not the validas? The sarmentosa were placed near the infested coral while the others were not so close.

Over the next two and half ours I dipped more and nothing... By then I was too tired and have to get back to the books... A third of the corals are checked but I have another two-thirds to go so it will have to wait to tomorrow night. Before ending, I scraped all the infected acros off the rocks and any suspected pieces I dare not put it back into the tank.

I have contacted another reefer of this and will be contacting others of the same and hope they have dipped before letting corals enter their tank.

I have always been very careful in buying my corals from reputable business and reefers. But somehow I had missed one over the last two-three months from my coral buying sprees. No point trying to figure where it came from as the sole responsibility is in my hands... All I can do is try to destroy all the flatworms and hope that the casualties will be small...

What I intend to do for the next three months... Will be dipping all the corals on a weekly basis and will continue to do so for another month longer even when there are no signs of flatworms. Check all the corals for eggs... They are said to be easily spotted ( brown) and will only be found on dead corals as they do not lay eggs on live coral tissues. I will get a bottle of zeovit flatWorm stop. This helps to strengthen the corals and help to build a slime to protect them from flatworms ( prob the reason why I do not see any on sps that excretes lots of slime). I will also need to get a couple of wrasses from the halichoeres family.

Why am I sharing this with everyone you may ask? Yes, this is what I considered as a reefer's nightmare and I am quite embarassed that this has happened to me but I also need to share with fellow reefers of my experience so that you can learn from this to protect your investment and to have a better experience in this hobby.

It's 5:30am and I must get back to the books... Have an exam to write in 12 hrs...

That sucks :(
I too somehow introduced flatworms to my system at some point this fall/winter. And I have been either too busy/sick/lazy to find out exactly what I have or how to deal with it.
Sounds like you're on a good regimen to squash the out break though. Keep up the good work and continue updating us on your progress.

See? This is how that happens. You "forget" just once to practice safe fragging, and your whole tank can go to crap, thousands of dollars worth of corals need to get tossed and essentially, you have to start over from scratch.
I've got lots of frags from Wayne, check every one under a microscope and never found anything. I know his tank is fine, and so, the last frag he gave me, when I was busy, did not get checked. Until last night. Oh, look, flatworms on the frag. #$%%
It has been in my system a few days. It got tossed last night. I checked all the other frags and nothing. But the chances that one let loose and went for a swim in the tank are pretty good. Nothing I can do about it now, but that 2 minutes of being lazy, just once, may have just cost me my coral collection.

People, DO NOT add frags to your tank without dipping. You WILL get something bad, and in the case of AEFW, not treatable in tank.

Brad, I hope your tank is gonna be ok. This whole thing has me very concerned. I do not want to share this with anyone. As you said all it takes is one... I wish I had set up the other tank already. The irony of it all is that the second tank is to be my insurance policy...

I've been through this, it isn't fun, but you can win. I found Revive to be stressfully on the corals for repeated dipping. Have a read here, it works well, and the corals don't even react to the dip if done correctly. Unfortunately it's only available in The States. Perhaps you could test some infested frags with an insecticide that is available in Canada. B-Cyfluthrin is the ingredient that kills the flatworms.

Rob, if I end up having them in the tank, I cannot remove any of the colonies. They're well attached to the rock :) I've got frags before and tried to turkey baste the flatworms off with little success, so I'm hoping that the few that came on this frag were equally well attached. It's possible that one let go and is in the tank somewhere, but I'm hoping I don't get them breeding in there over this.
The kicker is I know so much better than to add a frag to the tank without checking and dipping. Just dumb..

Dips don't kill the eggs. Every piece should be very closely inspected for eggs, and the eggs need to be scraped off. All new corals should be quarantined, but any corals found with eggs need be quarantined and dipped several times over a few weeks at least. AEFW is a reef's worst nightmare - they are terrible critters and take so much time and effort to eliminate. A worm-aggressive Wrasse is a good idea especially Halichoeres spp. although they will usually eat ornamental shrimps and crabs as well. So there are drawbacks to that option.

Egg masses are easy to see and are laid around the dead base area. I always get fresh cut frags or cut the frags off of any base to avoid things that hide down there. I also check (almost) every frag under a microscope for pests.

It's the "almost" factor above that will kill you -lol

BLUE WORLD ON HILLSIDE HAS SOME GREEN WRASSES IN $21.00 THEY ARE SMALL, UNDER 2 INCHES AND WILL EAT YOUR FLATWORMS
GOOD LUCK I HOPE ALL GOES WELL
:2gunfire:

sorry to hear that