It CAN Happen to you

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by Ephraim

I've got some reading to do to come up with a treatment plan. I am hoping i can avoid the "move all my acros route and separate qt them for more than a month". As it stands they seem to only be located in a very small area of the tank. And initially i am going to work on the hope/assumption that they have no spread to far. I am going to grab some betadine on the way home from the airport sunday night and start dipping all colonies and frags immediately to drop down the numbers.

Has anyone found any predators for these yet? Green madarin? some kinda wrasse?

Apparently 6 line wrasse will eat them...sometimes.

There was a guy on the ZEO forum who added 6 six lines and they put a dent in the numbers but never got rid of all of them and he still had to QT I think. From all the reading I have done on RC, they spread and you might need to take all acros out

[Ephraim]

i'd like to add a six line to also keep spaghetti worms in check too but i have a magenta dottyback in there that keeps killing them. Gotta catch him out first. Off the get go i am going to try a dipping approach and try to get the dottyback out and into one of my other tanks so i can get a sixline. Basically make it as hard as possible for these damn things to live in the tank. If i see more spreading then i will have to go the QT route.

I would like to avoid tossing the affected peices, a tri color nana(super sweet), a dark purple valida that grows like a beast, and a nice deepwater white and purple. They are all some of my favorites, i'd like to save them if at all possible.

I have not seen the worms themselves, from what i understand it is next to impossible to see them unless they are off the coral in a white bowl. But the white spots i am seeing on the coral definately matches pictures i have seen of other people's issues.

What dips can people reccomend that will be both effective but not stress the acros too much.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by Ephraim

i'd like to add a six line to also keep spaghetti worms in check too but i have a magenta dottyback in there that keeps killing them. Gotta catch him out first. Off the get go i am going to try a dipping approach and try to get the dottyback out and into one of my other tanks so i can get a sixline. Basically make it as hard as possible for these damn things to live in the tank. If i see more spreading then i will have to go the QT route.

I would like to avoid tossing the affected peices, a tri color nana(super sweet), a dark purple valida that grows like a beast, and a nice deepwater white and purple. They are all some of my favorites, i'd like to save them if at all possible.

I have not seen the worms themselves, from what i understand it is next to impossible to see them unless they are off the coral in a white bowl. But the white spots i am seeing on the coral definately matches pictures i have seen of other people's issues.

What dips can people reccomend that will be both effective but not stress the acros too much.

Revive is the best IMO, never stresses the corals at all.

FWIW when the guy was using six lines to help with AEFW, he had to blow them off the corals with a turkey baster so they would float around the tank and the six lines would eat them. Otherwise he said they wouldn`t go near them on the actual corals.

[paddyob]

Originally Posted by zoaElite

That really sucks Mark, good luck with them as you said they are hell. Any ideas on how you are going to combat them, chemically or naturally?
Levi

I had flat worms cover my tank. I added a spotted mandarin (as it is natural food) and it literally wiped them out. The terminator. Possible this is a safe route to try. Beats chemical warfare!!!


Patrick

[Chaloupa]

Mandarins work well most of the time for Red Planaria flatworms...but AEFW are way different...and WAY worse. Any fish added that helps is a blessing but it's a tough war against them.

Just a word of caution when using Revive...I did a mass dip with Revive a couple of weekends ago and thought to dip a bit longer than recommended and to date have lost 8 frags....so be careful and don't dip too long.

Good Luck with your battle...if you only have a few or less than 10 colonies...I'd consider taking them all out and trashing them....unless you have a tank big enough to QT them in...another thing that is suggested is adding Camel shrimp to the sump of the Q tank and rotating corals through the sump....put in sump for .5-1 hour and let shrimp pick off eggs and AEFW...them remove and put back in the QT display...watch shrimps closely..once they eat all the nasties they reportedly move on to eating the polyps.

[Zoaelite]

Thanks for the info, I know after I added my Mandarin any larger brown/ red Flat worms were destroyed. Hope everything works out for you Mark.
Levi

Originally Posted by Chaloupa

Mandarins work well most of the time for Red Planaria flatworms...but AEFW are way different...and WAY worse. Any fish added that helps is a blessing but it's a tough war against them.

Just a word of caution when using Revive...I did a mass dip with Revive a couple of weekends ago and thought to dip a bit longer than recommended and to date have lost 8 frags....so be careful and don't dip too long.

Good Luck with your battle...if you only have a few or less than 10 colonies...I'd consider taking them all out and trashing them....unless you have a tank big enough to QT them in...another thing that is suggested is adding Camel shrimp to the sump of the Q tank and rotating corals through the sump....put in sump for .5-1 hour and let shrimp pick off eggs and AEFW...them remove and put back in the QT display...watch shrimps closely..once they eat all the nasties they reportedly move on to eating the polyps.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by Chaloupa

Mandarins work well most of the time for Red Planaria flatworms...but AEFW are way different...and WAY worse. Any fish added that helps is a blessing but it's a tough war against them.

Just a word of caution when using Revive...I did a mass dip with Revive a couple of weekends ago and thought to dip a bit longer than recommended and to date have lost 8 frags....so be careful and don't dip too long.

Good Luck with your battle...if you only have a few or less than 10 colonies...I'd consider taking them all out and trashing them....unless you have a tank big enough to QT them in...another thing that is suggested is adding Camel shrimp to the sump of the Q tank and rotating corals through the sump....put in sump for .5-1 hour and let shrimp pick off eggs and AEFW...them remove and put back in the QT display...watch shrimps closely..once they eat all the nasties they reportedly move on to eating the polyps.

Must depend on the coral...I forgot about 3 colonies in a revive dip for about 20 minutes a while back and all are still alive and well. I dip all my corals for 8 minutes or so and never lost one.

[my2rotties]

I found this useful link

http://www.melevsreef.com/aefw.html

We pulled all of our acros out last night and like GSP said there were egg strands at the bases. It was the bases that had indentations rather then being flat and molded with the corals. We did long dips in Revive, and put them in my 90g in the basement. I had no clue what was going on with my corals, since we changed the halides, and our well water is changing due to the run off and I thought our RO was not working properly.

So... don't know if it is too late for them or not. I am thinking they might be beyond the Revive now. Will be driving to the city to get the Betadine. The corals look terrible in the 90g and I am almost regretting taking action, but there was really no choice. The bad thing about being new in the hobby is I do get faced with an issue and my experience cannot pin point the issue until much later in the game.

Live and learn... at least the fish are fine.

[Ephraim]

Well i got to dipping the affected corals and the peices adjacent to them. Only the ones showing bites had the worms on them as near as i could tell.

I tossed my valida as the whole base was egg city, fragged a few tips off of it to see if i can save. Dip used was kent, couldnt find any betadine today so i grabbed this to try out. Stunned the worms, did not kill them, at the reccomended dosage.

took some pictures, will post them up in the AM. I was shocked at the size of some of these monsters, alot bigger than expected.

[Snappy]

Before introducing new corals to my system I use Tropic Marin and/or Sea Chem iodine dips, they work pretty well.

As an alternative you can always try this camel shrimp cleaning tank idea.
http://www.korallen-zucht.de/index.p..._id=52&clang=1