scubasteve
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2014
- Location
- Cambridge, Ontario
We all hate the dreaded AEFW. The best way to prevent is quarantine and dip but there have been some recent discoveries with existing products that have a beneficial benefit as well that help to prevent and we all know even with qt and dip these evil buggers can still mange to slip through. People with wrasse and strong healthy coral usually just live with it as a fact of life and the wrasse and healthy coral keep their population low, but 1 power outage could change that overnight.
So my standard for years was always to cut off plug and encrusting part and remount to new plug, dip with expel-p or flatworm exit (levamisole) to stun any nasties and make them easier to blow off, then dip in Bayer (Imidacloprid) and qt redipping every couple days for a couple weeks.
We know levamisole is very reef and invert safe and the only bad effect is the toxins released from moving and dying flatworms and planaria. We also know alone it will not kill AEFW but it does disrupt their life cycle stage so they can not develop from larval to adult and end up dying before munching coral. One of the other neat benefits is that levamisole actually increases sps slime coat which is a main defense for preventing AEFW infection to begin with as they struggle to stay attached and is a main reason why they target smooth skin acros that have a thinner slime coat and weak or dying corals that also have a thin slime coat.
Well just so happens I noticed bite marks on one of my corals in my 10 gal a couple months ago. Of course within a week that coral was covered in bite marks and started on another 2. Most my frags are already encrusting onto rock so I did not really want to remove them. Sad part is this is where most new sps keepers completely give up after nothing seems to work. Well 1 month later I can't find any adults with a turkey baster any more and all the bite marks have healed with no new ones.
The only thing I did was treat my tank at 4x the dose of flatworm exit. Recommended is 4 drops per 5 gal increasing 50% every 30 minutes till flatworms detach and blow around with just powerheads then blow with baster and remove as many as you can, brine shrimp net works great. I used 16 drops per 10 gallon (which is what it took for them to detach the first time) every 3 days for 4 weeks. After the first 2 treatments they stopped blowing off but I basted every night for the month. I'm now dosing 1 drop per gallon once a week and some odd things have happened but it's beneficial. Aside from the thicker slime coat that I already expected from other people reporting it does that dosing weekly I have also noticed my zoas seem much happier and reach out less, my gorgonians almost never put their polyps away and my acans are so puffy now they bobble almost as much as a bubble coral.
I am now sticking to this weekly dose as the benefits are definitely worth it. All my snails are fine even the baby lightening dove snails and it has not seemed to kill any micro feather dusters which I did expect to die. Pods are still all over my tank so it has not seemed to harm them either and urchin is still good and barnacles on snails lol.
And to anyone worried about sticking hands in a and treated with dewormer, light neutralizes it fairly quick and your carbon removes it within hours so turn of flow to carbon while treating and best done at lights out time for best effect.
Never have I had such an easy time with in tank AEFW and 0 predators. Unless I find an adult or eggs soon I'm pretty sure they are gone and will stop using just to see if they even come back or it toasted them and how the corals react to it gone because I have never had acans inflate so much in an sps dominant low nutrient tank.
We might actually be able to keep people in the hobby easier.
So my standard for years was always to cut off plug and encrusting part and remount to new plug, dip with expel-p or flatworm exit (levamisole) to stun any nasties and make them easier to blow off, then dip in Bayer (Imidacloprid) and qt redipping every couple days for a couple weeks.
We know levamisole is very reef and invert safe and the only bad effect is the toxins released from moving and dying flatworms and planaria. We also know alone it will not kill AEFW but it does disrupt their life cycle stage so they can not develop from larval to adult and end up dying before munching coral. One of the other neat benefits is that levamisole actually increases sps slime coat which is a main defense for preventing AEFW infection to begin with as they struggle to stay attached and is a main reason why they target smooth skin acros that have a thinner slime coat and weak or dying corals that also have a thin slime coat.
Well just so happens I noticed bite marks on one of my corals in my 10 gal a couple months ago. Of course within a week that coral was covered in bite marks and started on another 2. Most my frags are already encrusting onto rock so I did not really want to remove them. Sad part is this is where most new sps keepers completely give up after nothing seems to work. Well 1 month later I can't find any adults with a turkey baster any more and all the bite marks have healed with no new ones.
The only thing I did was treat my tank at 4x the dose of flatworm exit. Recommended is 4 drops per 5 gal increasing 50% every 30 minutes till flatworms detach and blow around with just powerheads then blow with baster and remove as many as you can, brine shrimp net works great. I used 16 drops per 10 gallon (which is what it took for them to detach the first time) every 3 days for 4 weeks. After the first 2 treatments they stopped blowing off but I basted every night for the month. I'm now dosing 1 drop per gallon once a week and some odd things have happened but it's beneficial. Aside from the thicker slime coat that I already expected from other people reporting it does that dosing weekly I have also noticed my zoas seem much happier and reach out less, my gorgonians almost never put their polyps away and my acans are so puffy now they bobble almost as much as a bubble coral.
I am now sticking to this weekly dose as the benefits are definitely worth it. All my snails are fine even the baby lightening dove snails and it has not seemed to kill any micro feather dusters which I did expect to die. Pods are still all over my tank so it has not seemed to harm them either and urchin is still good and barnacles on snails lol.
And to anyone worried about sticking hands in a and treated with dewormer, light neutralizes it fairly quick and your carbon removes it within hours so turn of flow to carbon while treating and best done at lights out time for best effect.
Never have I had such an easy time with in tank AEFW and 0 predators. Unless I find an adult or eggs soon I'm pretty sure they are gone and will stop using just to see if they even come back or it toasted them and how the corals react to it gone because I have never had acans inflate so much in an sps dominant low nutrient tank.
We might actually be able to keep people in the hobby easier.
