AEFW help me beat it!

[ifarmer]

When I had acro eating flatform, I used Bayers once a week for 8 weeks and that got rid of it for good
During these treatment periods, corals could go a little brown due to stress.
Keep in mind, Bayer is very strong so you need to clean them off completely otherwise the left over residual can kill your crabs and shrimps.....
Everytime I dip the corals with Bayers, I always loose at least one shrimp or crab/invert.

Good luck with the treatment

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

keep at it and stay hopeful, there is light at the other end.

if you are dipping with bayer and still seeing eggs i would dip in melafix. I had a small encounter with them. I scrapped eggs, dunked bayer and melafix every 5 days, after about 4 dunks i never saw anything again.

point is, if the dunk is working you should NOT be seeing eggs.

 

[billwill]

I’m interested in the melafix dip. How do you dose, concentration, with Bayer/separate?

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

melafix marine 10ml per quart of water.

i used to alternate between bayer and melafix but now do mostly melafix.

it could be that it works better or it could be that you can see what is coming off... which is pretty important as well.

 

[d5332]

Never had flatworms but...
I have met a handful of serious sps keepers and they all had 1 thing in common....

They all had wrasses fish, carnivorous "reef safe" wrasses as a means to protect their corals.
May want to consider wrasses and a tank lid once are done dipping stuff.

 

[29bonsaireef]

+1 on wrasse.

 

[Murr7]

Never had flatworms but...
I have met a handful of serious sps keepers and they all had 1 thing in common....

They all had wrasses fish, carnivorous "reef safe" wrasses as a means to protect their corals.
May want to consider wrasses and a tank lid once are done dipping stuff.

I have a six line currently and I would love to add more wrasses but my display tank is only 36 gallons, unfortunately many of the ideal flatworm wrasses require much more space than I can give them.

 

[Murr7]

keep at it and stay hopeful, there is light at the other end.

if you are dipping with bayer and still seeing eggs i would dip in melafix. I had a small encounter with them. I scrapped eggs, dunked bayer and melafix every 5 days, after about 4 dunks i never saw anything again.

point is, if the dunk is working you should NOT be seeing eggs.

I'm going to have to do some reading on melafix because it is being suggested to me more and more. I hadn't ever really heard of it and I always used Bayer as a dip but I'm going to go on ahead and pick some melafix up.

 

[Murr7]

The corals are really starting to color up and polyps are starting to extend back out. I also just picked up melafix and am planning on dipping in it tomorrow. When the lights come on I'll snap some pics.

 

[Murr7]

I dipped in melafix today and saw no flatworms, I inspected every frag and only found bite marks on two of the frags. These marks could be old damage from flatworms killed off in this week's Bayer dip. The melafix dip made it easy to know for sure if any aefw were blown off the frags.

 

[drawman]

Nice work @Murr7 keep up the fight and keep us updated!

 

[Som1else]

How is the fight going for you now?

 

[Murr7]

How is the fight going for you now?

Things are looking up, I haven't seen any new signs of aefw but I'm going to wait a few weeks until I put them in the display. I'll continue dipping and monitoring them but I believe I've turned a corner. Almost all of the frags are gaining their colors back and look as thought they are going to pull through.

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

i got a pair of these..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B010...SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=maganfying+glasses

they have little lights on them which are nice but the problem is no depth of field so the coral has to be right in your face.. BUT..

with the 15x lenses in any eggs will JUMP out at you. and hey.. they are only $10.

 

[Murr7]

i got a pair of these..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B010...SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=maganfying+glasses

they have little lights on them which are nice but the problem is no depth of field so the coral has to be right in your face.. BUT..

with the 15x lenses in any eggs will JUMP out at you. and hey.. they are only $10.

I'll have to get these, my wife hates Amazon because I love little gadgets.

 

[drawman]

So are you still dosing with bayer or have you transitioned to melafix? I've always used bayer so I'm curious how melafix is working for you and how harsh it is on the acros.

 

[Murr7]

I swear I can see the corals brighten more and more everyday. I dipped them in Bayer and melafix again and I think that it is the one two punch that is needed to eradicate aefw. I am experiencing a red cyano bloom in the tank which I attribute to the dosing off kz flatworm stop and kz coral booster. I installed a IM mini max reactor to run a small amount of gfo and will do a water change today. I'm going to continue to dose both kz products for another two weeks everyday and then slowly reduce the number of times I dose them to twice a week. I'll take some pics when the lights come on.

 

[Murr7]

So are you still dosing with bayer or have you transitioned to melafix? I've always used bayer so I'm curious how melafix is working for you and how harsh it is on the acros.

The last dip I did I used melafix and bayer like this- Bayer 5min, then tank water rinse while turkey basting, then melafix 1-2min while turkey basting, then rinse in clean fresh mixed saltwater. I wouldn't probably do this multi dip with very stressed/dieing corals because it could be extremely stressful but my frags were looking healthy and I was confident they'd be fine. I mixed the melafix to manufacture recommendations and I saw very little stress on the frags but it was a quick dip. Ive read the longer that you leave them in the melafix the more stressful it becomes. To me Melafix and Bayer have their pros and cons as sps dips. Melafix is harsher but it will kill aefw within a min or so and is rumored to kill the eggs as well. Another plus is it is clear and is easy to see what is coming off the frags. Bayer is much more gentle and will kill off almost all sps pests in the first dip, but it won't kill the aefw eggs. I think Bayer is a great choice for all around sps dipping but Bayer is so toxic that when I dip with it it makes me nervous and I don't want to chance my other 4 legged pets coming into contact with it somehow. Im going to continue using both products on new sps frags, melafix if the frags look healthy and Bayer if they seem stressed. It also will be nice that I now have a separate system to qt incoming frags.

 

[Som1else]

Its a good sign that the corals are gaining color, even with the stress of dipping. It probably means that there are very few if any worms munching on them anymore.

 

[Murr7]

So a little update on things, I am about 99% sure that I am flatworm free! I am planning on doing a final dip/inspection on all the sps just to make 100% sure that they are dead and gone! It's been a long and irritating road and while I suffered a few lost corals I saved a majority of them. Thanks for all your help everyone I appreciate the advice and support.