Eliminating Blue Clove Polyps with Fenbendazole

[ReefMind]

Interesting that it got the GSP also. Maybe it'll work for folks who want to not have GSP any more, though that might be less common than blue cloves going nuts, since GSP doesn't spawn in aquaria.

Useful information, thanks.

This is exactly why I came here to read all this. I'm going to try breaking off the section of rock they are attached to first but ordering the meds to make a dip as a backup. I scraped and peeled and sliced with a razor until the mat was mush and they STILL came back. Now they are irritating an acro and have got to go.

 

[brucey]

Keep us updated. Hopefully it works out. I just added a new CUC. Still no bsp.

so my plot thickens…
I waited 2 weeks before turning things back on…they were showing signs of dying but small nubins or stumps were still to go.
I put my skimmer back on, added carbon and did a water change and the next day the nubins in the lower light areas were back, fully open, and like they were completely unaffected…

the polyps in high light areas have gone, but where they’re thickly clumped and in low light the first treatments of circa 40mg made little difference.
Over the last few weeks I’ve added circa 150mg which has affected them in the same way but it’s taking a very long time for them to disappear
Short of scrubbing the shrivelled up polyps I’m not sure what to do….

 

[brucey]

hi, great reading. fighting this stuff myself.. in norway i cant get the panacur.. any chance someone would sell me leftovers? at least 1grams.

Pm me
I’m in the uk
Happy to help if you cover postage

 

[brucey]

Anyone who knows how this will affect pod population, i would guess bristleworms are in dangerzone with this med?

My bristleworms have been ok but I’ve lost a few big Mexican turbos not long after treatment started

Pods ok too
Other snails not affected

 

[danfee]

My bristleworms have been ok but I’ve lost a few big Mexican turbos not long after treatment started

Pods ok too
Other snails not affected

So yeah…. I’m very surprised at my results. My tank looked awesome all through treatment. Clams, nassarius, emeralds, hermits, mangrove, lps, sps… all look great.

I added 1 gram of the pancur c to my 112 gallon. Left skimmer on. Gfo/carbon reactor off

I still see the tiny nuisance snails crawling all around.

I was reluctant to even do a water change. But I did one today at the 7 day mark. Vacuumed the **** out of the gravel. (30 gallons on my 112 gallon). Replaced reactor with carbon and not gfo and turned back on.

blue cloves completely gone. I get many of you say they will come back but now, because of what I’ve seen, can always redose.

Side note: I’ve been dealing with blue cloves for over a year. My past treatment has been to turn off all pump and lay a layer of aiptasia x on them for 30 minutes. It works well. Turns the rock bare white. But since I can’t get them all they always regrow. So I’m thinking if I see some heads pop up I’ll just put some aiptasia x back on them. If that doesn’t work I can always do another treatment of the dog wormer.

I think that my lps looked especially better was because my po4 was .05 before treatment and went up to .15 today. I have a mixed tank and it’s always a battle sps vs. lps water quality.

Good reefing. Hope this helps. And thanks for all your help

Ok so yeah they are coming back. Started seeing them pop up again after my second big water change and turning reactor with carbon back on. I’m thinking about moving to plan B.

Im thinking about doing the opposite of what most of you are doing for my second attempt. What if we try what someone posted a couple posts ago about doing a much smaller dose?

I want to try and figure out the minimum dose required to make them unhappy and just leave it in…. For a long time. I think it’s doesn’t take nearly as much as I added and anything extra is just wasted.

Going to keep skimmer going like I did last time but turn my reactor with only gfo back on.

Only thing different in my tank will be that I won’t be adding carbon to my reactor. Also hoping the much smaller dose will not effect anything in my tank long term.

 

[jmac218]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here. First of all I'd like to thank peanut for starting this thread, and everyone else for chiming in with their person experience. I read all 33 pages of this and decided to take the plunge and dose to kill these overgrowing bcp.

I have a 70g cube which is completely infested with these guys. I've went the aptasia x route, I used to brush them with a toothbrush every cleaning only for them to spread more. So I'm taking my chances and going with the fenbendazole.

I followed Max Draco's writeup for the dosing amounts plus a ton of information from here as to how many times to dose and whether to use skimmer or not (I'm keeping it running). Plus, thankfully i read here, I was ready to pull every coral that wasn't sps out of my tank.

I used safeguard canine dewormer. I took a hammer to it while it was still in the package to crush it to a fine powder. I then mixed it with one gallon of tank water. This would give you 222mg to one gallon which he states will treat 111 gallons.
I dosed last night with 12 cups or 166.5mg.

Here is a picture of my tank last night before I dosed. As you can see it's completely infested. I put it in at 8:20pm, so it's been 14 hours now. At the 2 hour mark, I could see them start to get irritated. Now this morning, they're about half way closed or so.

I'll update my post with more pictures this afternoon when white lights come on as to the progress this medication has made.

Again I'd like to thank everyone of you for taking the time and chance to figure all of this out for the rest of us!

 

[danfee]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here. First of all I'd like to thank peanut for starting this thread, and everyone else for chiming in with their person experience. I read all 33 pages of this and decided to take the plunge and dose to kill these overgrowing bcp.

I have a 70g cube which is completely infested with these guys. I've went the aptasia x route, I used to brush them with a toothbrush every cleaning only for them to spread more. So I'm taking my chances and going with the fenbendazole.

I followed Max Draco's writeup for the dosing amounts plus a ton of information from here as to how many times to dose and whether to use skimmer or not (I'm keeping it running). Plus, thankfully i read here, I was ready to pull every coral that wasn't sps out of my tank.

I used safeguard canine dewormer. I took a hammer to it while it was still in the package to crush it to a fine powder. I then mixed it with one gallon of tank water. This would give you 222mg to one gallon which he states will treat 111 gallons.
I dosed last night with 12 cups or 166.5mg.

Here is a picture of my tank last night before I dosed. As you can see it's completely infested. I put it in at 8:20pm, so it's been 14 hours now. At the 2 hour mark, I could see them start to get irritated. Now this morning, they're about half way closed or so.

I'll update my post with more pictures this afternoon when white lights come on as to the progress this medication has made.

Again I'd like to thank everyone of you for taking the time and chance to figure all of this out for the rest of us!

Good luck. Just keep an eye on your po4 and you should be good. You have tons so that’s a lot of die off.

 

[jmac218]

Good luck. Just keep an eye on your po4 and you should be good. You have tons so that’s a lot of die off.

Yes I definitely will thank you. I kept the skimmer running as well to try to help with that.

 

[jmac218]

So it's been about 47 hours. I ended up adding 3 more cups or 41.6mg of fenbendazole last night because that's what I had left of my gallon. I used the last cup to test a single frag covered in bcps and they were closed within minutes (that was my initial test).

Here are some progress pictures. They're definitely getting ticked off! I've kept my skimmer running and so far pulled out about a quarter cup of some nasty looking stuff.

My nitrates are currently at 3 and phosphate is .042ppm. I will keep a close eye on everything. I'll be adding carbon and purigen at the 10 day mark, and I'll use my trusty phosphate rx should I run into any issues with that.

 

[brucey]

So it's been about 47 hours. I ended up adding 3 more cups or 41.6mg of fenbendazole last night because that's what I had left of my gallon. I used the last cup to test a single frag covered in bcps and they were closed within minutes (that was my initial test).

Here are some progress pictures. They're definitely getting ticked off! I've kept my skimmer running and so far pulled out about a quarter cup of some nasty looking stuff.

My nitrates are currently at 3 and phosphate is .042ppm. I will keep a close eye on everything. I'll be adding carbon and purigen at the 10 day mark, and I'll use my trusty phosphate rx should I run into any issues with that.

Great looking tank, I can see why you want to get rid of them so badly

I ended up having to dose significantly more than I expected and ended up losing all my snails and bristle worms.

In my 90 g I ended up putting close to 300 mg in. Far far more than I wanted but then I’ll never grow Xenia or leathers and only really bothered about a healthy clean up crew.
Each tank must be very different. I have a lot of Zoas and very much a mixed reef, some Zoas were struggling in but but to do with the algae going nuts.
Different systems must react in different ways

 

[jmac218]

Great looking tank, I can see why you want to get rid of them so badly

I ended up having to dose significantly more than I expected and ended up losing all my snails and bristle worms.

In my 90 g I ended up putting close to 300 mg in. Far far more than I wanted but then I’ll never grow Xenia or leathers and only really bothered about a healthy clean up crew.
Each tank must be very different. I have a lot of Zoas and very much a mixed reef, some Zoas were struggling in but but to do with the algae going nuts.
Different systems must react in different ways

Yes I only have 1 frag of zoa's and they're definitely not too happy as well as my one torch. It was doing fine up until today and my water is a bit cloudy. I'm thinking maybe bacteria bloom? But my skimmer has been working in overdrive and these polyps are definitely dying. I'll be following up this post with pictures of the progress. I'm planning on doing one more dose in about a week at half strength 100mg or so, so I'll be totaling out around 300 as well in 70g.

 

[Semisonyx]

Do these grow like GSP? I fortunately haven’t encountered them. I’ve found the easiest way to get rid of pests is a solution of sodium hydroxide injected via an insulin syringe. If these have a mat, I would try injecting a mL or two under the mat and see the response. I wouldn’t inject more than a couple mL a day because it will raise your alk. Be cautious though as sodium hydroxide is highly caustic to skin and eyes.

 

[jmac218]

So approximately 84 hours later most of these little buggers are dying off. The ones at the top with more light seen to be holding up a bit better but they're still dying.

 

[jmac218]

Do these grow like GSP? I fortunately haven’t encountered them. I’ve found the easiest way to get rid of pests is a solution of sodium hydroxide injected via an insulin syringe. If these have a mat, I would try injecting a mL or two under the mat and see the response. I wouldn’t inject more than a couple mL a day because it will raise your alk. Be cautious though as sodium hydroxide is highly caustic to skin and eyes.

They seem to grow similarly to the gsp but the mat isn't as thick so you can't just peel them off the rock like you can with the gsp.

 

[brucey]

So approximately 84 hours later most of these little buggers are dying off. The ones at the top with more light seen to be holding up a bit better but they're still dying.

Keep going with the treatment as long as you can
I thought I left mine long enough before I added carbon/turned the skimmer on again but sadly not the case…

I must have dosed close to 300g in my 90g and have them coming back with a vengeance

 

[jmac218]

Keep going with the treatment as long as you can
I thought I left mine long enough before I added carbon/turned the skimmer on again but sadly not the case…

I must have dosed close to 300g in my 90g and have them coming back with a vengeance

It's been a week now and I still haven't added carbon. I planned on doing one more dose at half strength just to be sure. I figured when they're mostly dead I'll hit them one more time to make sure they can't recover. Hopefully that works out.

 

[ulferik]

when the time comes to remove the fenbendazole from the water.. any idea on how long i should run carbon?how many/big water changes? anyone with experience for when it was safe for add cuc etc?

 

[jmac218]

It's been 3 and a half weeks since my initial dose. I never followed up with a second dose and they have all disappeared. I added carbon about a week ago and still haven't done a water chance. I plan on doing a heavy cleaning and large water change tomorrow because I've had a pretty bad algae outbreak.

I'm not sure if it's because of the blue clove polyps being gone, or if the fenbendazole had some sort of positive impact, but my sps is growing like crazy now!

Here are some pictures from tonight. You can see the algae is pretty bad, but the cloves are completely gone! From what I had to now I'd say it worked pretty dang good! I still have 1 packet left that I can redose should I find it necessary but as of right now I'm happy with the results!

 

[Dburr1014]

So today I continued my battle against the blue clove polyp. I have been experimenting with boiling tank water and hydrogen peroxide.
I microwaved tank water and placed a rock in it for about 5 minutes. Then dosed h2o2 all over the polyp for a few more minutes. Then scrubbed with a toothbrush. Rinsed with water and back in the tank.
This pic is after. Frammer is ticked a little but will be fine. The rock was covered up to where the skeleton starts.


This pic is another one I have to do. The rock was just as covered.

My update.
Been almost 6 months with h2o2, hot tank water and a tooth brush. Had to do it a few times but I'm happy to say I am blue clove polyp free. It's been a couple months with zero.

Take away;
If you can remove the rock you can kill them without the heavy drugs.
Hope this helps some people.

 

[jmac218]

Hi R2R

I had a lot blue clove Polyp in my 225 gallons tank and I've been following this interesting posts about how to eliminate the polyp. So last week I pulled the trigger and put the bendazole in my tank, 250 mg, turned off the skimmer, UV and pull the carbon media. I Put back all the equipment after 72 hrs and I started to do 40 gallons of water change every other day. Total water change 120 gallons.
I took pictures of the progress.

So far the blue Polyp is gone

This didn't hurt your clam at all? I dosed about a month ago maybe 5 weeks and I would like to add a few clams to my tank. I just skimmed back through all these pages I'm glad I saw yours in the picture.