Help identifying possible pests

[newbreefer316]

I've been having issues with keeping sps in my frag tank and for the most part I thought it was just from an alk drop while we were on vacation about a month ago and a lack of flow from my gyre getting stuck on the wrong program but after looking at some of the different pieces I noticed little bite marks maybe on some of the corals. I bayer dip everything but I realize how easily some eggs or something could have slipped through.

 

[Lovemyreef2015]

Looks like flatworm bite marks to me.

 

[smh254]

I would have to agree[emoji115]

 

[newbreefer316]

Looks like flatworm bite marks to me.

Thanks, time to start doing some research.

 

[Scorpius]

Acropora eating flatworm or AEFW.

 

[BigJohnny]

Aefw

 

[George209]

AEFW

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Good luck! treatment is tricky if you have a lot of glued down pieces, but not impossible.

 

[Tanghoarder]

.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/flatworms.328095/page-4

Here’s one reeferes experience with these. It ended well for him but it takes time and effort to overcome AEFW

 

[jda]

Now that you know what they bite marks look like, learn to spot the eggs as well. When you see eggs, scrape them off of there with a dental pick or toothbrush - dips will not kill them. Even if you cannot eradicate them, you can knock them back enough to live with them with some work.

The best thing to do with the most infected colonies, is to mount them to frag plugs, drill hole in the rock to mount them so that you can take them out for dippings. When you do this, scrub the rock with a stuff brush about 2-3" down to kill all of the eggs that they might have laid on the rock work. They can lay eggs on racks too, so clean those on dip days.

You will find that some corals have horrible infestations and some have none. It is crazy.

I help a guy with special needs who has an acro tank and he is infested with them - when I asked him about dipping and QT, he asked me what that was. We use a double dose of Flatworm Stop from Zeo and it has really helped in the past few months - too soon to say that they are all gone, but their numbers are way down and we have not seen any new eggs yet. Time will tell on anything, but we are happy that at least now he can live with them and the tissue death at the bottom has stopped.

Lastly, ALWAYS be honest when you sell or trade frags. The karma of having AEFW and not letting people know is too much to overcome.

 

[TheLadyCrash]

Lastly, ALWAYS be honest when you sell or trade frags. The karma of having AEFW and not letting people know is too much to overcome.

^^ This