Okay, so a little update on my battle with pests.
I'm not really concerned about the AEFW anymore. I've dipped everything 4 times now and I have not yet found another AEFW. Obviously, I'll keep on dipping and looking for them, but so far, they seem to be gone.
HOWEVER, this last week or so I've noticed that a handful of my frags were just not looking good. In fact, some were showing some signs of stress, missing polyp extension, tips turning white, bases looking like they are crumbling away, extruded guts at times, like something was really irritating it. I examined everything closely with my eyes and couldn't see any signs of worms, pods, etc. So, I tried doing a really heavy dip of one of the really bad looking frags and still, nothing visible came off in the dip. At the same time I decided to order a cheap dissecting microscope (20X power) to really get a closer look at the coral tissue and see if I could find anything. Tonight I finally got to use it.
I took out my frag of Paletta Pink Tip, which for the last few days has had ZERO polyp extension, in fact, the polyps are completely retracted inside the coral. The tissue itself looks retracted too. You can kind of see the outlines of the underlying skeleton. So, I knew something was wrong. I thought maybe it was something in my water. I'm actually waiting for a Triton test to come back soon. However, under the microscope I found a couple of concerning things. First, I noticed little swarms of tiny, reddish colored, fast moving pods at the base of the skeleton and on some of the coral tissue itself, mainly in the areas with exposed skeleton. I plan on treating with interceptor to see if I can get rid of whatever they are. But, I also noticed some sort of black worm like critter. These little guys weren't as numerous, but they were there. They move fairly quickly as well. Could they be the dreaded black bugs that everyone is concerned with? Perhaps.
I went to Lowes and bought some Bayer. I mixed up a test dose of 150 ml of tank water with 50 ml of Bayer and I soaked the frag for 5 minutes. After the dip I wasn't able to find the little pods anymore and I didn't see as many worms, but I did find one and it was still alive! I plan on testing a stronger/longer dose tomorrow. Probably a full 10 mins. I need to find a way to kill these critters, whatever they are, because something is clearly infecting my corals. I worry that whatever these bugs are, they might actually be eating away at the coral skeleton itself. The affected frags all have exposed skeleton with numerous little caverns/holes. I don't know if that's normal coral architecture or not, but I saw these worms climbing in and out of the skeleton. I suppose its possible that these aren't pests at all, but could be just a "clean up crew" eating away the already dying tissue, but something is clearly killing my acros. Whatever it is, it's survived multiple dips with Polyp Lab Reef Primer, which claims to be able to remove everything. They have also survived a full tank dose of Interceptor that I did about a month ago. However, that was using pills which were slightly expired, so I don't know if it was 100% up to strength. I am going to test interceptor as well as soon as I can get some. I got some Interceptor Plus from my vet tonight, but it was the chewable "gummy" type pills that I didn't realize until I got home. Gonna go back tomorrow and get the crushable tablets.
Needless to say, this sucks. BUT, I am going to find a solution to beat these. I'm not going to let my corals just die off.
