My own experience with AEFW or acro eating flatworm

[ScottB]

My first observation about flatworms is, well, they are hard to observe. See them in the first two pics? Me neither. Even in the third pic I could only see the damage. A bit late.

Under a well lit magnifying lense, you can just make them out on the flesh. (sorry don't have a pic of that.)

More pictures and info to follow...

 

[ScottB]

I don't know how I got them nor when. I dip in Bayer and visually inspect everything I buy. I have not found a flatworm after dipping new corals in a very long time. I suspect that I missed some eggs somewhere along the way though.

On the bright side, I have them only in my frag system which makes treatment considerably easier. Most of the colonies are small enough that I can dip them easily. The hard part is that I have a hundred different sticks in there, so it is a lot of work to dip each week.

 

[TheHarold]

I don't know how I got them nor when. I dip in Bayer and visually inspect everything I buy. I have not found a flatworm after dipping new corals in a very long time. I suspect that I missed some eggs somewhere along the way though.

On the bright side, I have them only in my frag system which makes treatment considerably easier. Most of the colonies are small enough that I can dip them easily. The hard part is that I have a hundred different sticks in there, so it is a lot of work to dip each week.

That does not appear to be AEFW to me. Those seem to be the larger Polyclad flatworm?

Either way, good luck. I tried EVERYTHING to save my reef- spending hundreds; even having a dedicated drag tank for frags that got dipped every day, and ended up losing virtually all of it

 

[ScottB]

That does not appear to be AEFW to me. Those seem to be the larger Polyclad flatworm?

Hmmm. I wish/hope you are correct, but based on images here, RC, and google it looks a dead ringer to me. The one image above that shows a curvy, zig-zag side was the result of my scraping scalpel. Plus, bite marks and eggs all matched.

Can you post a picture of what you think AEFW should look like? Believe me, I would love to doubt my ID, but this one looks like a duck, sounds like a duck...

 

[TheHarold]

Hmmm. I wish/hope you are correct, but based on images here, RC, and google it looks a dead ringer to me. The one image above that shows a curvy, zig-zag side was the result of my scraping scalpel. Plus, bite marks and eggs all matched.

Can you post a picture of what you think AEFW should look like? Believe me, I would love to doubt my ID, but this one looks like a duck, sounds like a duck...

From your photo, it looked like over an inch. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought AEFW were much smaller.

Have you seen colonies of eggs where the eaten areas meet the flesh yet? I had them everywhere!

 

[ScottB]

From your photo, it looked like over an inch. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought AEFW were much smaller.

Have you seen colonies of eggs where the eaten areas meet the flesh yet? I had them everywhere!

Ahhh. No, I zoomed in for those pics. They are 1/8th to 1/4 of an inch. I cannot see them on the flesh with the naked eye. I use a big, lit lense to see them. And the eggs are even harder to see. But yes, I found eggs on all four. Right at the margin of live/dead tissue and edges of the plug/encrusting.

This lense is a must for finding eggs.

 

[ScottB]

From your photo, it looked like over an inch. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought AEFW were much smaller.

Have you seen colonies of eggs where the eaten areas meet the flesh yet? I had them everywhere!

If you posted your AEFW experience here, I likely read it. How did you come out on the battle?

 

[TheHarold]

If you posted your AEFW experience here, I likely read it. How did you come out on the battle?

I tried everything- after Bayer did not work, I tried flatworm stop, flatworm exit, UWC purge, etc. It just threw off the entire balance of the tank, especially Purge- even LPS started to die. This was a full tank of acropora colonies. Ended up 100% restarting it, bleaching everything and starting from dry rock. Still not sure if I want to start buying pieces again.

 

[Weevo]

Those are ages for sure

 

[Weevo]

AFEW

 

[ScottB]

I tried everything- after Bayer did not work, I tried flatworm stop, flatworm exit, UWC purge, etc. It just threw off the entire balance of the tank, especially Purge- even LPS started to die. This was a full tank of acropora colonies. Ended up 100% restarting it, bleaching everything and starting from dry rock. Still not sure if I want to start buying pieces again.

Oh. Sorry to hear about that. I did read of a few of those outcomes. Hoping I can muster the energy to stay on top of this -- this is a frag system, so I stand a "better" chance I think.

 

[ScottB]

I am on my fourth week of treatment now. The first round of dipping was pretty disappointing. I would guess I dislodged around 30 worms. The good news is, they were concentrated on only 4 small colonies. The other 96 or so did not seem to have any.

The damaged colony pictured above also had EGGS. A lot of them. I scraped them off, and then superglued over the areas in case I missed some. And I swapped in a new plug. The tissue loss has stopped, but PE is limited. It is still not a happy coral. The other three had less apparent damage and far fewer eggs.

I chose to use Melafix Marine as my dip. It mixes mostly clear and seems to perform well. Active ingredient is Melaleuca (tea tree oil). I have a rectangular storage container that fits a frag rack. Fill it with tank water, add Melafix. Clamp an MJ pump and hose inside and blast away for 3-4 minutes.

Most corals did OK in the dip, but I did lose an Event Horizon Milli sadly. It was gorgeous with amazing color, but went brown right away and never came back. One out of a ~hundred ain't bad; wish it had been a Bali slimer though. I have acres of that stuff.

Here is my 3-tank frag system. 300 gallons total volume; all the sumps are tied together. And "yes" I dipped all the acro frags/colonies in the whole system. Takes a little more than an hour each time.

 

[ScottB]

Ugh. Still dipping and finding worms. Some big, some small. Far fewer eggs detected. Moved the last acros out of the smaller tank in the foreground. Flatworms were present in there too (it is generally my LPS tank).

Almost through my first liter bottle of KZ Stop. Cannot tell that it is doing anything. I will say the Melafix stuns these guys much better than Bayer, but is much harsher on my millis than Bayer. RIP Event Horizon milli.

 

[ScottB]

Forgot about my own thread

I can close this out now. I think the last worm I found was late August. I took the kitchen sink approach starting early June.

1) Weekly dips in Melafix and then switched to KCl. It may be a tad more harsh but generally tolerated well and this stuff kills worms fast. Three grams per liter.
2) Sixline, melanurus, and several handfuls of springeri damsels. I would turn off circulation and baste the corals. They got pretty good at eating them when basted off.
3) KZ Flatworm Stop and KZ boost.

So I don't know which element was least/most effective, so I would recommend all of them. That said, if this plague returns, I just might go the route of lanthanum chloride. The latest Coral Magazine had an article on it's use against aefw. Treat for 6 hours, skim, GAC, water change and repeat a week later. If you are low in PO4, you probably want to throw a bottle of Flourish in there.

 

[gobble]

I just did a quick read of a summary of that article. The suggestion is that lanthanum chloride is a reef safe treatment for AEFW? That sounds too good to be true.

 

[ScottB]

I just did a quick read of a summary of that article. The suggestion is that lanthanum chloride is a reef safe treatment for AEFW? That sounds too good to be true.

Dosing LC is a fairly common practice for reducing phosphates. It can be too effective though, stripping the water and rock to zero PO4 which is a very dangerous place for coral. Dosed correctly, it is reef safe.

Before reading this article, I was completely unaware of it being used to knock out aefw. The folks at Coral Magazine are pretty rigorous editors of their content, so I don't have many doubts that this could work. I would be concerned about stripping my PO4 though. I have plenty of trisodium phosphate solution to counter that though.

 

[gobble]

I did just some google searching last night and couldn't find a single other source of information on this. It seems like this would be groudbreaking if it works. I've had a few SPS go from perfect to white overnight in the last few weeks and blew one off last night to find a bunch of little bugs under magnifying glasses. I was certain they were AEFW, but thinking more about it and looking at pictures after I had dumped the water they could have been pods. I need to try and examine again, but may have the same problem as you.

Thanks for posting I was completely unaware of this. BRS sells the Tropic Marin version of LC.

 

[ScottB]

I did just some google searching last night and couldn't find a single other source of information on this. It seems like this would be groudbreaking if it works. I've had a few SPS go from perfect to white overnight in the last few weeks and blew one off last night to find a bunch of little bugs under magnifying glasses. I was certain they were AEFW, but thinking more about it and looking at pictures after I had dumped the water they could have been pods. I need to try and examine again, but may have the same problem as you.

Thanks for posting I was completely unaware of this. BRS sells the Tropic Marin version of LC.

Here are a couple of aefw pics under zoom. They are about 1/4 inch to 3/8ths. Very hard to spot on the coral flesh but bite marks are the tell.

If they ever come back, I will try the LC approach with care. Dipping 17 frag racks every weekend is just not that much fun.

 

[ScottB]

Well, they are back again, and I am back to dipping.

My kitchen sink approach really seemed to work through the late summer and Fall. I maintained most of my worm predators, but stopped dipping and dropped back to regular dose of KZ FW Stop.

I started to notice a few colonies that were showing a strange pattern of dying along the bottom stems, and deeper areas inside the branches. My coralline grows over it quickly. Thought it was odd. Again, my worms seem very particular about which coral hosts they choose.

I have UC's new Purge 2.0 and Fauna Marin's new AEFW-X in transit to me now. Trying to decide which to go with.

 

[Risk1994]

Did you try the lanthanum chloride method?