AEFW
 

As I was preparing for my exam tonight I received a call from a fellow refer... " I have some very bad news... your tank may be infested with acropora eating flatworms." I was in shock. Every coral that I put in gets dipped and I have always inspected the dipped water and coral once more before adding the frag or colony to the tank. Somehow, I missed one and now I have flatworms.

My initial reaction was "no... This can't be happening..." at this point I had dropped my books and started to pull out the bottle of revive, the suspected colony and dipped it. Sure enough, flatworms started to release themselves from the coral. I had then pulled out more containers and dipped more frags and colonies...starting with the validas and shortcakes. Whew... Nothing. I dipped more... Now the samentosas... I have three... Two frags and one colony... One of the frag passed but the other and the colony didn't. I broke more colonies off the rocks and dipped them along with other frags... Nothing. Then hair acros were next... Nothing. Why the samentosas and not the validas? The sarmentosa were placed near the infested coral while the others were not so close.

Over the next two and half ours I dipped more and nothing... By then I was too tired and have to get back to the books... A third of the corals are checked but I have another two-thirds to go so it will have to wait to tomorrow night. Before ending, I scraped all the infected acros off the rocks and any suspected pieces I dare not put it back into the tank.

I have contacted another reefer of this and will be contacting others of the same and hope they have dipped before letting corals enter their tank.

I have always been very careful in buying my corals from reputable business and reefers. But somehow I had missed one over the last two-three months from my coral buying sprees. No point trying to figure where it came from as the sole responsibility is in my hands... All I can do is try to destroy all the flatworms and hope that the casualties will be small...

What I intend to do for the next three months... Will be dipping all the corals on a weekly basis and will continue to do so for another month longer even when there are no signs of flatworms. Check all the corals for eggs... They are said to be easily spotted ( brown) and will only be found on dead corals as they do not lay eggs on live coral tissues. I will get a bottle of zeovit flatWorm stop. This helps to strengthen the corals and help to build a slime to protect them from flatworms ( prob the reason why I do not see any on sps that excretes lots of slime). I will also need to get a couple of wrasses from the halichoeres family.

Why am I sharing this with everyone you may ask? Yes, this is what I considered as a reefer's nightmare and I am quite embarassed that this has happened to me but I also need to share with fellow reefers of my experience so that you can learn from this to protect your investment and to have a better experience in this hobby.

It's 5:30am and I must get back to the books... Have an exam to write in 12 hrs...

That sucks :(
I too somehow introduced flatworms to my system at some point this fall/winter. And I have been either too busy/sick/lazy to find out exactly what I have or how to deal with it.
Sounds like you're on a good regimen to squash the out break though. Keep up the good work and continue updating us on your progress.

See? This is how that happens. You "forget" just once to practice safe fragging, and your whole tank can go to crap, thousands of dollars worth of corals need to get tossed and essentially, you have to start over from scratch.
I've got lots of frags from Wayne, check every one under a microscope and never found anything. I know his tank is fine, and so, the last frag he gave me, when I was busy, did not get checked. Until last night. Oh, look, flatworms on the frag. #$%%
It has been in my system a few days. It got tossed last night. I checked all the other frags and nothing. But the chances that one let loose and went for a swim in the tank are pretty good. Nothing I can do about it now, but that 2 minutes of being lazy, just once, may have just cost me my coral collection.

People, DO NOT add frags to your tank without dipping. You WILL get something bad, and in the case of AEFW, not treatable in tank.

Brad, I hope your tank is gonna be ok. This whole thing has me very concerned. I do not want to share this with anyone. As you said all it takes is one... I wish I had set up the other tank already. The irony of it all is that the second tank is to be my insurance policy...

I've been through this, it isn't fun, but you can win. I found Revive to be stressfully on the corals for repeated dipping. Have a read here, it works well, and the corals don't even react to the dip if done correctly. Unfortunately it's only available in The States. Perhaps you could test some infested frags with an insecticide that is available in Canada. B-Cyfluthrin is the ingredient that kills the flatworms.

Rob, if I end up having them in the tank, I cannot remove any of the colonies. They're well attached to the rock :) I've got frags before and tried to turkey baste the flatworms off with little success, so I'm hoping that the few that came on this frag were equally well attached. It's possible that one let go and is in the tank somewhere, but I'm hoping I don't get them breeding in there over this.
The kicker is I know so much better than to add a frag to the tank without checking and dipping. Just dumb..

Dips don't kill the eggs. Every piece should be very closely inspected for eggs, and the eggs need to be scraped off. All new corals should be quarantined, but any corals found with eggs need be quarantined and dipped several times over a few weeks at least. AEFW is a reef's worst nightmare - they are terrible critters and take so much time and effort to eliminate. A worm-aggressive Wrasse is a good idea especially Halichoeres spp. although they will usually eat ornamental shrimps and crabs as well. So there are drawbacks to that option.

Egg masses are easy to see and are laid around the dead base area. I always get fresh cut frags or cut the frags off of any base to avoid things that hide down there. I also check (almost) every frag under a microscope for pests.

It's the "almost" factor above that will kill you -lol

BLUE WORLD ON HILLSIDE HAS SOME GREEN WRASSES IN $21.00 THEY ARE SMALL, UNDER 2 INCHES AND WILL EAT YOUR FLATWORMS
GOOD LUCK I HOPE ALL GOES WELL
:2gunfire:

sorry to hear that

After my AEFW incident, all new frags get a dip and a close inspection. You only want to go through AEFW once in a lifetime.

The eggs aren't so easy to spot. The coral needs to be air dried a bit, and they can be in some very tight spots; every nook and cranny has to be inspected, this is a very important part of the treatment.

Brad, if you end up with AEFW, unfortunately the only way to eliminate them will be to remove your corals for dipping. It took a long sleepless night before I resolved to do this. Fortunately for me my corals were little more than frags.

You may not have to remove all your corals if you act quickly, they seem to have their favorite pieces, my tri-color was especially tasty apparently. If there is no recession at the base it may be OK to leave them attached... and see how it goes.

Rob, the corals just don't come out without removing most of the rock. Some are encrusted to the rock over a 6" area. If it gets to that point, I'm done. There is no way I can remove all acropora tissue for multiple dips and place them back in tank.
This is still only a small possibility though, so we'll see what the year brings.

Just keep a close eye on them and be resolved to act quickly if need be. You may not have to remove all your corals if you can deal with their "favorite" before they spread. All infestations seemed to be characterized by base recession.

Yes, good point. If you catch it early enough there may only be a few corals affected since AEFW, like red bugs, always have favourite corals to munch on. Once you figure out their favourites you can continue to monitor those favourites in the future.

Awwww guys that so sucks! Just another reason I hate those damn acros.
I hope Brad you caught that frag in time.. And Wayne hopefully you can get them stopped!

those will eat red planaria. Not sure if they eat AEFW

I have been doing some legwork on sourcing:
BAYER ADVANCED COMPLETE BRAND INSECT KILLER
in Canada. The active ingredients are:
1) Imidacloprid and
2) beta-Cyfluthrin.

1) Imidacloprid is the active ingredient found in many topical flea medications that are available in Canada such as Advantage II as well as crop pest control agents also available in Canada.

2) beta-Cyfluthrin is another common pest control agent and can be found with shipping available to Canada here. The MSDS for the linked product is here.

Were somebody suitably motivated, the information and sources above should enable you to recreate the Bayer product used successfully in the link Reefer Rob posted up about a dozen posts back. If you guys would like me to try to put it together I would be happy to put some more legwork in and get it together.

Failing that, I am happy to donate frags to either of you with no limits to quantity should the need arise.

I think at this point my only concern is future stock, so I'll be taking frags of everything, making sure they're clean and finding them a home. Other than that, I'll watch and wait. Hopefully it doesn't become a problem.

As for Wayne, he's tearing the tank down for a rebuild anyway, so that should allow him to more easily sort this out. Bet he's glad now that he didn't mount his corals like I told him to :)

Thanks for the post Dan!

Dan, this would be an interesting project and could make you high in demand.
I am working on a rebuild so that may not be of a huge concern however my concern is will these flatworms lay eggs only on dead sps corals or will they lay eggs on rocks as well? If so is there another way to rid of them besides dipping the rocks or using insecticides?

I had some success fighting them. Last year I dosed zeovit flatwormstop for 3 month at double or triple dose and it wipped them out for a while. In december, they came back on my hyacinthus and millepora (they seem the most susceptible of having them) and after on some other acros.

I went back to flatwormstop again at low dosage and I'm trying other tricks in fighting them. Apparently flatwormstop contains some phosphorus (a chemist did some analysis on it) and some reefers noted that a sudden drop in phosphates could trigger an infestation. So I guess it's a good thing to let some phosphates in your system (I'm at 0.03). Secondly, Claude Schumacher from Fauna Marin advised me to lower the temperature to 73-74 to limit their growth. I'm at 75-76 right now and with a frequent basting of corals, they do get rarer and now I just have 2 infected colonies and they do get better.

I don't like dipping solutions as it seems harsh on the coral and a PITA to do.

Great work Dan!

It should be noted that 2 different Bayer products were successfully used by people posting in the RC thread, and the common ingredient in both was B-Cyfluthrin.

The flatworms lay eggs in the "white zone" near the feeding area of live tissue. Dipping the corrals, and killing off all remaining live tissue on the rocks by basting with hot water is the best way to deal with these pests.

I've read up on the FWS and my understanding is that it minimizes the chance of these worms going after the sps as the sps builds a slime coating that the worms do not like but it does not kill them. Can you direct me to the link that tells me FWS does get rid of them? I am planning to get it anyways.
Thanks

FWS doesn't kill them, just "strengthens" the coral. Also, as far as lowering temps, this reduces the metabolic rate of corals and inhibits growth, meaning that if/when a coral is damaged, it's ability to heal itself is compromised. Not an option I would choose.
I'm hoping that on the small frag they came in on, that there was only 2 or 3 on that piece, and they were still there when I removed it. I counted 3. If there were 4, then I might have an issue, I might not. If one let loose into the water column, it's possible a fish would have eaten it. Fingers crossed.

I had great luck following this advice, thereafter i quarantined everything....

even got all of the fish he recommended ...for a coral qt tank.


http://www.leonardosreef.com/2012/01/aefw-treatment/



He knows his sps

Good god just the mention of AEFW gives me the heebie jeebie's. I read through the leonardosreef info about the quarantine for sps coral...good stuff. Think my next addition is a halichores wrasse, or i wonder if a leopard wrasse would do tthe trick too???
First of all good luck wayne and brad both of you have georgeous corals it would be a shame if it did get out of control.
i recently added quite a few coral frags to my system recently over the last few months (from Wayne) weeks (from Denis)and days (from Gareth). I absolutly did dip each and everyone with TLF Revive, but i didn't look at any of them with a magnifier so now i wonder about eggs!!!!! EEEEEK
Dam those flat worms....looks like im going snorkling with a magnifing glass....

You likely won't see the eggs in the water, the corals need to be dry. This is likely the most stressful part of the treatment :sad:

Rob, I've seen corals affected and easily saw the egg masses. They're a decent size, and en mass, quite easy to spot on the underside of a colony.

Ronnie, the eggs are only deposited on dead areas along the bottom edge of corals, not on the tissue, so any time I get a mounted frag, I cut it off it's base above this line just in case.

During my inspections I would turn the coral under a strong light, and view them with a magnifier. It amazed me how the eggs would appear on the 2nd or 3rd pass in an area I had previously inspected. Even a water droplet would disguise them. When your only defense is stealth, evolution makes you very sneaky.

Perhaps the corals I saw were so heavily infested that they were so visible. One colony, you could see the egg masses as you approached the tank.

http://www.garretts-acropolis.com/In...FW_eggmass.jpg

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...zLp6N_Yo_5ZTSb

They should be pretty easy to spot.

Yikes, Rich, I hope that wasn't from your display or frag tank...:surprise:

That's what they looked like on a dry coral. I tried, but I could never see them in the water. As the coral dried they became visible. Perhaps some strains aren't so stealthy :surprise:

Just some pics I got online. I have seem them in person and they are pretty visible but only put of the water. I had a friend of mine who got infected by aefw and wiped out his collection worth a few thousands bucks. Sigh, such a heart break.

Got these somehow this fall too...
always dipped and inspected new corals and most of the time reglueing on new plugs to lessen the risk of eggs.... but still got them !
QT is the only way to be sure...

BUT many reefers actually lives with them quite well (reefbum was a great example) some blasting and wrasses helps...
I choose no to tear down the tank and just dip the more affected/accessible colonies or frag them... and since december I don't see them anymore, no more bite marks and sps are thriving again... we'll see !

here are some pics I took at the beginning...

adults
http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...0/IMGP1816.jpg

http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...03102805AM.jpg

can you see him on the coral ?
http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...0/IMGP1814.jpg

eggs
http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...ave10516PM.jpg

http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...0/IMGP1812.jpg

Bite marks

http://i988.photobucket.com/albums/a...03102846AM.jpg

http://reefbuilders.com/2013/02/21/r...able-critters/

hope for the future!

So how effective is Coral RX in the prevention and defence against AEFW? I currently dip all my corals using Coral RX, although I only have a couple acros and mostly LPS. I guess what I am getting at would be, what is the best coral dip on the market. I am currently in the building phase of my new tank which will be mostly SPS. AEFW and Dinos scare the ever living **** out of me.

you can go with either coral rx or revive but neither will destroy the eggs which means you will have to inspect the coral even more carefully. From this thread there has been some very good advice given... If you consistently dip and inspect your chances of being infested by these worms would be less. Once I am done with this I plan to do the following.. Buy frags only and dip them. If you have to buy colonies better inspect the base for stn and eggs. They lay eggs only on dead parts of the coral. With all corals cut it off the frag plugs and rocks used and use your own. Set up a quarantine tank if possible. Introduce wrasses that likes flatworm (not guaranteed but if you don't over feed they do look for food off the corals).

heheh, I just saw that article, and my immediate reaction was: Aquattro must know! You beat me to it lol