AEFW and Red Bugs

[Atsoi88]

Thanks guys for all the great responses.
Reefoman- hope you get all those nasty critters.
so I dont think I have AEFW, or red bug. Wht I see on my green acro are a few white spots. I'll try to get a picture this afternoon.

 

[reefoman]

Thanks guys for all the great responses.
Reefoman- hope you get all those nasty critters.
so I dont think I have AEFW, or red bug. Wht I see on my green acro are a few white spots. I'll try to get a picture this afternoon.

Thanks... I have no choice I want pest free tank
As about white spots that's how I found flat worms, I feed my corals one hour after lights are off and 30 minutes after feeding I'm inspecting corals response with flash light, it's easiest way to see coral body.
If you see light spots take one coral from your tank and deep it, if you have worms they definitely gonna show up.

 

[Pseudo]

You bad reefer Mark... Take out all your corals and cut off bases and put into a temp frag tank. Then tear your tank apart. Put your rock in muriatic acid bath. That will kill everything and get rid of all of that built up phosphate and algae. Get new sand, clean out the tank and start fresh.

This the only surefire way to get a truly pest free tank for you. Keeping a pest free tank is the other dimension to this. DIP EVERYTHING. REMOVE BASES and QUARANTINE if possible!!!

 

[PolandSpring]

In my opinion, best option is too take out ALL sps from display and put into a QT tank for 8-10 Weeks. Dip every 3-5 days. but more importantly, cut off all the bases and glue them onto new plugs to keep in the QT. Also, you need to kill all your bases off in your display tank. I would suggest after 4 weeks in the QT to rinse out the tank and clean everything in it and then dip the sps and put it back into a fresh QT system just to kill any flatworms that were on glass, eggcrate, rock, etc. Then keep inspecting the sps for the next 4 weeks. If after the dips for 2+ weeks you are not seeing any flatworms, then you are most likely AEFW free. Thats how I did it when I had it to be extra sure they were gone.

 

[Pseudo]

Yeah what he said

 

[reefoman]

Thanks for advice I appreciate it but no room and time for quarantine tank folks, my living room is messy enough cause if my hobby, I'm lucky that my wife are accepting what I did few days ago lol
I'll get ride of them dipping, Richie did this method 2 times with success so I hope I'll be lucky as well.
From the informations I found people lost most of them corals in quarantine tanks, some of them said if they knew that they would prefer to live with flat worms.

We will see...

 

[kres1024]

Turkey basting weekly a bunch of wrasses
And dipping the corals that are small and easily removed will work.

 

[jackson6745]

I did what Mark is doing on my old 120g and my 34 solana. Both were packed to the brim with SPS. I did fully eradicate them doing series of dips over a couple of months. To my knowledge they don't live on rocks. I went as far as dipping rocks and never saw one come off, acros of course are a different story. This would make me think the larvae reared begin as water born organisms and for some reason, settle and thrive in acropora (probably food and habitat)..... but that is speculation

FYI be careful with mariculture colonies. Many of these are infested.

 

[Pseudo]

Actually I have found egg masses that were on and off the acro colony. Dip Dip and then Dip some more!

 

[PolandSpring]

sometimes the eggs are on the rock right beneath the colony, so becareful of that also.

 

[reefoman]

My plan was to dip all corals again this coming weekend but yesterday decided to check what's going on with 3 most infected colonies and I dip them... Non even one flatworm !, no eggs, nothing...
I think that my tank wasn't badly infected, I feed my corals 2-3 times a week in the night then always checking them response with flashlight this way I found that eaten spot on one branch of valida and day after I deep all corals I think it help to stop invasion.
Anyway this coming weekend ill dip them all one more time...

 

[reefoman]

I dipped all my acros again today...
No sign of flat worms, non even one! No eggs!
I gonna dip them one more time (probably last) just in case after 2 weeks.
Also got an email from Dr Kate that coral list is longer... That flatworms (so far) are eating 12 acropora species. :-/

 

[mellotang]

What dip are you using to kill the flat AEFW?

 

[reefoman]

Bayer...

I repeat 3 times every 2 weeks then dipped few frags recently to check if something gonna show up... Clear, no flatworms.

 

[Silkyslim]

I always pop the plug the frag was on. No chance of eggs that way.