My own AEFW (Acro Eating Flatworms) images
 

Hey, why not? I finally got my own collection of them, so I can put some on my I.D. page.

My A. valida looked pretty bad over the past week, and I thought it was an alkalinity issue. Turns out I was wrong.

Here is is, back on June 13, looking happy:
http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/06/tyree_0613.jpg

And then again, on July 28th, super close up:
http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/07/tyree_0728.jpg

Several people informed me early this morning that they are AEFW. Not really sure, I pulled the coral out of my tank, and blasted it in a while bowl of water (.25g perhaps) with 4 drops of Lugol's Solution. Here's what I found.

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw.jpg

Some were large, like the one above, and many were very tiny. They are virtually invisible to the naked eye when studying a coral. A few more pictures to give you some perspective.

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw_bbstar.jpg

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw_circled.jpg

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw_penny1.jpg

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw_ruler.jpg

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/aefw_many.jpg

And finally, my little coral. It was a mere twig last September, and finally it is something I can hold in my hand. The question is will it survive... I blasted it off repeatedly, and redipped it in new bowls of iodine three times. When I put it back in the tank, the flow caused many of the now-white flatworms to blow around, only to land elsewhere. Now the rest of my corals can be part of the party too. :rolleye1: My Copperband Butterfly ate a few.

http://melevsreef.com/pics/06/08/tyree_in_hand.jpg

I seriously doubt I'll treat my corals in a separate system. Humm.

Marc,

I am in the same boat with the larger FW I discovered yesterday. I dipped the two worst off corals in TMPCC and it killed off all FW on the two corals. I am going to try FW Exit tomorrow, though I am not holding my breath as to its success.

Bryan

Sorry to hear you've got the AEFW Marc... :( Let us know how your treatment goes and please share any info you feel relevant.

I don't even have a plan yet. I just placed an order with Marine Depot an hour ago. Looks like I need to add some Flatworm Exit to my order. What is the other stuff, Bryan?

FWE won't do much good on these Marc, at least that's what I've read. I personally haven't tried it as I simply culled my entire sps collection, well, 95% that is.

TMPCC= Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure. It took out all the FW from the corals, but does not kill the eggs. It also allegedly works on red bugs, but I have never had to test it (knock on wood). The TMPCC is a dip.

Also from what I read FW exit will not work, but I did read someone had sucess at 2x normal dosing levels. We'll see how it goes.

Bryan

Melev do you know how you got aefw? was it through a frag or a colony? or did it just show up on your coral one day without any recent additions?

now I don't have any experience with AEFW *knocks on wood*, but do they primarily exist around the base? or do they go all the way up?

If it were me I'd probably chop all the tips that still have color off Lugol dip the hell out of them, stick them in a QT tank with other tips of corals that I've culled, and hope for the best that none hitchhiked and just let them die out in the main tank.

Man that stinks melv,... I wish you luck. Do you think this could have been what caused your other problem not too long ago?

Whiskey

I had the same question, any new additions to the tank that would have brought these in?

Sorry to hear Marc. It seems that everyone will eventually end up with these in their tanks, if they haven't yet. With that many AEFW's on that one coral alone, I think it is safe to assume that a lot of your other acros are also going to be housing them. The only way you will probably be able to erradicate these things from your tank is by treating the corals separately and leaving the tank acro-dormant for a good month.

So sorry to see the damage on what I'm guessing is your favorite coral. Those "bite marks" sure are a tell tale sign of AEFW damage.

One thing that is good is that I know we will all benefit from whatever treatment route you choose as you like to take lots of (good) pictures and thoroughly document everything. I wouldn't bother with FWE. Many have tried it at very strong doses and I don't believe it was successful long-term for any of them. Your current options are TMPCC and levamisole. There is also some sort of over-the-counter iodine dip that people in Europe are using (check dolt's thread for info on that). Be sure to take your time reading through the 3 or so big AEFW threads first and then decide which route you want to go. Each one has its own risks, advantages, and disadvantages. FWIW, I will probably continue to treat incoming corals with the treatment that worked for me, which was 60ppm levamisole for 5-7 hours. This treatment is cheap and effective, but, IME, you can expect a 20-30% loss of corals.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

I agree. I was searching last night and these AEFW's go back to 2001 from what I have found and they have exploded recently popping up in every corner of the world in hobbyist tanks

Man, go back even farther, 1998 my first encounter w/ this Bastards,shipment of Tonga Acros. They go after tricolors first B4 any other acros. in the tank.

My tank tends to have incoming and outgoing corals on a regular basis, for whatever reason. For example, in the past 30 days:

I took pictures of one guy's gorgeous SPS tank. In return, I got 6 frags.

A LFS contacted me to pick up corals that he was throwing out, so I could save them possibly.

A local reefer brought me a frag of his RTNing coral. It didn't survive 24 hours.

The month before:

Club frag swap - I brought home a few pieces.

A bunch of zoanthids were placed in my prop section, donated by another reefer in the area.

AEFW could have come in on any of that stuff. How long they remain dormant, nor how long it takes for them to travel to the actual coral they want to eat - no idea.

I started reading one AEFW thread where Weatherson was going to treat his tank rather than pulling out the corals, which would be my preference obviously. I only read page 1 of the 24 page thread, so I need to see how that played out.

I have a Lemon Meringue Wrasse and a Six Line Wrasse, plus the Copperband. It would be nice if these three would tagteam the worms.

Acro-eating flatworms are becoming more and more of a common occurance - a norm rather than an odd occurance.

Our local club will be having a talk on quarentine, and the obvious pro's to this delimna.

I never quarentined, but you want to make a bet I will do so from this point forwards.

Melev

So what is your plan?

Is it recommended to remove the colony to keep others from getting infected?

Can someone post the main dicussion threads about AEFW?

I need to educate myself on this since I'm sure it will be my turn I'm sure knowing my luck.

I'll find a few links to post in this thread to help you out.

As Raddogz stated, basically quarantine procedures can help you more than you know. Much like fish we have too much of a desire to toss a new aquisition into the tank. I'm sure everyone has at points (if not still) been guilty of this (me included). Its just too bad it takes a loss like this to have people wake up, sadder still when people don't wake up. Best we can hope is that those of us who read these threads smarten up and start treating/QTing everything we get before it affects us.

Amen to that!

I agree 101% on this. Tricolors (nanas, cerealis, valida, etc.) are AEFW magnets and will be the first to show signs. They are kind of a "canary" coral for the AEFW's. If you don't know if you have the AEFW's, put a tricolor in your tank and check it a month later. I bet if you had any AEFW's in the tank, there would be some on that tricolor.

Melev,
I read your post....I feel your pain! After reading your post I pulled a small milli colony from my tank that didn't look too hot and guess what I found after hitting it with lugols and a TB? Grrrrrrrrrr.......

I purchased some TMPCC today and will begin treatment this weekend.....:( :( :( :( :(

I will be setting up a 30gal cube for quarantine, pulling all colonies and frags and doing the initial TMPCC trial. I plan on doing a treatment weekly until I feel satisfied all is OK....:cool:

Now you guys have me thinking I should set up my quarantine / prop tank. Ugh.

Geez Marc, your tank is like a brothel for corals. Coming in, going out... It was just a matter of time before AEFW's were transmitted.
:D

Marc, please don't take offense to this but I was under the impression that you always quarantine stuff? This has turned out to be shocking to me. It reminds me of the reefers who spend thousands on their reef tanks and but yet don't have a plan for emergencies such as a electrical outage. Marc set a good example, just kidding around :)

LOL

On a serious note I just received a flyer in regards to MACNA and noticed that Fernando Nostratpour will be speaking. If you go to MACNA make sure you attend his talk!

It was from his speaking engagement at a local club did I go home and try out the turker baster on a suspicious acro. Yep, it confirmed my suspicions - AEFW.

Yes, have a quarentine tank sucks - but at the risk of a mass kill off of sps - trust me its worth it!

I'm sorry to hear that Marc. Please keep us informed on what treatment you decide to go with.

I fear the same in my 120 reef.

Let me know if this a workable procedure for identifying the presence of AEFWs...

1. Remove my A. Valida colony, placing it into a white bowl

2. Fill bowl with enough tank water to cover coral

3. Stir in 5 drops Lugols iodine solution

4. Use a pipette/baster to blast the coral with the seawater/iodine solution.

5. Perform a close (compound microscope) inspection of the detritus that collects at the bottom of the bowl.

IS THIS CORRECT?

There are now a small collection of established SPS systems subscribed to this thread concerning AEFWs; we could loosely coordinate our treatments to perhaps determine which one approach or combination produces best results.

Quasi-scientific at best, however so much of what we do in this hobby is quasi-scientific...

During the summertime I am away from my reef for 8-10 days stretches (my reef is in my classroom - pics in my galllery). Consequently, daily feedings are limited to several rounds of flakes delivered via an Eheim Feedair.

My observation is that my fish population is forced to feed off the reef to an extreme. The grazers feed off the reef structure and my opportunistic feeders (6-line wrasse for example) continually inspect the corals for any potential tid-bits of food.

Are AEFWs temperature sensitive? Could temperature change limit population growth/hasten stabilization. Or, do these devils exhibit J-curve growth eating themselves out of house and home only to perish in a devastating and cataclismic population crash?

AEFWs are mean; I do not like them very much at all.

That is pretty much what I did. You don't need a microscope to see these guys, as they aren't that small. Some were about the size of the "T" on the penny I took a picture of, others smaller and a few were quite large.

As regards quarantining corals... I tend to always quarantine fish so they can be healthy before adding them to the reef, but not corals. I inspect them visually, and put them in the prop section to get used to the water, and a few days or weeks later they go into the tank.

I'll have to change my approach now. It's too bad, really. But apparently necessary.

Marc - I hope this goes into a ReefCast episode.

Don't fret over setting up a quarantine tank, just call it a frag grow out tank :)

Well afer reading this thread I decided it was high time I checked out that crappy looking tricolor in my tank. When I picked him up and looked at its underside I saw hundreds of little circular patches of missing tissue. So I didnt bother with the iodine just dipped it in fresh water. HUNDREDS of the little bastards came off. So I guess my garf tri color and purple bonsai will be next. :(

Do yourself a huge favor and read up on AEFWs. There are several very good threads with lots of information to help you avoid wasting your money, time and possibly livestock. As for useing FWE at 2X... we went up to somewhere between 8 and 10 X dosages. It ws very expensive, hard on the fish and even after repeated such treatments still did not erradicate the AEFWs, but all of this is well documented here on RC in just a couple of good threads.

As for TMPCC, while it is stated to work against red bugs, I was told by a coral farmer that it was somewhat less than 100% effective against the LRBs.

IMO you need to treat all corals, and expect losses like Travis said. It sucks but they will be everywhere. Also IMO do not cover eggs. Either scrape or toss. I have a theroy on they can get out at a later time, like being encapselated for a different time. Sounds weird, but we know nothing about this thing yet. COuld be like brine shrimp. Yes, why listen to the new guy, well I pass my info that I get from some more intellegent people in the aquarium trade. Just my thougths.

You could look at more losses than the treatments but on a slower basis. Seeing 1 by 1 drop to these critters would suck.

Good luck and following along. Have gone through it also like Travis, used levamsole.

Grant

I went through the Levamisole treatments around the same time or just before Travis and had similar results. I had higher loses than most others for some reason but haven't figured it out. No signs of them on anything now. Everythign gets a TMPCC dip several weeks in a row before going in the display now...

Where are you shopping for Levamisole?

I got mine from a local farmers CO-OP. It is a pig wormer. Mine came in a big plastic bottle (~1000mL) with very little powder. Doesn't take much (still have some and have even done more treatments on my montis (with only one partial loss...). I paid ~$14 for the bottle

Fleet Farms in MN. has it... Also sold as a cattle de-wormer.

barnstocker.com is where we got ours, but that was last year sometime. Right around the time we learned our lesson that "one dip was just not enough".

It was the single most laborious thing I've had to do with tanks. Watching losses pile up only made it worse. I completely drained the tank each time and washed the tank and equipment out of paranoia for the ba$tards. I think the worst part was that the time to clean and swish everything always came at around 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning... What made it looks good, though.

Sorry they had such an impact with your tank. I was able to make it thru with minimal loses maybe a hand full if that . I think I lost more to the TMPCC dip than AEFW's themselves.

Got mine form a CO-OP and its is called Levasole.

I'm trying to read all the threads going on but my eyes are killing me.

I'm reading that many are removing corals from the main system, setting up Quartine tank and treating with Levamisole in combination with TMPCC. My question is, what about the Live Rock? I'm sure that the AEFW dont all reside on our Acro's

What about removing all fish and setting up a holding tank for them and treating your whole system without the fish in there?

Wouldn't it be funny to find out that the Red Bugs were the critters keeping the AEFW's under control?

There is no reliable in tank treatment. Levamisole would cause some serious issues on an entire tank situation. You'd have a massive spike from killing everything off. All anecdotal (some may have been 'scientifically' derived) evidence shows that the AEFW's die without a host after five days. Removing all acros from the display for Levamisole treatment is a 4-5 week thing, so as long as you get all encrustations (not the easiest task), the AEFW's present in the tank will be dead before you put your other acro's back in the display.

Marc sorry to hear this. I also what to know what you plan on treating with.

I think about that all the time.

So many seem to have outbreaks of AEFW after treating for RBs.

It's like clkwrk said, the goal is not necessarily to treat the ones left in your tank, but to starve them out. When you remove the acros, ALL acros, from your tank into the QT/treatment tanks(s), you do so for a minimum of 1 month, many for longer than that, to ensure that any existing AEFWs starve and additionally that any eggs left behind have time to hatch and then again starve. The "guesstimated" egg hatch time is 2+ weeks and the average time for an AEF to starve is 5 days. That is also why we need to do multiple weekly treatments to the corals in the treatment tanks.

The one big problem that alot of us run into is that we need to get every last scrap of acro flesh out of the tank, or else the AEFWs won't starve in the time that we expect them to, and if any survive we all know how fast they can again grow to plague proportions. So chiseling and scraping every last bit of encrusted acro is a necessary chore :(


On a side note, we finished building the 2 2' square treatment tanks last night, going to water test them then likely start the first levamisole treatment this afternoon, I am just tired of watching one after another coral fall to these monsters.

What will these treatments do to your acro crabs.

kill them

Luvamisol dip is what I hear kills these suckers. A friend used it on these guys with absolute great sucess. Also, green spotted mandarins are know to eat flatworms aswell as black leopard wrasse. Here at the store, we keep black leopard wrasses where ever we have a flat worm problem, in less than a day, the flatworms are all gone. But definately try the luvamisol dip to get rid of the AEFW, and if you want in the end to try and keep them out... the black leopard wrasee... every sps tank should have one :)

-Mike C.