Juppy
29-07-06, 16:07
I have been struggling for months to get colour back into some of my acro colonies. They didnt bleach or anything just went brown. The worst hit have stn'ed from the base up to the bottom of the branches and now have zero polyp extension.Also growth has stopped. I started seeing blotchy patches on some of them too. I tried everything, water is as near perfect as it has ever been, relamped my t5's, started doing massive water changes regularly. Then i started doubting my faith in the t5's.
So i decided to pull a couple of colonies to have a better look. Around the base of the worst colonies were bundles of tiny brown eggs, when i say tiny i mean you need tank light to see them and very good eyes a couple of inches away. S**t!!!! took some tank water out and swished the coral very forcefully. Looked in the bucket to find 5 flatworms swimming round!! these arent the red planeria (SP?) but perfectly clear large flatworms. You would never notice them on a coral in your tank unless you pulled it, perfectly invisible.
Today tried to get som tmcpcc but had to settle for lugols for now as couldnt get hold of the coral cure (which apparently kills these bas&&rds! Made a stongish dip and left a couple of the bad corals for 10 minutes or so. Swished the corals and put them back in the aquarium. Again loads of flatworms swimming around in the lugols solution like they were taking a relaxing bath! The stuff doesnt touch them, just loosens them a LITTLE!. On top of that the four colonies i treated look well rough and i had to bin another one as it was so badly affected by the worms. Looking on rc it seems that if i am to have any chance of getting rid of these i am going to have to chip all corals from the rocks and dip them in tmcpcc once a week for 4-5 weeks!!! i still have some seemingly unaffected corals but i am sure that it is only a matter of time before these get hit. Unless i can break the cycle.
Looking at the damage i wouldnt be surprised if a large % of the issues most of us have a put down to water quality or other environmental issues are actually down to these or the equally nasty red bugs. I have onlly seen a couple of posts on the uk boards about AEFW or red bugs, we get our aquacultured corals from the same sites as the yanks do but their hobby is riddled with them. It is impossible that more of us dont have them, i think a lot of people do but just havent noticed them. I would urge anybody with sps issues or odd polyp behaviour to have a good look around the base of the corals.
Am seriously contemplating jacking this in after the last couple of days, am going to continue to dip IF these corals pull through and try the tmcpcc also but if i end up losing most of the corals that i have grown for the last couple of years i will be putting my system on ebay (sps and aefw free) Really hacked off! Would appreciate any advice anybody may have.
BTW FWE does not touch these unless you use 5-6 times the recommended dose over several weeks and i have seen what a single dose has done to some tanks on here.
cheers
Juppy
So i decided to pull a couple of colonies to have a better look. Around the base of the worst colonies were bundles of tiny brown eggs, when i say tiny i mean you need tank light to see them and very good eyes a couple of inches away. S**t!!!! took some tank water out and swished the coral very forcefully. Looked in the bucket to find 5 flatworms swimming round!! these arent the red planeria (SP?) but perfectly clear large flatworms. You would never notice them on a coral in your tank unless you pulled it, perfectly invisible.
Today tried to get som tmcpcc but had to settle for lugols for now as couldnt get hold of the coral cure (which apparently kills these bas&&rds! Made a stongish dip and left a couple of the bad corals for 10 minutes or so. Swished the corals and put them back in the aquarium. Again loads of flatworms swimming around in the lugols solution like they were taking a relaxing bath! The stuff doesnt touch them, just loosens them a LITTLE!. On top of that the four colonies i treated look well rough and i had to bin another one as it was so badly affected by the worms. Looking on rc it seems that if i am to have any chance of getting rid of these i am going to have to chip all corals from the rocks and dip them in tmcpcc once a week for 4-5 weeks!!! i still have some seemingly unaffected corals but i am sure that it is only a matter of time before these get hit. Unless i can break the cycle.
Looking at the damage i wouldnt be surprised if a large % of the issues most of us have a put down to water quality or other environmental issues are actually down to these or the equally nasty red bugs. I have onlly seen a couple of posts on the uk boards about AEFW or red bugs, we get our aquacultured corals from the same sites as the yanks do but their hobby is riddled with them. It is impossible that more of us dont have them, i think a lot of people do but just havent noticed them. I would urge anybody with sps issues or odd polyp behaviour to have a good look around the base of the corals.
Am seriously contemplating jacking this in after the last couple of days, am going to continue to dip IF these corals pull through and try the tmcpcc also but if i end up losing most of the corals that i have grown for the last couple of years i will be putting my system on ebay (sps and aefw free) Really hacked off! Would appreciate any advice anybody may have.
BTW FWE does not touch these unless you use 5-6 times the recommended dose over several weeks and i have seen what a single dose has done to some tanks on here.
cheers
Juppy