Eliminating Blue Clove Polyps with Fenbendazole

danfee · Jan 11, 2023

danfee said:
Ok that took a bit but read all 31 pages on this. Good job guys. I don’t recall any info on clams though. They can be left in tank, correct?

Also skimmer on or off? Heard people were doing both.

Glenner’sreef · Jan 11, 2023

danfee said:
Ok that took a bit but read all 31 pages on this. Good job guys. I don’t recall any info on clams though. They can be left in tank, correct?

If you can safely remove your clam to a frag tank or another tank, I would do it. When reintroducing corals, inverts etc into the tank start with a $2 snail. Observe for a day or two while continuing to clean the water. Wait a week or two. Don’t be in a hurry. Work your way up to your $100 clam. I believe I kept my skimmer running all the way through the process. These blue polyps don’t stand a chance with that much medication in the course of 24/48 hours.

Reefman71 · Jan 12, 2023

danfee said:
Ok that took a bit but read all 31 pages on this. Good job guys. I don’t recall any info on clams though. They can be left in tank, correct?

I don’t know, personally any inverts I would remove. I’ve never seen anyone mention anything about clams.

Reefman71 · Jan 12, 2023

danfee said:
Also skimmer on or off? Heard people were doing both.

Skimmer off until you add the carbon

danfee · Jan 12, 2023

So it looks like Panacur C is the way to go. Just ordered it. So I don’t have to separate the granuals in the packet right? I read on another thread that someone was doing that but I think that was with safeguard. Nobody here is worried about the other ingredients?

Reefman71 · Jan 12, 2023

danfee said:
So it looks like Panacur C is the way to go. Just ordered it. So I don’t have to separate the granuals in the packet right? I read on another thread that someone was doing that but I think that was with safeguard. Nobody here is worried about the other ingredients?

Take a cup of water out of your tank, dump the bag in it and mix it up and dump it back in. You should see results in a few hours

brucey · Jan 16, 2023

Worth adding to this you can get good results from a far far lower dosage

I treated m reefer 425 with maybe 25mg over a few days.
The results look to be the same but with a lesser risk. No dead cuc, faster turnaround to add soft corals as the low dosage can be more quickly removed.

I took a 1.8g sachet of panacur containing 399mg of Fenbendazole, mixed it into 80ml RO and dosed 1 ml at a time.
No other corals irritated and cloves slowly dying.

Reefman71 · Jan 16, 2023

brucey said:
Worth adding to this you can get good results from a far far lower dosage

I treated m reefer 425 with maybe 25mg over a few days.
The results look to be the same but with a lesser risk. No dead cuc, faster turnaround to add soft corals as the low dosage can be more quickly removed.

I took a 1.8g sachet of panacur containing 399mg of Fenbendazole, mixed it into 80ml RO and dosed 1 ml at a time.
No other corals irritated and cloves slowly dying.

They’ll be back in a month.

brucey · Jan 18, 2023

Reefman71 said:
They’ll be back in a month.

Will check back in in 12 months time then
This way I’m not impacting cuc in any way and it’s so far had a major dent in the bcp

Reefman71 · Jan 18, 2023

brucey said:
Will check back in in 12 months time then
This way I’m not impacting cuc in any way and it’s so far had a major dent in the bcp

Keep us updated. Hopefully it works out. I just added a new CUC. Still no bsp.

danfee · Jan 18, 2023

Alrighty. Update so far:
Was pretty nervous about this yesterday but feelin better now.
Dosed a 1 gram packet of Panacur into my Red Sea 425 (112 gal) yesterday so it’s been 24 hours. The little blue jerks started to not look good about 2-3 hours after my dose.
Everything looks good today after the 24 hours. (Except the blue cloves. They continue to look worse but still there). Two of my torches retracted a bit but I’m not too worried yet.
I did not remove anything. I had no softies or algae eating snails in the first place.

What I left in: 3 clams (I saw someone say they remained heathy throughout the process so I left them), nassarius snails (same deal as the clams), sps, lps, euphyllia, giant bubble coral, mangrove, hermits (they’re still roaming around) zoas, etc…. Everything looks really good except the two torches on lower left of the tank have retracted a bit. Crossing my fingers with the nassarius though. I have no setup to remove anything from the tank.

GFO/carbon reactor off

I left my skimmer on because I don’t think (hope) it will remove too much of the medicine. Also I didn’t want po4 to rise too much with the die off for my sps.
I thinks that’s about it. Any recommendations on how long before water changes and turning reactor back on for carbon would be appreciated. Thanks again for the info found here.

Reefman71 · Jan 19, 2023

danfee said:
Alrighty. Update so far:
Was pretty nervous about this yesterday but feelin better now.
Dosed a 1 gram packet of Panacur into my Red Sea 425 (112 gal) yesterday so it’s been 24 hours. The little blue jerks started to not look good about 2-3 hours after my dose.
Everything looks good today after the 24 hours. (Except the blue cloves. They continue to look worse but still there). Two of my torches retracted a bit but I’m not too worried yet.
I did not remove anything. I had no softies or algae eating snails in the first place.

What I left in: 3 clams (I saw someone say they remained heathy throughout the process so I left them), nassarius snails (same deal as the clams), sps, lps, euphyllia, giant bubble coral, mangrove, hermits (they’re still roaming around) zoas, etc…. Everything looks really good except the two torches on lower left of the tank have retracted a bit. Crossing my fingers with the nassarius though. I have no setup to remove anything from the tank.

GFO/carbon reactor off

I left my skimmer on because I don’t think (hope) it will remove too much of the medicine. Also I didn’t want po4 to rise too much with the die off for my sps.
I thinks that’s about it. Any recommendations on how long before water changes and turning reactor back on for carbon would be appreciated. Thanks again for the info found here.

Give it at least five days, even if your Zoanthids start looking irritated that means it’s working. I would turn the skimmer off.

Tired · Jan 19, 2023

danfee said:
Crossing my fingers with the nassarius though. I have no setup to remove anything from the tank.

For a few inverts, a bucket with some form of water circulation and either a few big handfuls of sand or a small chunk of live rock works just fine as a temporary holding situation. A heater is generally good, but may not be needed. If any non-photosynthetic critters start looking stressed, you should be able to easily remove them and house them elsewhere for a bit.

carmodpg · Jan 19, 2023

I had some frags covered with BCP in my frag tank. I have a lot of shrooms,other corals and inverts that would be adversely affected if I dosed fenbendazole directly into the frag tank. So instead, I mixed one gram of Panacur with 1 gallon of ro/di and mixed it up. I then mixed 7.5 liters of tank water with about 80 ml of the solution and soaked the zoa covered frags in there for about 30 minutes. I can tell you that it was extremely successful in killing all the BCP (and GSP as well). The zoas were not harmed. It has only been 3 days, but there is no trace of BCP at this time. It gives me a chance to maybe rehome the zoas to a new frag plug at the least, without having to worry about any transfer.

Tired · Jan 19, 2023

Interesting that it got the GSP also. Maybe it'll work for folks who want to not have GSP any more, though that might be less common than blue cloves going nuts, since GSP doesn't spawn in aquaria.

Useful information, thanks.

danfee · Jan 24, 2023

So yeah…. I’m very surprised at my results. My tank looked awesome all through treatment. Clams, nassarius, emeralds, hermits, mangrove, lps, sps… all look great.

I added 1 gram of the pancur c to my 112 gallon. Left skimmer on. Gfo/carbon reactor off

I still see the tiny nuisance snails crawling all around.

I was reluctant to even do a water change. But I did one today at the 7 day mark. Vacuumed the **** out of the gravel. (30 gallons on my 112 gallon). Replaced reactor with carbon and not gfo and turned back on.

blue cloves completely gone. I get many of you say they will come back but now, because of what I’ve seen, can always redose.

Side note: I’ve been dealing with blue cloves for over a year. My past treatment has been to turn off all pump and lay a layer of aiptasia x on them for 30 minutes. It works well. Turns the rock bare white. But since I can’t get them all they always regrow. So I’m thinking if I see some heads pop up I’ll just put some aiptasia x back on them. If that doesn’t work I can always do another treatment of the dog wormer.

I think that my lps looked especially better was because my po4 was .05 before treatment and went up to .15 today. I have a mixed tank and it’s always a battle sps vs. lps water quality.

Good reefing. Hope this helps. And thanks for all your help