BREAKING NEWS! We Have Officially Eradicated AEFW's With A 100% Reef Safe IN TANK Treatment.

[CustomReefCreations]

Insulting others is a really good look for you and your company. Sharing your experience here is great but the way you're going about it isn't very helpful.

i agree 100%... however, when I am giving realistic feedback with actual data, and I have thousands of dollars worth of dead coral. what I am not looking for is people to chime in and say well I am doing great. thats a direct contradiction to data, and what looks like an attack... the comment in question... he didnt post data which we all benefit from. just, well my exact coral is fine. If someone has questions or data, or anything of actual value. I am game to discuss and try to figure it out and benefit everyone involved. I tried this treatment... because of all of the comments of success. saying well my 2 acropora are fine doesnt help.... I have 1000+ acropora that are fine too, I was posting about my experience and losses.

 

[J. Austin]

The truth is there are people having issues and die off and those numbers are climbing.

Please share data here. Not just “my stuff is fine”. What do we learn from that?

I want this to work.

Perhaps the “double dose” instructions provided were too harsh and that’s the reason for the dosing correction a couple weeks ago.

 

[lexinverts]

i agree 100%... however, when I am giving realistic feedback with actual data, and I have thousands of dollars worth of dead coral. what I am not looking for is people to chime in and say well I am doing great. thats a direct contradiction to data, and what looks like an attack... the comment in question... he didnt post data which we all benefit from. just, well my exact coral is fine. If someone has questions or data, or anything of actual value. I am game to discuss and try to figure it out and benefit everyone involved. I tried this treatment... because of all of the comments of success. saying well my 2 acropora are fine doesnt help.... I have 1000+ acropora that are fine too, I was posting about my experience and losses.

Fair enough. Tell us what kind of "data" you would like to see. I'll be happy to share.

 

[naterealbig]

i agree 100%... however, when I am giving realistic feedback with actual data, and I have thousands of dollars worth of dead coral. what I am not looking for is people to chime in and say well I am doing great. thats a direct contradiction to data, and what looks like an attack... the comment in question... he didnt post data which we all benefit from. just, well my exact coral is fine. If someone has questions or data, or anything of actual value. I am game to discuss and try to figure it out and benefit everyone involved. I tried this treatment... because of all of the comments of success. saying well my 2 acropora are fine doesnt help.... I have 1000+ acropora that are fine too, I was posting about my experience and losses.

Definitely enough success with this product on members tanks to warrant continued testing, and enough negative experiences to warrant caution.

What is the difference in parameters and systems between those realizing success, and those realizing failures?. Some of the greatest benefit to be gained from a discussion like this is helping to understand what will promote success and what could lead to failure.

For those that have had some issues with corals, perhaps some details on water parameters, recent changes to the reef, equipment and chemicals being used, known previous pest infestations, along with dosing and additive regimens could potentially be very useful.

Also, could an ammonia spike due to pest death be causing causing coral die off?. Has anyone tested for ammonia during treatment?. Perhaps a dose of prime along with treatment to help mitigate ammonia or nitrite?. Not sure here, just putting some ideas out there.

 

[dz6t]

I will like to know the mechanism of action of this product. There is no need to disclose the ingredients of this product.
Is it by inhibition of some enzyme pathways using enzyme inhibitors or bacteria infection on AEFW?
Are all the active ingredients biological or chemical based? Or a mix?
I think these are reasonable questions to ask.

 

[Fishinbob]

I have halted my 3rd dosage as well, similar results as other have posted. I used the new dosing regime of 2oz per 20 gallons as instructed. Parameters were in line
Alk 9.2
Cal 435
Mag 1280-1300
Nitrates 2
Phos .02

After the initial dosage everything looked well enough. Lost a few frags that were looking rough no big deal. Proceeded with the end of week water change and dosed a single dosage. 1 ml per 20gallons. That's when things took a turn. Alk consumption had slowed and alk Rose to 10.5 over the course of the week. Adjusted doser to half.
Immediately after second dosage smooth skin acros started rtn the next day. I performed an emergency 25% water change to mediate death.
At this point nitrates have jumped to well over 10 and phosphates are unreadable on hanna ultra low(phosphates too high)
It slowed it somewhat. Alk consumption from that point plummeted... had to shut of dosing from that point. Corals are recovering slowly hopefully they will bounce back. I have since had to transfer all sick acros to new tank to heal as some were stn and others rtn. I have spoke with several other people through PMS with similar results that have closely watched their parameters. Although I have not had significant losses as others have. I am hesitant to continue. Unfortunately I feel the hobbiest have been the test bed for this product, the product does seem to diminish populations but at what cost... if you loose almost all your acros flatworms arnt a problem! Anyone considering this treatment use caution I would reccomend a heavy dipping regime before using this as a last resort. Also on the subject of monti eating nudis.... product doesnt touch them at all. The expell dip on the other had is amazing and has helped significantly in the battle with MENs. I'm just a guy testing a product that has less then satisfying results. I feel the product havnt been thoroughly tested as we have been the ones reporting ph drops, alk stall and other factors which were not known to UWC, which would have been obvious if tested in systems prior. I'm not bashing by any means just disappointed in the losses. Please share your results everyone... maybe there is a factor I've missed or a variable that may have hindered my results. I for one was excited for the product and want it to work and will stand by their dip but cant back the purge treatment at this time. If UWC would be willing to support some more testing on dosages and variables I could get behind it but until then USE CAUTION!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Well,

I am really sorry for your losses. Let me give my experience with some more data

I don't do water changes since Jan 4th.2018
I run Calcium Reactor with ARM and second chamber with Magnesium from D&D
I do Triton testing every 2/3 months and dose daily Sr, I (for me the most important parameter after KH), Mn and V
I am currently doing Vibrant twice per week.
The only other thing I give to my reef is New Life Spectrum pellets for my fish.

Immediately after the first double I noticed Alk going up an corrected the pH inside the reactor (I am a KH scary freak and I do testing during treatment twice a day)
PO4 has a history in my tank due to the several infestation I have had. 0.25 for 3 months then moved to 0.17, 0.14 during 4/5 months and now after a break to 0.00 it's at 0.55 using a hanna checker
despite the high PO4 (that I measure everyday) my glass remains clean and I haven't cleaned in 3 weeks more or less.

Only made the first double dose. Tomorrow I will do the second dose at single and today I haven't done any water change.
Skimmer cup off running for the initial 48 hours after dosing and then with cup normally.
Carbon in reactor is off also.

I have a fuge with Chaeto and Caulerpa doing fine.

My frag system is mainly zoas that kept closed for 48h after the first dose but now doing fine

I have blue tenuis (frag), red dragon (frag) and Hawkings echinata all doing fine so far.

Only one frag of green solitariensis started STN yesterday but hasn't increased the dead tissue today and because I have 2 in the display I am not worried at all.

PE? I don't know what that is unfortunately. In almost 20y I haven't had in any of my displays. Maybe due to fish as I have a bispinosus and a burguessi.

This tank is 3y old and I have had (in order of appearance) lack of nutrientes, valonia, dyctiota, aptaisa, aefw, cianos and dinos and I have overcome every single plague without disassembly of the tank. I feel that everytime I get over one more plague the reef comes back even stronger.

I don't see my pumps dirty (I run 4 WAV) but I must be honest and tell you that I am cleaning them in muriatic acid every 2 months or so.

One thing to notice is that I am very picky ... 661ml dosed to display, 100ml dosed to frag and 98ml dosed to sump (just to make sure the double dose covers all water volume I have). Calculated without the glass and displacement of rock and sand.

As for AEFW ... I blow corals everyday specially my validas and I see AEFW getting out smaller by the day. Today I saw one that landed in a piece of rock and didn't moved for about 30s before it was eaten by my anthias.

I will do the second dose tomorrow and keep reporting.

All the best,
Rui

 

[reef_ranch]

For those with bad results, did you have an alk spike if greater than 1 dkh? Do you run low nutrients?

Perhaps the combination of the product and the alk spike is the cause of the rtn? My alk jumped from high 7s to 9.2 . This coincided with the rtn on the few that I lost. If I hadn’t dosed anything I would have expected some rtn with a sudden change of that magnitude. Throw in the drop in Ph and light intensity and it all adds up to a lot of stressors. Not to mention whatever the product itself does to stress the corals.

For those with few losses, did you experience an alk spike? Where do you keep your NO3 and PO4?

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Well still no bad experience so far and hope to keep it that way.

no3 I have no clue ... I don’t measure.

My all spike was from 7.2 to 7.5 but again I measure twice a day.

 

[Asco1104]

What time of day are people dosing that have had big losses? Could it be that dosing early in the light cycle is having a negative effect.

 

[mars108]

From what i have seen Purge seems to hit pH quite bad. One thing which is often overlooked in reefing is pH and being overstocked and running a calcium reactor more than triple the size of my tank water volume, i personally know a major pH swing can rtn a coral overnight. A natural pH night and day swing can easily be a difference of 0.3 day and night. Purge seems to be able to open increase that to a day & night swing of 0.5 which corals won't like at all and we all know smooth skins will are indicator corals as they are likely to go first when there is a water quality issue. If someone was to dose Purge first thing in the morning during moonlights that could potentially become a major and sudden swing leaving the tank struggling for days to get back to the normal pH range. Anyone have an apex pH data to tag along with thier feedback?

Another thing which crossed my mind, I'm fairly sure there were reports of the fw losing colour and paling out. Could this be that along with paling out the polyclads are also releasing toxins in the water and without carbon, it's causing issues? Again information regarding other livestock preferably Fish could be of some use as fws releasing toxins would usually affect fish and cause them to act stressed.

I doubt a alk swing of the so far reported amounts, would have been enough to cause issues just based on the swing alone. My tank lighting period to morning swings about 1 dkh a day as my dkh uptake during lighting period is immense compared to my lights out, moonlight and ramp up and down periods. Most tanks will be seeing big day to night swings, but goes unnoticed without testing or having an alkalinity monitor. Being on a doser the alkalinity increase should be fairly steady being split throughout the day. Dosing something like this, imo people should be testing all key levels regular anyway and should be catching the swings way before it causes any issues. Clearly alkalinity monitoring warning should be printed on the label though. Same with ph monitoring. Insteads of saying turn of Protein skimmer, would be better to say leave cup off.
I understand why companies won't print the ingredients on the label but this is one of the things i really dont like in reefing and would prefer more companies were like seachem and put the ingredients on the label. If we knew what was in it, we would be able to take precautions according to what's in it. Won't complain too much about that though as i fully understand the various reasons why ingredients aren't listed.

@UWC how important are the water changes during treatment? What exactly are the water changes for? Is it to cut back on accumulation or whatever it is in the bottle or more to keep water quality or something else.

I recently got a load of acros from a mate closing down. Acros came out of his qt being treated for aefw a few months in. Not taking any risks everything got triple dipped, band sawed off the bases and all stripped areas were removed. No eggs or fw found, however as a precaution, I purchased a bottle of Purge to treat the frag tank before i move the acros over to the main display.
Right now, must say i'm not feeling as confident as i was when i received it over a week ago and in a way now glad i never jumped right in and dosed the tank. Now feeling i should just dip once more and move over instead of treating the tank as there is a lot of money in the frag tank which i would prefer not to lose, especially when it comes down to either a dip and final examination which i can get done in an hour or a month purge treatment and risk being one of the unlucky ones. Such a shame really as I really did want to try it out and give my honest feedback but, i'm certain there are no fw in the frag tank so now comes down to, is it worth the risk. Will wait it out a bit longer and see what other users have to say

 

[dz6t]

Is it possible that Purge killed off some large colonies of flat worm such as polyclads and led to large amount of toxin being released? Since most worms shares biological pathways and it is not possible for a medication to selectively target AEFW.

 

[Wu Tang Clam]

Without sounding rude.....
Understand that the treatment is going to be a bumpy ride!!!
You have stressed coral already from the flatworms.
The Skimmer is switched off or overflowing into the sump not collecting the waste it was-so your nutrients are going to spike 100% and ph and oxygen levels also (that’s the first thing that’s going to cause a lot of instability)
Then the treatment itself.The double dose is very thick and makes the water very very turbid with poor light transfer for almost the entire first week this is 100% going to effect the corals ability to utilise the light resulting in the kh consumption going down(that’s the second big instability hit)
By the 2nd to 3rd week the damage from the first week is probably is just starting to show.

I think the product is good and of course if you think about it the system is going to be under a huge amount of stress when dosing.

I think if you can at least minimise the areas that could cause the most instability
Like dose it in the evening so you don’t get a huge swing in the amount of available light
Keep the Skimmer going,increase flow,check kh daily and maybe even run some gfo to help with nutrients you’ll be ok

But just understand that just by dosing it your 100% going to cause some stability issues you just need to be prepared and ready to make adjustments or just let it be expect the losses and ride it out!!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

From what i have seen Purge seems to hit pH quite bad. One thing which is often overlooked in reefing is pH and being overstocked and running a calcium reactor more than triple the size of my tank water volume, i personally know a major pH swing can rtn a coral overnight. A natural pH night and day swing can easily be a difference of 0.3 day and night. Purge seems to be able to open increase that to a day & night swing of 0.5 which corals won't like at all and we all know smooth skins will are indicator corals as they are likely to go first when there is a water quality issue. If someone was to dose Purge first thing in the morning during moonlights that could potentially become a major and sudden swing leaving the tank struggling for days to get back to the normal pH range. Anyone have an apex pH data to tag along with thier feedback?

Another thing which crossed my mind, I'm fairly sure there were reports of the fw losing colour and paling out. Could this be that along with paling out the polyclads are also releasing toxins in the water and without carbon, it's causing issues? Again information regarding other livestock preferably Fish could be of some use as fws releasing toxins would usually affect fish and cause them to act stressed.

I doubt a alk swing of the so far reported amounts, would have been enough to cause issues just based on the swing alone. My tank lighting period to morning swings about 1 dkh a day as my dkh uptake during lighting period is immense compared to my lights out, moonlight and ramp up and down periods. Most tanks will be seeing big day to night swings, but goes unnoticed without testing or having an alkalinity monitor. Being on a doser the alkalinity increase should be fairly steady being split throughout the day. Dosing something like this, imo people should be testing all key levels regular anyway and should be catching the swings way before it causes any issues. Clearly alkalinity monitoring warning should be printed on the label though. Same with ph monitoring. Insteads of saying turn of Protein skimmer, would be better to say leave cup off.
I understand why companies won't print the ingredients on the label but this is one of the things i really dont like in reefing and would prefer more companies were like seachem and put the ingredients on the label. If we knew what was in it, we would be able to take precautions according to what's in it. Won't complain too much about that though as i fully understand the various reasons why ingredients aren't listed.

@UWC how important are the water changes during treatment? What exactly are the water changes for? Is it to cut back on accumulation or whatever it is in the bottle or more to keep water quality or something else.

I recently got a load of acros from a mate closing down. Acros came out of his qt being treated for aefw a few months in. Not taking any risks everything got triple dipped, band sawed off the bases and all stripped areas were removed. No eggs or fw found, however as a precaution, I purchased a bottle of Purge to treat the frag tank before i move the acros over to the main display.
Right now, must say i'm not feeling as confident as i was when i received it over a week ago and in a way now glad i never jumped right in and dosed the tank. Now feeling i should just dip once more and move over instead of treating the tank as there is a lot of money in the frag tank which i would prefer not to lose, especially when it comes down to either a dip and final examination which i can get done in an hour or a month purge treatment and risk being one of the unlucky ones. Such a shame really as I really did want to try it out and give my honest feedback but, i'm certain there are no fw in the frag tank so now comes down to, is it worth the risk. Will wait it out a bit longer and see what other users have to say

Here is the apex data for pH

All the best,
Rui

 

[trido]

Here is the apex data for pH

All the best,
Rui

I assume the drop from 8.2 down to 7.8 was the initial dose. My ph is already low and sits a 7.65 at night and goes up to 7.85 in the day. A 4 point drop down to 7.2-7.4 might kill my whole system!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Yes. The drop was the initial dose

IMHO you should investigate the reason for the low pH @trido

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Yes. The drop was the initial dose

IMHO you should investigate the reason for the low pH @trido

Photos of progress

Lost soli

General status

My red dragon and tenuis

And second dose in 7 days after initial double dose

Skimmer running with cup off for 48h now.

 

[BigJohnny]

I hate to bring in some bad news, but I feel like I can't continue with the third dose. I have a couple of acroporas RTN (Red Dragon, and Home Wrecker) and a couple that are stressed. The vast majority of my montipora have thinned tissue and are very stressed. I've maintained chemistry throughout this process and nitrates haven't been an issue. The skimmer has been running the whole time, just dumping back into the tank.

I did the double dose on day one and and the single dose on day 7. I did a 10% WC on day 6 and will do one today, but I will not do the third dose tomorrow. I will let things recover.

I have been testing ALK every day and have noticed a SIGNIFICANT reduction in alk consumption which is on of the reasons I am discontinuing my treatment.

hopefully I killed the AEFW with this half treatment. Only time will tell.

Did your alk level swing or did you adjust your dosing and keep it stable?

 

[Asco1104]

I think it’s best to dose in the evening to limit the time lights are on with a cloudy tank and to try to reduce the ph swing.

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

I think it’s best to dose in the evening to limit the time lights are on with a cloudy tank and to try to reduce the ph swing.

My pH spike is at middle day not end ... I track that with APEX.
Also is not the light or lack off that kills corals in my opinion!