- Acropora-eating flatworms
are a common pest in our reef tanks.
controlling them once you have them is not easy,
and biological controls like a six-line wrasse,
well, they can be hit or miss,
even though they're a known predator of adult
Acropora-eating flatworms in the wild.
Hi, guys and girls, I'm ReefMan,
and this video is all about using medications
as dips to control Acropora-eating flatworms.
Now, I have done videos on the life cycle
of Acropora-eating flatworms.
The eggs hatch in about 11 days,
Then it takes about a month or so, 35 days,
for the worms to grow up, to be old enough to reproduce.
I've also done a video on using biological controls
like the six line wrasse to combat these flatworms
in our reef tanks, and those biological controls,
Well, they're great, but it helps if you could just
reduce the overall population to begin with,
and that's where chemical controls
for these flatworms can come in handy.
Here's a video of some generic flatworms.
They're falling off a euphyllia
that I treated with Coral Rx.
I'm not really sure that Coral Rx is going to work
on Acropora-eating flatworms, though.
There is a new paper that was just published in Aquaculture
in October of 2020 titled, "Efficacy of chemical treatments
for Acropora-Eating flatworm infestations."
There's a link down below in the description,
check it out. But this is a research paper
out of the National Sea Simulator in Australia,
and the research team is from the James Cook University
and also the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
In the paper, they're looking at testing out two different
antiparasitic drugs: Levamisole and Praziquantel.
They're testing both as a dip for Acropora
suffering from Acropora-eating flatworms.
They're also interested in the effect that these two drugs
might just have on the coral frags themselves.
If the coral dies or doesn't grow after treatment,
well, then it doesn't really matter
if the flatworms are gone or not.
Levamisole is an anti-parasitic drug
that's very soluble in saltwater,
making it easy to use as a dip.
The team mixed 40 milligrams of Levamisole HCL
into a liter of water, and then used that
for their coral dip.
There is not much Levamisole there,
so you can make it a little bit easier
by making a larger batch.
but even a gallon of water is only going to need about
151 milligrams of Levamisole HCL powder.
Praziquantel is also an antiparasitic drug,
and it's one that's used pretty commonly
for flukes and worms in our fish already.
This is a little bit harder to prepare though,
because Praziquantel is not soluble in water.
Instead, the team mixed 50 grams of Praziquantel
into a liter of 100% ethanol,
and then they diluted that to 50 milligrams
per liter of Praziquantel by mixing in a small amount of
that stock solution into saltwater.
Now 100% ethanol is kind of hard to find,
but you could likely use a drinking alcohol
like Everclear instead, and you'd come close
if you can't find pure ethanol.
Everclear is about 92% ethanol, so it should work well.
You can get both of these medications online,
or even better, just print out the paper
or even the abstract,
take it to your local vet with some explanation.
I bet that they'd help you get the medications
and they'd also help figure out the exact dose
to use for your dip.
That way you're getting a medication
from a sort of legitimate source, and you know
it's a high quality and something that doesn't have
anything else that you don't want in it.
Now, both of these chemicals are used as a dip,
and the coral was put into the dip
and then left for an hour,
and they had an airstone in there as well for circulation.
After the hour, the team shook the corals
and clean saltwater to dislodge any remaining worms,
and then they put them back into their clean systems
for four weeks to see what would happen.
Both chemicals did a pretty good job
of removing Acropora-eating flatworms
from the Acropora millepore that they were testing.
Although both of them really just paralyzed the worms,
and then they of course fall off the coral
because they're paralyzed.
Praziquantel did a much better job of this,
and the paralysis lasted much longer.
Levamisole also paralyzed the worms,
but they were already recovering and crawling around
in the container that they did the final shake-off in.
Praziquantel removed 90%, plus minus 3.4
of the Acropora-eating flatworms outright,
and then shaking the coral afterwards
increased that to a total of 95%,
plus minus 2.6 of the flatworms removed.
Levamisole only removed 75%, plus minus 6.61,
without shaking it.
With shaking, that goes up to 93.33% plus minus 3.8%.
Now, if you don't treat it at all with any medication,
and you just shake the coral,
you're going to remove about 33%, plus minus seven or so.
Now because Praziquantel seemed to paralyze the worms
and it lasted longer,
it's what I would recommend using as a dip.
Remember though, it's not soluble in water,
so you can't just add the powder to saltwater.
You need to dissolve it in ethanol
or something like Everclear before you can use it.
And that does make the dosage a little bit
more tricky to get right, because you have to dissolve it
and then add that solution to your saltwater.
In both treatments, the coral itself,
and again, they were using Acropora millepore fragments,
it didn't seem to mind.
The team didn't have any issues with bleaching.
One frag out of the couple hundred they'd used
bleached after the treatment,
and the coral continue to grow and in crust onto its mouth
in the final four weeks of observation after the treatment.
Praziquantel is useful for fish parasites as well,
so it's kind of just a useful medication to have
on hand, if you're purchasing a lot of fish,
and you can use it as a prophylactic treatment
during your quarantine.
Note that neither treatment
got rid of 100% of their flatworms.
The team recommends retreating every three weeks
until you no longer see any damage
from the worms around the base of your coral,
and no new worms fall off during a dip.
Biological controls, of course, they're also going to help.
And with the medication removing the bulk of the worms,
a six line wrasse or something like that might be able to
just take care of the rest of the worms for you,
making the number of followup dips that you need to do
a lot less.
If you don't see any worms fall
off during a treatment after three weeks
or after shaking it after the dip, then you're probably
in a good place and you don't need to worry
about Acropora-eating flatworms anymore.
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So let me know what you think in the comments down below.
I always like to see what you have to think about the video
and any other information you can share with us,
and hopefully you'll be able to get rid
of your Acropora-eating flatworms
without too much of a battle.
Stay safe, have a fantastic day, I'll see you next time.
Bye.