Ridding Tank of Brown Flatworms
 

i just got home from a trip, only to discover an explosion of brown flatworms. they're everywhere!!

ive read that there is a certain type of nudibranch that will eat them, but i have probably 0-1% chance of finding one around me.

are there any other fish that would work?

it's only a 24 gallon aquapod, so i dont want to try a psychedelic mandarinfish (even though i have a ridiculous pod population). what about a sixline wrasse or something?

ive started syphoning them out, but ive barely made a dent in the population :(

any input would be awesome! id prefer to deal with the problem "au naturel" instead of with drugs.

whipfin wrasse
 

i had a huge outbreak.... and added a whipfin fairy wrasse
not knowing it ate them... and it cleaned the tank of them compleatly
never seen one since.

It's Velvet Nudibranchs that eat them..I've been trying for quite some time with no success to find them....I have tried fish with no luck in one of my Biocubes....
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...upa/194544.jpg

I just treated my main display recently with FWE (Ocean Aquatics still sells it) and it was really a breeze. Of course you have to siphon out as many as you can first and then be ready to do that for quite a while once you put in the FWE. You also have to have a water change ready. I ran a lot of charcoal for about 5 days afterwards. No ill effects other than to get rid of FW's.

Meleev has a good article about getting rid of Flatworms on his site that you might want to read.

Fwe
 

I also used FWE and tried to avoid it but couldn't so went the chemical route.Only thing I lost besides the FW's was my little brittle stars.Too bad cause i kinda liked them but hated the FW's so sacrafices had to be made.Clint

A yellow wrasse or leopard wrasse is a natural flatworm predator.

I used the FWE as well... worked great... didn't see anything that was bothered except the FW...

i got a baby wrasse today. he seems keen.

also got a bunch more hermits to get more feet on the rocks so the flatworms dont have the run of the liverock!

some gorilla crab i found before i left (and removed) had taken out all of my hermits...except maybe 1 or 2 of them. :(

i think that added to the flatworm's ability to reproduce with no harassment.

What kind of baby wrasse did you get?

I used flatworm exit aswell. It worked well but also killed my sea hares. This is what I blame for loosing all my fish, which chain reacted to kill some corals with the spike that came from that. To top it all off I never did get rid of all the flatworms. However they overpopulated themselves and used up whatever nutriant that they live on and tapered down to decent numbers. Now I don't bother them and they don't bother me. Although since I added a velvit nudi, but I think my sixline killed it.

It's a good thing this hobby is just as rewarding as it is frustrating!!!

Thank god for that or beleive me it would be gone a few times. lol

I am also looking for a non-chemical cure. Otherwise they can stay there.