What eats flatworms?
 

Hi,

I have some what looks like mustardish colour flat worms in my QT with my cycling live rock :evil: ... what can I put in there to eraticate :2gunfire: these suckers?

Thanks,

Chad

how good is your live rock and how bad do you want to get rid of them..

if your rock is mostly just rock then I would be tempted to soak it in fresh water for a week or so then resead it, but I hate flatworms also..

I don;t think a preditor will truly wipe them out, but rather control them.

Steve

I've heard that some Mandarin Gobys (sp) eat them, But Flatworm eXit will nuke the buggers :lol: J&L sells it.

oh I forgot about that.. good time to use it when all you can kill is rock.. :mrgreen:

Steve

My 6-line wrasse cleaned them right out outta my tank :squarewi:

how long has your tank been flatwork free Mak? I have seen others that thought theres did also but down the road they came back.. not bad but they were there.

Steve

I have a wrasse (Halichores solorensis) that controls the population in my tank. I had a few probly about a hundred or so but a few days after introducing the wrasse they were all gone. I still have a few in the overflow though, where the wrasse can't get to them. I blow these guys off the glass with a turkey baster, apparently they don't like that. They disappear for a few weeks and then start to reappear in the overflow. I haven't been able to find one in the main tank for months though.

C:)

6 line wrasse is supposed to be a good fish for controlling flat worms

Doug

All I have on the rocks is some feather dusters a few zoo's and some other neat looking thing.. I think it got introduced by some macro algae I picked up cuz before that I didn't have any.. at first I thought it was another form of Algae until spotted a Bristle worm with two of em in its gut..

Will that chemical kill ALL life on the rocks?

Chad

I once had a pair of 6-lines. Never made a dent, if they ate any. Sold them. My mandarin and leopard wrasse never helped.

"Exit" did though. It wont harm anything in your tank or on your rock. Use as directed. The toxin from flatworms, will however harm livestock. Esp. if their in abundance when treated.

Not that I want to start another Flat worm exit thread (there are enough of them on RC), but I used it a couple of months ago. It worked for a while but now they are back with a vengence. I think it works better than anything else out there, but not 100% effective by a long shot. :cry: As Doug pointed out it didn't seem to have any ill effects on the live rock, coral or fish.

Well maybe I will try it out.. like I said its in my curing live rock QT. So.. I am in no rush. But I don't want to waste the life that is on there right now.. I will try that flat worm exit thing..

Thanks everyone

Chad

I've got quite a few flatworms in my tank now - so far they seem pretty benign though - what kind of problems can they cause?

Steve, my tank has been Flatworm free for maybe 10 months or so. I noticed within a week, the numbers of Flatworms were only 1/3 to 1/2 the population and after a month I could not spot a single one...and still can't :mrgreen: . Every two weeks at waterchange time I would syphon out a good few hundred :eek: :rolleyes: .

I bought "flatworm exit" and it nuked em. not a sign of any flatworms anymore.

Right on Gord! I'm glad to hear it worked for you :biggrin:

Ditto, I found Flatworm exit to work fine. I had a minor flatworm problem about a year and a half ago. My tank didn't experience any adverse effects from treat with FE, however, I had a very low population of flatworms. I understand the toxins released from the death of large flatworm populations can lead to the adverse effects in the tank.

Also, before I used FE I introduced 4 green chromis to my reef. Any time I would use the turkey baster to blow the flatworms off the rock, two of the chromis would follow my turkey baster and would eat as many flatworms as they could catch. It was kinda cool.

But yuck, flatworm breath, how can anyone eat those things? ever smell your fingers after mashing some of the little critters against the glass? absolutely disgusting smell. . . . not as bad as a rotting snail though. That to me takes the cake.

This reminds me of a video on "america's funniest home video's" Where a monkey scratches his bum then puts his finger to his nose and smells it and falls off the tree. :lol: My question to you is, why in the world would you want to smell your finger after squishing a flatworm :question: :mrgreen: :lol:

http://members.shaw.ca/cmcd/Monkey.mpeg

a link for anyone who wants to see this.

Chad

Hey Chad, that clip was funny. I pretty much had the same reaction as the monkey. To answer your question, I guess I was curious.

It's like when people find something old in the fridge, like sour cream, you look at the expiry date, wow 5 months ago, and what do most do, they open it to take a look...

Doug

yeah but you only do that once :wink:

Oh for sure, once is enough.

Doug