@#$%$ Flatworms!

[saltwater-virgin]

Might be of interest ...
http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html

[Chaloupa]

NOT something I would keep around as part of a clean up crew...no really, one becomes one MILLION soooooo fast and they smother corals. Not a good part of a reef...I feel for ya dealing with them again....I have them in one of my biocubes, and it is a royal pain in the butt. I am trying to get the Velvet Nudi's but haven't seen any in anywhere for months and months....they seem ideal for dealing with flatworms

[TeknoPunk]

Originally Posted by reef_raf

To the posters talking about keeping a few for clean-up. Are you sure you mean flatworms, or do you mean bristle worms? IMO, bristle worms are good, flatworms are bad, even one. Mostly because one usually turns into one million.

oh sorry yea I was thinking about bristle worms.

[TeknoPunk]

hmmm I just looked flatworms up.... I've never seen them in any of my tanks how are you guys getting them? piggy backing on live rock?

[Reefer Rob]

If you do use Flatworm Exit make sure you get rid of as many as you can before you treat. Multiplying the number you can see by about 500 will give you the approximate number in your tank. When I treated I thought it was going to be the end of my tank, I couldn't believe how many came out of the rock work. 2 1/2 months later and my tank has almost recovered.

I recently read an article that recommended shining a light on the side of your tank overnight, the flatworms will be attracted to the light and can be siphoned out in the morning. I'm not sure if this will work but I wish I'd tried it before I used Flatworm Exit. If you can reduce their numbers before your treat it should be safe.

Rob

[untamed]

Originally Posted by TeknoPunk

hmmm I just looked flatworms up.... I've never seen them in any of my tanks how are you guys getting them? piggy backing on live rock?

In my case, I inherited from from a frag trade. I didn't pay them any attention until it was too late and I realized that I had millions of them. At one point, my LR was literally red colour. Flatworms must have been hiding in the rock that the frag was attached to.

Immediate, first response should be to siphon as many as possible. They are easy to siphon because they don't really grip on very tightly. Start a siphon using airline tubing. I found it helpful to put a short piece of rigid tubing on the end so that I could work it like a pencil.

Since the airline tubing is so small, you can siphon for quite a while before you remove any volume of water. I used a 2 gallon bucket. The flatworms sink to the bottom of the bucket, so when the bucket is full you can put 98% of the water back in to the tank and siphon again.

Repeat until you can't find a single flatworm. Do it again tomorrow, and again, and again....then treat with flatworm exit. I think a relentless combination of these strategies could actually work. In my case, each time I saw big improvement, I backed off...so I never got the job done.

[Doug]

Hve to agree with the others who said to treat in some form or another. They can & will get out of control. It nearly wiped me out a few years ago and I have seen many tanks that became plague like because of letting things go "naturally"

[tang daddy]

Originally Posted by Dutch

unless there taking your tank over just leave them they are part of the natural reef anyway and they help ( in moderation of course ) to control nutrient levels, feeding on waste food etc. I have a few in my tank and they only come out during feeding time eating the extra food. If they are taking over your tank try using the flat worm trap starve tank for a few days then put in trap with a little food inside this takes some time to reduce numbers but does help.

If you want your sps to go bye bye then leave the fw in!!

I have spent countless nights up till 4am in the morning researching about flat worms on RC.

So far the most common found in our tanks are the red fw which are planaria and white fw which are undetectable, mostly invisible but there are probally 100 other species that we haven't encountered yet.

These are my suggestions and maybe you can do some research on your own but I must say please do it at your own discretion and by no means am I liable for what happens to your corals or your tank, therfore it is only suggestions.

1) set up a qt.

2) take all sps and related species out of your tank. Flatworms live for only five days, going from what I read!!

3) use either tmpcc-tropic marin pro coral cure or lugol's to Dip corals in a bucket and then rinse in another bucket. Make sure to inspect every frag/colony for eggs as the iodine dip will not erradicate them if you see eggs best to frag up the colony and throw the part with eggs away some people scrape the eggs off.

4) repeat step 3 once a week for 1 month.

5) you're main display, for an in tank treatment you can use FWE if you choose to get rid of the red fw aka planaria as they are not harmfull to sps but at huge populations can often climb on the corals shedding it of light thus killing the coral slowly. ps if using FWE by salifert make sure to first have 1/2 of your tanks volume water ready also alot of carbon in a canister filter ready for after the treatment as I've read that this can be very affective for removing toxins via the dieing fw's. 1 more thing is I have also read that in tank treatments are effective with repeated treatments also going as much as 6x the recomended dose!! eg. so 1 ampoule treats 300g, tank volume 200g = 4 ampoules x 1 week for 4 week.

6) in step 5 the 6x treatment should be worked up slowly like 2x treatment 1st week, 3x 2nd and so forth, I also read that fw can build a tolerence to fwe so maybe that's why some have gone up to 6x. after 6 weeks your corals should be safe to return to your main display.

To sum up everything I stated above and alittle more info about the dreaded basterds life cycle 5 days for the adult, 14 days for the eggs to hatch, the babies can start laying eggs after only 5 days of being born scary isn't it. From what I've read most take out the sps and do meds in qt while doing FWE in main display because dips have shown better results, also the reason for weekly treatments is to break the life cycle. Another medication that works is levamisole aka pig dewormer why I didn't suggest this is because of more casualties as the dip btw only going by what I read! leaving your tank without sps for 6 weeks if you ask me to be on the safe side 8 weeks hopefully eggs that you missed prior to fwe treatments or remaining survivors of fwe will definately starve!! also make sure that all sps including encrusting stuff on lr should be scraped off, why do all this work and leave them a little to eat only to find out that after 2 hard months and hundreds down the drain that you still have them!! out of the many that have them some you hear of some you don't all will say qt your new arrivals for atleast 1 month (I thought they were just saying it as a joke besides who has the time but until you have you just don't know) no matter who it's from cause when your whole tank has it not only is it too late but now you have a bigger problem. If it's one thing i've learned is that now I actually believe in QT and not just for sps but anything rock, sand anything you buy you never know what you're bringing in your tank, heck maybe your tank is fw free until you decide to buy some more lr from someone shutting down their tank that had fw and they weren't aware of it so the rock had a clutch of eggs and six months later you discover you have it again!! It's no wonder why so many by sps frags alot easier to see eggs as oppose to maricultered pieces which may have eggs hidden in the crevices of larger plugs, I never thought I would be a pro easter hunter...

man I feel like I just wrote a book on fw's anyhow I wish you the best of luck on ridding the bastards and if you want more info RC has alot.

Cheers Chris

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

I put in a Leopard Wrasse & a Yellow Canary Wrasse into my seahorse/frag tank & they cleaned up all the flatworms within a couple of weeks no problem. I love biological control solutions.

[Reefer Rob]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

I put in a Leopard Wrasse & a Yellow Canary Wrasse into my seahorse/frag tank & they cleaned up all the flatworms within a couple of weeks no problem. I love biological control solutions.

Seems to be the most reliable fish for control. My 6 Line Wrasse did nothing. I wanted to get a Leopard Wrasse (beautiful fish) but I don't have a DSB.