@#$%$ Flatworms!

[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"