Are things the famous flatworms? (1 Viewer)

[ilopez0321]

I just looked at my sump and found a bunch of these towards the surface of the water. I guess they came with the Chaetto, algae. What are they and what should I do?

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[Miller]

they are flat worms but not the dreaded type. Body shape is off but others will chime in.

 

[ilopez0321]

My tank is kinda bare, not many corals. I've just filled it with rocks and I'm starting to add corals now. Should I be concerned about them moving from my sump to the DT and messing up with my corals after they become a pest?

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[steveb]

Those are red planaria flatworm - they can be a nuisance. Will settle on glass, liverock, corals etc..

chemical treatment - flatworm exit
another method of removal - How to eliminate Flatworms (Red Planaria) | Melev's Reef, Inc

my favorite method of control - melanurus wrasse Saltwater Aquarium Fish for Marine Aquariums: Hoeven's Wrasse

 

[webster1234]

I know this sounds like overkill but I dip and QT EVERYTHING (even macro algae and live rock), just because of instances like this. When I got chaeto from the LFS, I dipped it in a mix of CoralRx (double suggested dose) and flatworm exit (also double suggested dose), and then looked in the dip container with a magnifying glass to see if any pests fell off. Then I put it in a QT tank for 6-8 weeks to give any ich that might be suspended in the water a chance to die off.

Had you done that, you would have been able to see the dead flatworms in the bottom of the dip container and known that you needed to treat for flatworms, or toss the chaeto and get another batch. I hate those things. You can still treat them in your DT but it takes a lot more chemicals to do so. With flatworms, you will need to treat at least twice, once for the live ones, and again after the eggs they have layed hatch. And probably even a third time (all about 7 days apart) to make sure you got them all. Also I would use double the recommended dose of flatworm exit as these things are hard to kill once they get infested. I did a test once where I added some flatworms to a dip container and treated with flatworm exit to see how much of a concentration it took to kill them all. At 4x the recommended dose, there were still a few survivors. These were coming from a small tank that had an infestation of them. I finally just took the tank down because I never could kill them all. They kept coming back. I treated that tank at least 10 times with FE, using a max dose of 2x because it had some fish and corals in it. That is when I decided to see just how much these things could take and experimented.

Good thing is at least you don't have a tank full of fish and corals yet. They can be maintained using natural predators as others have suggested but the easiest method of control is to not get them in the first place.

If you are new to the hobby, I am not trying to be critical. Everybody makes mistakes. I just hope you see the importance of the QT process. You can save yourself a lot of frustration in the future by starting this practice.

 

[ilopez0321]

Thanks for the feedback, how where they hurting your tank while you had them? Would they feed off of corals (zoas, sps, lps)?

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[webster1234]

They don't really hurt anything, They just cover the corals in high enough numbers and block the light. When there gets to be so many of them, they "shade" the coral which makes it unhappy. Other than that, I've never known them to "kill" anything. In high enough numbers, a big die off of them can release toxins into your tank which needs to be scavenged up with carbon and water changes. Better to try and kill them now if you can and wait a while, checking the sump and glass for signs of them before too heavily stocking your tank. Otherwise, you will always be looking over your shoulder for them.

I have that problem now with zoa eating nudibranches. Somehow I let them get in my DT and now, I have to go hunting every night with the blue light to try and catch them. I have some big zoa colonies on base rocks that I can't remove. What a PITA. Wish I had known about Bayer dip way back when and dipped my zoa colonies a few times while in QT. I could have kept from getting them.