fishouttawater
New member
Long story, figure it might help someone!
A little background...I have a 24g Aquapod, about 15lbs of live rock, most of which is covered with mushrooms and xenia, and one BTA. I had a VERY bad flatworm infestation, had tried a blue-velvet nudibranch in the past and currently have a yellow-coris wrasse (canary wrasse), but neither put a dent in the worm population. I was always hesitant to try the flatworm eXit, knowing that I had so many in cracks and under corals, that when they died it would crash my tank.
So...here's what I did, and what happened. I turned off my return pump and powerhead and siphoned 10gals of water into a big rubbermaid tub. I dropped about 20 drops of flatworm exit in the tub, and then pulled all of my liverock out of my tank and into the medicated tub. I left it in there about 15mins....
Meanwhile, while my fish are losing their **** (royal gramma kept breaching but with tank only half full remained inside), I siphoned all flatworms I could see from the surface of my aragonite sand.
Now, back to tub and rock, I shook each piece of rock vigorously underwater, removing and dunking to jar any dead worms out of cracks...being carefull not to squish or gouge my BTA, mushrooms, or xenia. One at a time I replaced the liverock pieces, and on the last one, as I'm inspecting it out of the water to make sure most worms are gone, I see my firefish in a crack staring back at me :mad2: He sees me and flops onto the carpet, where I scoop him up and throw him back in the tank.
Next I take 10 gals of premixed saltwater and top up the tank, pretty sure that I'm at least going to lose the medicated and shook firefish. I dropped in a filter bag of Ultramaxx carbon in the back chamber and fired up my Tunz 9002. All the corals were super ****ed and retracted, anemone included...but fish seemed fine. I observed some dead flatworms swirling around, netted those that I could with a fine plankton net.
Now fast forward 24hrs, my fish started freaking out. Clowns looked very stressed, swimming awkwardly, floating sideways for a bit before hurriedly darting to shrunken BTA. Meanwhile the Tunze is pulling out lots of skimmate, and the stuff its pulling is deep orange to red in color! I'm guessing the dead worms in the rock just sort-of dissolved, and the skimmer pulled the crud out...I think despite the carbon and skimmer, the levels of flatworm toxins got too high. However I just rode it out, and the fish calmed down within a couple hours.
Today, 4 days later, all my corals have recovered and are thriving, my BTA is looking better than ever, all fish (firefish included!) are healthy and eating, and, most importantly, can not find one (literally, not one) flatworm in my tank. Sorry for the long post, haha, if you can't tell I'm stoked to be rid of those little brownish-red bastards. Lemme know if you have any questions on anything I did.
A little background...I have a 24g Aquapod, about 15lbs of live rock, most of which is covered with mushrooms and xenia, and one BTA. I had a VERY bad flatworm infestation, had tried a blue-velvet nudibranch in the past and currently have a yellow-coris wrasse (canary wrasse), but neither put a dent in the worm population. I was always hesitant to try the flatworm eXit, knowing that I had so many in cracks and under corals, that when they died it would crash my tank.
So...here's what I did, and what happened. I turned off my return pump and powerhead and siphoned 10gals of water into a big rubbermaid tub. I dropped about 20 drops of flatworm exit in the tub, and then pulled all of my liverock out of my tank and into the medicated tub. I left it in there about 15mins....
Meanwhile, while my fish are losing their **** (royal gramma kept breaching but with tank only half full remained inside), I siphoned all flatworms I could see from the surface of my aragonite sand.
Now, back to tub and rock, I shook each piece of rock vigorously underwater, removing and dunking to jar any dead worms out of cracks...being carefull not to squish or gouge my BTA, mushrooms, or xenia. One at a time I replaced the liverock pieces, and on the last one, as I'm inspecting it out of the water to make sure most worms are gone, I see my firefish in a crack staring back at me :mad2: He sees me and flops onto the carpet, where I scoop him up and throw him back in the tank.
Next I take 10 gals of premixed saltwater and top up the tank, pretty sure that I'm at least going to lose the medicated and shook firefish. I dropped in a filter bag of Ultramaxx carbon in the back chamber and fired up my Tunz 9002. All the corals were super ****ed and retracted, anemone included...but fish seemed fine. I observed some dead flatworms swirling around, netted those that I could with a fine plankton net.
Now fast forward 24hrs, my fish started freaking out. Clowns looked very stressed, swimming awkwardly, floating sideways for a bit before hurriedly darting to shrunken BTA. Meanwhile the Tunze is pulling out lots of skimmate, and the stuff its pulling is deep orange to red in color! I'm guessing the dead worms in the rock just sort-of dissolved, and the skimmer pulled the crud out...I think despite the carbon and skimmer, the levels of flatworm toxins got too high. However I just rode it out, and the fish calmed down within a couple hours.
Today, 4 days later, all my corals have recovered and are thriving, my BTA is looking better than ever, all fish (firefish included!) are healthy and eating, and, most importantly, can not find one (literally, not one) flatworm in my tank. Sorry for the long post, haha, if you can't tell I'm stoked to be rid of those little brownish-red bastards. Lemme know if you have any questions on anything I did.
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