Blue Velvet Nudibranch

Racso

New member
Ok, we know these guys eat flatworms... exclusively. And we know they do a good job. But just how good? These guys are being such a PAIN in my tank that it is annoying the hell out of me. I do a W/C and suck most of them out... withen an HOUR, so many have moved back into a spot where the other ones were, that i looks like I didn't do anything. Some parts of my tank look like it has a maroon coralline just because of all the flatworms there are. Also, I have always loved these guys, I actually wanted them before I knew they are flatworms! I saw a picture of one and went, WOW, I want one!

So how fast will these guys take care of flatworms? I have a 75. I know I'll probably have to get rid of him, but I may be able to find someone who also has flatworms, and we can just trade it back and forth (cause I know that once I get rid of it, the worms will come back).

So, am I thinking straight here? Or am I just crazy? Also, where can I find these for pretty cheap? I've seen them for sale online somewhere, but I forget where...
 
Yeah, I tried flat-worm-crash-your-tank. Drove my seaclone crazy, caused all my corals to stop opening for a week, and I do mean ALL (my yellow polyps were the first to reopen 5 days laters), and didn't take care of a single flat worm. Figured I may have done something wrong, found no information saying i did, so I tried again about a week after everything looked normal, again with the same results!
 
liveaquaria.com has them in stock for $23.99 each and reefermadness.us has them in stock for $29 each.

Scientific name is Chelidonura varians if you want to Google them.
 
They're not a nudibranch FWIW. They really don't do much for flatworm problems besides lower the population to a more managable level, which they can do fairly quickly. Then they usually starve to death or get sucked into pumps within a month or two. IMO they shouldn't be collected.
 
I concur with Greenbean in that they aren't a long-term solution to a FW outbreak. Mine did a good job of lowering the FW population within a few days but the FWs were never eradicated. It bit the dust after first falling into my scoly and then getting stuck a powerhead intake. A week later, the FWs were back in force.
 
I wouldn't use one either.
You're the first person I've seen w/ a neg on flatworm exit.
Most make it sound like it's no big.
 
I tried FWE based on the good reviews. I thought that maybe I dosed it too high and that affected my corals, however, reading more into FWE, it will not affect the corals. I know it wasn't the death of the FW because NONE of them died!

As for the blue velvet, the problem wouldn't be starvation as I know there are other people in the area that have FW (a bunch of us got it from one person who didn't know had FW until AFTER we traded some stuff :rolleyes: ) so it could be moved around. Anyway, geting the FW into a more managable number would be nice.

After that, I may try FWE again, because maybe I had a bad batch or something. Something has to be wrong if I'm the only one who's had a problem with it, but I'm just worried it will do the same thing again.
 
"They're not a nudibranch FWIW"

Uh, yeah they are. You must be thinking of lettuce nudis, but blue velvets are true nudibranchs 100%.

As for effectiveness... depends on how many you have. They are like little robo-vacs, constantly on the move smelling the next flatworm to ingest. I would say that they go at a rate of about 1 flatworm every 5 seconds from when I had them. You get a few of them, and let em do their thing, and you will notice their effect.

One warning though, if you have already dosed FW-exit, I think that the flatworms that do survive might make the nudis sick or kill them if ingested. I think that the chemical might harm nudis as well as flatworms... so be sure to use carbon in the tank, and give the population some time w/o the exit before adding the velvets. I lost mine after putting them in a tank that was dosed a couple weeks earlier with exit... they started eating right away, but after a while, they both wasted away.

Great little buggers though. They are constantly moving after the flatworms, much more than most people would think. They dont move very fast, but every flatworm in their path is sucked up.
 
You might have better luck with a 6 line wrasse for a reef safe way to control flatowrms. FWE is definately a shock to your tank (seaclones wont cut it) It does work if you have good filtration methods for when the flatworms die (and release toxins)
 
I have never had a problem with FWE... except once really. It wasnt even one of my higher doses (usually I end up dosing 1.5x normal), but all of the little ceriths that reproduce in my tank got sick... some died after hanging out of their shells for a couple days. No other snails showed any problems, and I have 2 other reproducing varieties of snails in the system (micro-turbos/collonistas, nassarius) as well as super tongans, astraes, and nerites. It was odd that it effected just those snails like it did... but no biggie... they reproduce like rabbits and so it was a welcome thinning of the population. They are back in full repopulating mode now.

greenbean36191, if Im wrong, please let me know. I just have never heard anything to suggest that order cephalaspideans are not nudis.

As for 6-lines... I tried them too (Ive had flatworm problems for a while now), but they are hit & miss. At best, they might pick off one here or there, but they will hardly make a dent in a large population. A mandarin is also about as effective at flatworm control. Something tells me some types of flatworms might be tastier than others. I have the large red planarian ones... perhaps the white/clear ones are better eating.
 
Cephalaspidea and Nudibranchia are two different orders of opisthobranchs (sea slugs). One of the big give aways that Chelidonura isn't a nudibranch is that it has an internal shell. No nudibranchs have shells as adults.

Here's a list of sea slug taxonomy:
http://www.seaslugforum.net/specieslist.cfm

As for the original question, if you had FWE that didn't kill any flatworms, but did kill other things in the tank I would contact Habib and find out if there was a bad batch. I certainly wouldn't use the same package of FWE again.

If you do decide to use some sort of natural control, I would suggest finishing the job by hand rather than chemically since you might have some worms that are resistant to the FWE. Here's a good article about how to do it. http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html
 
What are the flatworms eating? If it's corals, fish, inverts, etc., remove it from the tank and let the FW's starve to death. If it's something on the liverock, let them keep eating until the food source comes to a trickle, so their population dies down.
 
To give an update on where exactly I am now, I used the FWE a while back, and its long gone in the trash now.

I have a sixline that likes to look at them, but doesn't eat them...

tried a mandarin from a friend who had one that ate flatworms, but it wouldn't eat them in my tank fast enough.

I no longer have a seaclone, I have a CSS125, which really isn't pulling out much more than the seaclone, which makes me wonder.... but thats a different story.

But as for taking the LR out, thats not an option.

I do siphon out the FW, actually, its basically all I do when I do a W/C. But withen an hour, more come out and I'm back to square one.

I know that FWE shouldn't hurt corals and stuff, and the problem is the massive death of FW that causes them problem, but when NO fw die and you corals start fading, what do you have to blame?

I have no idea what they are living off of since I don't have much bad algae (and the remaining spot here and they, the FW leave alone). I don't overfeed (if anything I WAY underfeed, I've feed my tank maybe 3 times this month :eek2: ). So I'm wondering that if they are reproducing in my tank so fast that a blue velvet may live longer in my tank than you would think, and again, I can transfer it to another tank.
 
Back
Top