do mantis eat flatworms?

[chilyb56]

Crazy question - but I have a plague of flatworms in one of my tanks - and I've never seen any flatworms in the mantis tank

 

[Gonodactylus]

It depends on the species of stomatopod and flatworm. Many marine flatworms pick up nasty chemicals from their diet and are unpalatable to most predators. However, not all are toxic or bad-tasting and I have seen some small stomatopods eat them. P. ciliata and N. bredini come to mind.

Roy

 

[Thurge]

Wow didn't expect that.

My Mantis reef had them for the longest time. I finally flat worm exited them out of the tank. Now I wish I had them back because the day they were removed is the day I started battleing nutrients.

 

[chilyb56]

yeah - I'm really holding off on using the exit. I don't want to go dousing my tank with chemicals - and the flatworms must be filling some sort of void in the ecosystem if they keep multiplying like crazy. And I've heard the tank can go into toxic shock if they're all killed off at once. Anyway, I've just been siphoning them out every time I do a waterchange. The only problem is that my fiance has been obsessing about them - they don't really bother me!