fish/coral deaths with flatworm exit

[Reef Addict II]

Hi everyone,

I have a question.

I just recently set-up my 300g tank (450g total volume)

I do not have any fish yet, but I have about 7-8 corals. When I picked up my corals from my friend, he has a flatworm ploblem.

I know ive seen a few in my new tank as hitchhikers.

I do have a bottle of flatworm exit coming. Since there are probably not more than 40-50 of these(if that in my tank), Should I just dose the tank and run carbon?

After reading this thread is seems the toxin from the worms is the culprit, not the medication. So having only a few of them in my tank, I figured kill'em now or??


Steve

 

[johara]

Steve - I absolutely would recommend you treat the tank soon, these guys can multiply fast, and the more you have the more dangerous the treatment. You're going to need more than the one bottle though with your total volume over 300 gallons, even to do the minimum treatment. I would hesitate to partially treat as resistance in survivors seems to be a potential problem.

 

[Reef Addict II]

I was going to shut down my refugium line.

I could also shut my sump line down also and just run the 2 closed loops, but I will need to have carbon and I wanted to put the carbon right in front of the intake to the sump.

I have 2 bottles coming hopefully shipping tomorrow.

Yes I want to try it, before I have any fish.

My 300g tank has about 240g of water, sump is about 75g and the refugium is 90g.

So actual water volume is 405g

Steve

 

[Habib]

Johara,

I will try to answer your questions in the coming days. The questions are not easy because of too many variables such as flow through rate, tank volume and time period in which the flatworms are still dying to name just a few. I however expect that the answer will be that 24 hours use of carbon in a working canister filter should be sufficient.


Do you have an estimate how many flatworms were still in the tank when commencing with the treatment. A couple of hundred, a few thousand,..?

TIA

 

[johara]

Steve - I would highly recommend that you treat all the parts of your system and not isolate sump or refugium - there have been almost no reports of loss of pods etc. esp with your low FW load and it would be awfully easy to miss a few FWs in those parts of the system and then need to retreat later when you do have fish or more vulnerable inhabitants. Also, despite your low FW load, I think ACTIVE carbon filtration with a cannister filter is far safer than more passive carbon at sump intake or ouput. There are pretty cheap diy ideas you'll find with a search if you don't have a cannister filter or yu can borrow one from someone nearby, maybe even your lfs if you know them well.

Habib -

Thanks for responding. It's not easy dealing with problems with a new product and I respect your willingness to work with us on finding the right way to use it. As for a FW count estimate, my best guess is one to two thousand but I could be way off, kind of like trying to estimate numbers of anti-war protesters .. I'm attaching a picture of the reef before treatment. The reddish brown area on the lower right front glass is a cluster of FWs, there was a similar sized cluster on the sand in back of the rocks. Maybe 12x8 cm. in area for each cluster, and a scattering more on rocks. The sandbed was otherwise clear, and no matting on rocks. I, of course, siphoned everything visible off before treatment, and had been siphoning it off every few days for several weeks beforehand, but they reaccumulated within 24 hours each time, so clearly there were more hiding in the rocks and I don't know how to estimate those. After siphoning off everything I could and then dosing I saw dead worms floating in the water column, certainly not clouds of them, but enough to easily see a few pretty much anywhere you looked and that is in a 155 gal tank so I'm sure it added up.

 

[andrejka]

ReffAddict,

Can you leave just 100G or less of water in the main tank and treat it (rearrange rockwork to be as close to the bottom as possible temporarily)? Use powerheads for flow.
After treatment - siphon out as much water as possible (most corals should be fine out of water for a short time; alternatively, transfer them to the refugium before the draining) and refill the tank with old water you removed before the treatment. Then - connect tank to the sump and refugium again and run carbon. How does this scenario sound?

 

[Flame*Angel]

johara - I'm so sorry to hear about your angel. That must be awfully difficult. I think that under the circumstances your attitude about this has been excellent and I sure hope you never see another flatworm!

Steve - I agree with johara 100% - get rid of the flatworms now before you have a serious problem and a lot more to risk. I wouldn't cut off any part of your system - trust me, you have no way to know where all the flatworms are. I would also recommend using Flatworm Exit as a dip (1 drop in a gallon of tank water) in the future. I've done this and it works quite well.

 

[Reef Addict II]

Hi,

Yes I think thats best. I only noticed 2 flatworms a week ago. Ive seen none in the past week.

I will dose the tank, when the product gets to me.

Yes I should of had the product with me when I picked up the corals. The dipping would of been a perfect solution, no pun intended, LOL.


Steve

 

[johara]

one week follow-up

one week follow-up

It does appear some damage is slow to appear. Since losing the angel and two anthias I have lost a large serpent star. Actually not 100% positive about that, but it comes out at feeding time pretty regularly, and did so for the first three days after treatment, but now I've not seen it for four days. Five days after treatment my largest acropora colony (about 2 years old) totally bleached over a 24 hour period. A merulina that is normally 100% fluorescing green is now brown over about 30% of it's surface area, doesn't appear to have lost any tissue however, so I'm hopeful it will recover. My 10 month old goniopora that had been growing and was always extended 6 or 7" has only opened to about 1 or 2" since treatment - I have less hope for it. Another acropora and some montipora and porites are looking fine. Again, I think the difference may be an initial higher dose to some as I dripped the Flatworm Exit into the tank.

I have now seen the shrimp gobies looking healthy after hiding several days, tiny little guys, so I guess fish size doesn't alter susceptibility. My hippo tang is feeding and behaving ok but is slow to heal from some major gashes on it's side, I think from dashing against the rock immediately after treatment. He visits the cleaner shrimp many times a day for "wound care" and I think and really hope he'll heal from this. The clown is almost all healed from some minor scrapes, and the sailfin is totally healed now.

And finally, the expected but bad news, I suctioned out two live flatworms yesterday and another today. I haven't been able to find any US vendors of Flatworm Exit recently. I think there is still some at mops the Canadian on-line store but they charge almost double what it was being sold for here (even after the exchange rate difference). Guess I'll have to do that anyway. Any thoughts on how long after the initial treatment to re-treat? Habib? It doesn't seem anyone really knows whether there is an egg or larval part to the worm life cycle, let alone how long it lasts.

I am considering trying to find a leopard wrasse as it seems if they come back slowly a fish might be better able to keep up with them than trying to eat up the pre-treatment great multitudes. I think they are beautiful fish anyway, so I'd be happy with it even if it doesn't eat FWs. I know they have a poor track record in captivity - anyone know a particularly reliable mail order source for them?

Johara

 

[plancton]

I used my flatworm exit yesterday. Full cap on my 70 gal, in 5 minutes the flatworms were dead, it was cool to watch, they died so fast I don't think they will come back. However my 70 gal was infested and I am starting to worry, toxic levels did probably raised a lot because you could smell the nasty toxic smell of the flatworms from outside.

30 mins after using flatworm exit, I did a 20% water change, afterwards the water looked greenish and still smelly. Today my small ocellaris is not looking good, somthing happened to its skin, as if he got burned or something, the big ocellaris is absolutely fine, I haven't seen my royal gramma, but I am sure he is fine, he looked fine yesterday and is very hardy. My blue tang also looks really bad, he keeps hidding breathing fast, but his skin is OK.

So I am going to perform another water change.
By the way, always keep your skimmer on, my octopus nw110 filled up twince, that same day, full of red looking gunk.