Flat worms?
- Thread starter Jeanniee
- Start date
fsn77
New member
Are you talking about red flat worms? If so, be prepared for a time consuming battle.
If possible, dip / swirl your leather and any other removable corals in a bucket of old tank water during your next water change (hopefully soon). You can remove a lot of red flatworms just by swirling aggressively. Then, focus on siphoning out as many of them as possible from the rest of your tank. If your tank is infested, it will take multiple attempts to really dent the population and you may need to consider additional treatments. A fw dip or Lugol's solution dip in a separate bucket will help remove / kill them off of most corals / rock, but a Lugol's solution dip can be very hard on some soft corals (especially toadstool leathers and mushrooms, IME) and neither is something you'd want to do to all of your rock. For a full tank / in-tank treatment, there are products such as Flatworm Exit to kill them off, but those also have their risks. Red flatworms can be toxic if a large enough number of them die off and decay in your tank at the same time. That is why manual removal is a very important step in erradicating them. Finally, there are a couple fish that will eat red flatworms, such as a sixline wrasse. However, a sixline wrasse can be very territorial and aggressive once it establishes itself, and there's no guarantee that every sixline wrasse will eat red flatworms -- many do, but others don't.
FWIW, after barely avoiding a potential red flatworm infestion awhile back, every new coral that goes into our tank gets at least a fw dip (most a Lugol's solution dip) to remove / kill pests such as red flatworms.
If possible, dip / swirl your leather and any other removable corals in a bucket of old tank water during your next water change (hopefully soon). You can remove a lot of red flatworms just by swirling aggressively. Then, focus on siphoning out as many of them as possible from the rest of your tank. If your tank is infested, it will take multiple attempts to really dent the population and you may need to consider additional treatments. A fw dip or Lugol's solution dip in a separate bucket will help remove / kill them off of most corals / rock, but a Lugol's solution dip can be very hard on some soft corals (especially toadstool leathers and mushrooms, IME) and neither is something you'd want to do to all of your rock. For a full tank / in-tank treatment, there are products such as Flatworm Exit to kill them off, but those also have their risks. Red flatworms can be toxic if a large enough number of them die off and decay in your tank at the same time. That is why manual removal is a very important step in erradicating them. Finally, there are a couple fish that will eat red flatworms, such as a sixline wrasse. However, a sixline wrasse can be very territorial and aggressive once it establishes itself, and there's no guarantee that every sixline wrasse will eat red flatworms -- many do, but others don't.
FWIW, after barely avoiding a potential red flatworm infestion awhile back, every new coral that goes into our tank gets at least a fw dip (most a Lugol's solution dip) to remove / kill pests such as red flatworms.
FSN-not sure what they are. As I said they have no identifying structures-at first I thought it was a bit of algae but when I tried to use the tweezers to remove them they moved away in a hurry. I was hoping to do a freshwater dip but didn't know what kind of effect that would have on my leather. I don't see this critters anywhere else.
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