Flatorms!

[dooleyb]

I have flatworms......not the good kind. Has anybody had any success getting rid of them without using Flatworm Exit (I only want to use it as a last resort). Please let me know your experiences, good or bad.

Another thing, How do you do a large water change without exposing the coral? I do 10% water changes weekly and get this out of the sump without exposing get coral in the tank. Anymore than that the coral is exposed. The reason is ask: I've read that the Flatworm Exit may require a large (25 - 50 percent) water change.


Your feedback is appreciated.

 

[Ricunger]

Do the most water change you can without the corals being exposed. Say you can do 25% remove and refill the do another 25% a few hours later.... as for the other questions i have no idea never had flat worms. Good luck though!

 

[coolfish5]

The down side of flatworm exit is all the dead flatworms. So they say to remove as many as possible prior to using it. We had to use it one the 144 reef. It made quite a mess, nothing a few water changes didn't take care of though. We used a six line wrasse that was supposed to eat them, but never had much luck getting it under control with that alone, nor with just reduced feeding. You might ask Brad what else he did prior to using flatworm exit.

As for doing large volume water changes without dropping level too much, what I've done in the past is try to add and remove water at the same rate, as in a slow siphon draining water from the tank, and refill at a slow rate. Granted this was with plumbed sea water so it was just a valve to turn to match the flows in/out. The suggestion of multiple small changes would probably work best in your case if you have to make up small batches of water.

 

[ServantSoldier]

Suck out as many of the flatworks as you can when you are doing the next couple water changes. A wrasse can get fat happy eating flatworms.. with a wrasse, you may be able to live with them.

Good luck

 

[saltwaterdad]

julian sprung had wrote a piece on flatwoms. i had talk to him about this because i had the same problem. VELVET NUDIBRANCH the only bad thing is when all the flat worms are gone the nudibranch well die. i bought one, all the flaworms were gone in about a week. good luck

 

[manderx]

the only sps coral that i've had be harmed by being out of the water for 15 minutes plus was a birdsnest. i've had lps out of the water for 10 minutes while fragging, just make sure it's deflated enough that the weight of heavy sagging polyps doesn't rip anything.

i've had cap frags out of the water for 24 hours and they lived.


just turn the halides off so they don't needlessly bake.

 

[J. Montgomery]

Agreed, nothing is going to be harmed by exposure to air during the time it takes you to do a water change.

 

[surfnvb7]

you can use fluke tabs, made by API to treat for flatworms. you just have to set up a quarantine tank to do the treatment and take the corals out of the tank. good thing is this stuff is relatively non-toxic, so it won't stress out the sps corals like FWE will.

 

[J. Montgomery]

The downside to that is flatworms don't only live on the corals. They climb over rocks, substrate, glass, etc . . .

 

[dooleyb]

Thanks everyone for their excellent feedback and suggestions. I have been siphoning them out the last couple of evenings. Will continue with that and add a wrasse and see what happens.

 

[diverdan814]

I just used Flatworm Exit on a 55 mixed reef and was amazed at how well it worked. I had siphoned out about 100 FW I saw on the glass before dosing.

About two hours later did a 30% water change, three days later another 30% water change- tank looks great. No FW survivors. And it is perfectly Ok to leave corals out of water for a bit- happens on the reef all the time.

 

[dooleyb]

Anyone know the contact information for UA of Troutville.

 

[Virginia Reef]

Phone is 540-580-7755.

Website is http://theultimateaquarium.com/index.php