Flatworm exit question

[scottsdale454ss]

Are you suppose to add the carbon as soon as the flatworms start dying, or after the 1 hour wait? does the carbon remove the chemical too?

i added carbon as soon as they started dying, but after 45 minutes alot of them were still moving, so i removed the carbon and added another 50% dose.

should i do a water change if they are still alive, or just go with carbon?

 

[scottsdale454ss]

Are they suppose to be dead after an hour? or will they die later? cus its been almost 2 hours and i still see some moving and that exit stuff was expensive :-(

 

[ninjazx777]

Flat worm exit is worthless it never kills all of them. Once you have flat worms you have them untill you tear down your tank all you can do is try and control there numbers by buying some wrasses I recomend yellow corris or six lined

 

[scottsdale454ss]

well thats not good news. Wrasses are expensive though. I tried a blue damsel, it might've eaten a few but didnt impact the population significantly

 

[moogoomoogoo]

I doubled the dose and never did the carbon or an immediate water change. This way it worked. Didn't work the first time when I followed the directions.

 

[scottsdale454ss]

ok i guess ill try it that way next weekend. I was scared i would kill my brittle stars and cerith snail, but they seem to be doing fine so far...

 

[purge43]

I double dosed,(125g/29g sump),frantically netted out as many bodys as i could(the whole time), waited an hour, turned on carbon(two magnum canister filters), waited another hour and did a 50% water change. Did the same thing two days later and flatworms havent been seen. Its been about 6 weeks. lps sps zoas palys fish shrimp,(even the harlequin), hermits,star fish, leathers, toads, dendros, duncans,blasto, acros, stylo,bubbles. f.spawns,shrooms. everything survived, some looked in bad shape, but in a couple days everything was back to normal.

 

[purge43]

But i run a bare bottom, no where for the little buggers to dig in and hide.

 

[scottsdale454ss]

Ok so i tried a double dose, waited a half hour. No luck, most of them were still thriving. so i added 10 drops at a time and waited, still nothing. so i ended up putting the dosage for 260 gallons into my 40 gallons, and they're still alive, i bet they're even multiplying as i type this.....

 

[travis32]

LOL. Well, if it's any consolation, I had thousands of them on my front glas of my 55g. They were blocking viewing of almost 1/4th of the front glass. Now, there's not a single flat worm on my glas. I found a way to get rid of 100% of them. Though I don't really reccomend it in a reef unless the tank is empty of corals and fish.

It's really simple. Do a kalkwasser (limewater) over dose to the entir tank over a period of 24 - 36 hours. (I threw a powerhead in my limewater top off and it dosed for 2 days before destroying my tank completely). The flat worms are gone. Haven't seen a single one reappear yet. Though my ammonia is now at 4.0 ppm probably from all the flat worms dieing off and the asterina starfish, and the snails, and the life in my tank, but hey, the flat worms are gone!

No, this was not intentional, and yes it was the most disasterous mistake I've ever made with an aquarium. No, I won't be doing it ever again, and no I don't reccomend it. Although, if you did remove your corals and fish. I could see this as a possible viable treatment option for flat worms. Just be sure you have a place to store everything while the tank recycles. ... ARG! Hmm. Might be a treatment for Aptasia too.

 

[Khoad]

I have had great results with FWE. I dosed the whole bottle to 140 gallons once a week for three weeks. I have not seen any since.(a year ago)
The carbon goes in once you see them dying. The carbon removes their toxins and the chemicals.
FWE works fast when dosed as above. Literally, within one minute you start to see them swirling around in the flow.

 

[scottsdale454ss]

Well i dont think i'll be tryin that travis, i enjoy life in my tank lol but thanks for the suggestion.


I left the dose in there for about 3 hours, but had to pull the plug on operation flatworms after i noticed more and more brittlestars and huge amphipods tumbling around the sand lifeless. I threw the carbon in and did a 5 gal water change. within a few minutes the brittlestars starting coming back to life. I'll wait another hour or two then do another 5 gallon change.

I guess i'll just have to live with flatworms. Any coral i give to people will just have to come with a warning of potential unstoppable super flatworms.

 

[scottsdale454ss]

I have had great results with FWE. I dosed the whole bottle to 140 gallons once a week for three weeks. I have not seen any since.(a year ago)
The carbon goes in once you see them dying. The carbon removes their toxins and the chemicals.
FWE works fast when dosed as above. Literally, within one minute you start to see them swirling around in the flow.

Well doing it once a week for a few weeks like that might work. It kills a bunch of them instantly yes but not all of them, and within less than a week i had more than i did before my first dose.

 

[Cloudburst2000]

Get a six-line wrasse and peppermint shrimp. I had a flatworm problem and moved my other fish out of the tank into another tank and put in a six-line wrasse and peppermint shrimp. I didn't feed the fish because I wanted him to eat the flatworms. In a few days, the flatworms were history. Since six-lines and peppermints eat flatworms, I wasn't worried about them starving. The reason I moved the other fish out was because I wasn't going to be feeding the tank for a few days. Then I dosed the tank with Flatworm Exit to kill any that the sixline and peppermint shrimp might have missed. Haven't seen any flatworms in the tank since. So if you have somewhere to relocate other fish, put in a sixline and peppermint shrimp, don't feed them, and they will eat the flatworms. If you feed them, they might eat the food instead of the flatworms, but they will eat the flatworms if you don't feed them anything else.