Flatworm Exit ?

Well Ed I've been looking for those also, if I find any I'll let you know where. If I do find them I plan on dosing again heavily with the FWE, and adding those guys a few days later. If I can keep them in check I'll be happy..they aren't really that bothersome, just kinda ugly if you know what your looking at.
 
I've read flatworms are developing resistance. Scary!

I siphoned as many as I could see every night for about a week leading up to the treatment. It really helped, but as you guessed - for every flatworm you see there's probably 2-3 that are hidden.
 
In my experience, FWE isn't incredibly effective. I found that I need to add a few drops to an 8 oz glass of tank water with some flatworms in it before they all stopped moving. Even one drop would be way over the recommended concentration and that definitely didn't do much more than stun them, even after letting them sit in it for 30 minutes or so.
 
I didn't fresh water dip tonight because of what I've heard. I've changed my plan and this is what I'm going to do. Give me some thoughts if you think this isn't going to work.

I've got 25 gallons of SW made and ready for a change. I plan on doing that change and using the 25 gallons that I pull out as a vat for 3/4 of the LR. Since I was already going to pull the rock, fresh water dip and then plop back into the tank, I thought I'd just shove it all into the bucket and dose it in there.

I won't have to worry about carbon or the toxins and I should be able to dose a ton compared to water volume. I plan on having a separate dipping vat full of old SW that I can dip and swirl the rocks before getting dumped back into the tank.

What do you think?


I should be able to kill almost all of the flat worms on the 3/4 LR in the tub that gets the FWE and then siphon the other 1/4 in the tank religiously.
 
That should get rid of most of them. I would be a little concerned about the toxins released by the worms damaging the bacteria and other microfauna on your live rock, though. The same goes for dipping in fresh water (and my gut feeling is that the fresh water alone would actually be more damaging than the toxins). After dealing with these a couple times, I treat them as a symptom of water quality issues and work on getting my nutrients under control when I start to see them. Neither FWE nor wrasses have proven to be a great solution by themselves.

My suggestion would be to siphon as much as you can, put a filter sock on the output of your overflow, then dose with double the recommended dose of FWE (I've done this in an SPS tank and saw no deleterious effects other than some temporary polyp retraction and sliming). Take a small powerhead to blast any dead or stunned worms out of crevices and up into the water column where they should eventually be swept into your overflow if you have decent flow. Even if the worms aren't all killed, you should be able to get a lot of them in the filter sock. Run the carbon as recommended, and then try to figure out where your excess nutrients have been coming from that led to the explosion.
 
I would pull the LR out and put it in a vat and treat it there. FW dip, then into a vat of new saltwater, treat the hell out of it w FWE a few times. But that leaves your substrate and main tank, sump/fuge. Do you have a plan for that ? I would think that if you start all over and leave the old substrate without cleaning it out in someway, your asking for trouble anyhow...
 
i agree with renisel. i had to use a whole bottle in 6 treatments in my 24gallon to get rid of them. i used 5-6 times the recommended dose. i had starfish in there and even though they looked dead, after running carbon they all started moving. these were the little 2-3inch brittle stars and one red brittle. i been flatworm free for more then 6 months now. wohoo! i can see my live rock.
 
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