Is this cyano or something else?

[MatAndPatti]

Hoping folks can help me out with an ID here... We've got a 29 Biocube that's been running for about a year and a half now. For the last 4 months or so, I've been fighting a bout of what I originally thought was cyano, but now I'm not so sure... In my past experience, the cyano has formed a complete film that you can sometimes remove in a sheet. This stuff grows as small red blobs (easiest to see in the 1st pic where it's growing on the glass). If I blow on it with a turkey baster, it will dislodge from rocks fairly easily. I've already tried 2 treatments of UltraLife Red Slime remover (which I've used successfully in the past on actual cyano) and it didn't seem to affect this stuff at all.

I've done a bunch of searching with no luck. Can anyone give me any ideas on an ID and possible cure?

Thanks!
Mat

 

[mcgyvr]

Can you get a more focused picture?
And please turn the blue channel of your lights way down or off if possible..

That certainly is not cyano though.. First picture looks almost like flatworms but again its not in focus and hard to see..

 

[Daddi0]

Do they move like an animal or stay in the same spot?

 

[MatAndPatti]

They do not move, at least not that I have noticed. They do reappear annoyingly fast. I can suck a bunch of it up during a water change, and the next day, it reappears as if I had done nothing.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics. I can try to get something better tonight (and will actually stare at them for a while to see if they move).

 

[Uncle99]

Looks like cyno to me, on the rock pics with arrows pointing down.

 

[MatAndPatti]

Ugh... Flatworms!

Ugh... Flatworms!

Thanks for the replies, folks! I was so focused on the color of these dang things, and how they seemed to form a film, that it never even occurred to me that they were worms. I swore it was cyano! It took a while of staring at them before I finally saw one moving... very, very slowly! More googling and I am sure of the ID. I've attached a few additional pics.

Since there's quite a few, I'm going to go with manual removal and freshwater dipping the rocks I can remove, before I contemplate doing anything more drastic. Luckily it's our smaller reef-only tank that has them worse (tho our 40, more heavily populated tank does have some), so hopefully if we do have a die-off it won't be too bad...

Thanks for the pointers in the right direction!

 

[mcgyvr]

yep.. flatworms for sure...
Airline siphon works...
Flatworm exit works well if you eventually get that drastic..

 

[MatAndPatti]

Tried some siphoning tonight (didn't have enough airline to do that, but I tried a smaller diameter siphon I had laying around) through a filter sock. Wow, crazy how nasty the water got, so luckily I had enough s/w mixed up ready I just replaced what I siphoned out with new. Then I grabbed one of the smaller (but heavily infested) rocks and did an r/o dip. Holy cow, nasty stuff. Figure I'll do things bit-by-bit for a few nights and see how it goes. I'd worry about hitting it with flatworm exit at this point, just too many of them. I saw how nasty that R/O water got after the dip, blech!

 

[Daddi0]

I could loan you my Dwarf Flameback Angel, They would be inhaled in a day.
Cheers! Mark

 

[MatAndPatti]

I could loan you my Dwarf Flameback Angel, They would be inhaled in a day.
Cheers! Mark

LOL, thanks for the offer, but I think the drive to pick him up would be a little too far...:lmao:

 

[LeJeune981]

I know bayer pesticide has been successfully used in riding sps and lps corals of the dreaded Flatworms and red bugs... and my lfs guy uses the dip on ever coral he brings in..(he is very very knowledgeable and experienced..

Bayer advanced is what he and others use..

I don't remeber the mix protocol.. but if you search Flatworms or bugs on frogspawn like i did..it will pull up quite a few posts about it...

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