Moving to a frag tank... LR has flatworms, what to do?

[Kinetic]

I'm breaking down my 32g m-tank and putting all the corals into a prop tank (40g breeder aga) while I replace it with a nice custom 68g tank.

I have a bit of Tropic Marin Pro-Coral Cure left, and was thinking of dipping all my corals one by one before putting it in the frag tank to be safe. But then all it has is a skimmer and a phosphate reactor for filtration. BB and no LR.

I have 45 lbs of LR in my 32g tank right now, but there are two pests: hair algae and brown flatworms. I wanted to use these as biological filtration... but the pests concern me.

The flatworms have never harmed any coral, though they keep only 1 kind of coral closed, my palys. They don't seem to bother anything else, but I'd rather kill them off than move them to a frag tank

Could I dip all my rocks in TMPCC as well? Will it cause more damage than good since there will be a ton of dead stuff? How long can my tank last w/o biological filtration?

I ordered 25lbs of baserock from marcorocks dot com, but it won't be here for another week. I was thinking of dipping all the rocks in a huge bath of TMPCC and then letting them seed the new 25lb rocks when they come in. But in the meantime, will my 40g breeder be ok?

Just need some suggestions, thanks!

 

[Elite]

use flatworm exit man.. kill them fast ..

 

[Kinetic]

eek, well i did a bit more research and found melevsreef.com (it's such a great site) and found out that salifert's flatworm exit works well.

Here's my plan (please critique!):

- http://www.marinedepot.com/aquarium_medications_salifert_flatworm_aiptasia_exit.asp?CartId=Bottle of Flatworm Exit
- Two buckets, one 30 gallon, and one 5 gallon.
- 5g bucket will have a seio 620 in it
- I'll first take each rock, and blow the crap out of them (literally) in the 5g bucket. I should get a ton of flatworms out (many will still latch on)
- I'll place them in the 30g bucket with a full dose of salifert flatworm exit for about 3 hours.
- Then i'll dump the 5g bucket, get another 5g of water, and then take the now treated rock one by one and do the same. After blowing off remaining dead flatworms I'll move the rock to the frag tank.

Will it work?

 

[JR719]

Yea, flatworm exit and do it fast. If you get too many, you can nuke your tank when you do kill them. Believe me, been there.

 

[JR719]

The only problem I see with your plan is that it does not give room for the eggs that have not yet hatched. Dose with flatworm exit, wait about 7 days and do it again.

 

[Kinetic]

i just don't wanna nuke my tank, so i'll do it this way first, then a week later when it's in the 40g

 

[JR719]

That should work. Be sure and dose again even if you don't see them. They are tiny when hatched. My second mistake was I did not see any after a week and thought I killed all of them. Well, another week passed and guess what??? Yep, dose again, then a week later just to be sure.

 

[Kinetic]

sounds good! thanks for the tip

 

[NanoClown]

or i can hold the coral... jp hows the 68 comin' along? and could you please hold onto the MTank 'till feb. for me, ill have the $ by then

 

[NanoClown]

i have $116, my mom says she'll pay for half

 

[Litefoot Sr]

Here's an alternative that worked for me. I bought and intended to use FW Exit but because I had so many FW I was concerned I would nuke the tank when they died. So I did this first. I use a euroreef skimmer in my sump which pulls water in through the intake port so I got a 8' section of air line tube and put a 12" section of hard air line tube into the end. Then I stuck the air line right into the intake port of the skimmer and then put the hard tube into the tank. Because the skimmer has a suction, it automatically created a vacuum and then I just vacuumed the FW right off the rocks etc. The hard tubing lets you pin point the suction and because the water just goes into the sump, you can do this as long as you want. The FW go right into the collection cup of the skimmer instead of killing them. My plan was to do this for
awhile so I could deplete the amount of FW to avoid the potential nuke. Of course this can take awhile so I did the vacuum each night for about 15 minuets and after 4-5 days I couldn't find any to vacuum up. I new there was probably more there but I couldn't see them so I waited. I think I did it a couple more times but it worked so good I never ended up using the FW Exit at all. I suppose my 6 line wrass wiped out the rest. That was 2-3 years ago and I've never seen a FW since. Good luck.

 

[Kinetic]

that's awesome! I'll try the same thing with my tunze 9010 skimmer =)

 

[Litefoot Sr]

Couple more things. I didn't get the 6 line until I had a million flat worms. Then I realized he couldn't ever keep up as fast as they multiplied. After I sucked em up for a week I new there was a lot more inside the areas I couldn't get to, but by then the wrass could eat them as he found them. Also, using the hard tubing was so accurate you could suck them up right off the corals without even touching them. It was cool. It was so fun I was laughing the whole time. Let me know if you have any problems.

 

[Kinetic]

laughing the whole time? haha =)

I will probably use my powerhead method to blow them out since I'm taking the rock out one by one. That'll get into the cracks too.

I'll probably get a radiant wrasse for this tank rather than a sixline. I heard sixlines are mean mofos... along with the wrasse I'll be getting a lawnmower blenny (hopefully it doesn't nip) as well, so a sixline might beat it to death.

 

[Litefoot Sr]

I got the 6 line wrasse because it had a reputation for eating flat worms. Like I said it's been in my tank for close to 3 years with no problems so far. It is of course the boss of the tank but it never bothers my other fish. I have a yellow tang, yellow tail damsel, a false percula and a royal gramma. I'm not familiar with the radiant wrasse. Are they supposed to eat FW also?

 

[Kinetic]

radiant wrasse are known to eat fw, red bugs, and also act like cleaner wrasse cleaning fish. They all around wrasse that's reef safe and very peaceful.

 

[stubbsz]

I haven't read everything on the thread to hope not to be redundant.

FW Exit does work.... I used two times to finish them for sure.

Most IMPORTANT thing.... Spend a few days/a week or two siphoning them off the rocks until the numbers are low. If you kill too many, that is what nukes the tank NOT the chemicals. The flatworms themselves are the problem.

Nuke them.

Get a net ready and start collecting dead flatworms... I kept plenty of current going to make sure I got to everywhere they are with the "Exit" and they'd lose their footing and come up in the water column where I'd scoop them

I got the numbers down to where I could only see about 20 one day... so I sucked those out.... rigid airline. Yes after the chemical went in maybe I scooped 100 dead ones, maybe more and who knows how many more died and didn't float.

I used a Big Bag of Carbon too.

I found a worm 1 week later so I nuked again..... My Serpent star got pretty upset that time and pretzelled on me but he recovered... have been fw free since them... a year or so.

I did it on my main reef with loads of stars, snails, crabs, fish, sps, lps, softies and nothing looked sad or died.

-Adrian

 

[wiszmaster]

be VERY carefull when sucking them out!

I just went thought his - a buddy came over @ night, and we siphones them out - filtered the water through a filtersock, and returned the water back into the tank ...

We didn't think about them dieing in the net, and the water .... next morning .... OH SH!T!!!
Corals didn't look happy @ all - all slimed up!
Fish? Lost:

Copperbanded Butterflyfish
Foxface
Sailfin Tang
Mandrin

Snails!

Some corals.



If you plan on siphening them out - make sure to NOT use the same water again! also just as a precaution you should run Carbon right away as well!

I ended up dumping a bottle of FWE in the tank that morning, ran a Fluval 204 & 4.5 both filled with carbon, as well as a Littlefishies Phosban150 filler with carbon ... did 5 water changes.

If you plan on running a canister filter, or any other kind of mechanical filter - make sure you have a few replacement sets for the filter pads - mine turned BRIGHT ORANGE within 1 hour of filtering.

Good Luck!

 

[Kinetic]

I'm pretty sure I will be blowing them off with a powerhead, rock by rock before moving them into my frag tank.

 

[wiszmaster]

by blowing them off with a powerhead - you may kill a few!
I'd make sure to run carbon & skimmer afterwards!

For the past 2 days my skimmer has been making red/orange/brown skimmate!