Need Help with Flat worms

[Deepsea2005]

Hello,

Can you show me the best way to tread flat worm without causing stress to tother animals?
I have 300 gallons tank with SPS, fish, and 2 magnifica anemones.

Thanks,

 

[bradleym]

Your best option is velvet nudibranchs. They are supposed to eat them. Also maybe some wrasses? Any chemical treatment will probably be bad for your inverts.

 

[joker295]

best thing is take all acro out of display and put in a qt where you can treat and dip... going to be a long process...wrasse will help but not eradicate the aefw...coral revive worked for me when I had the problem

 

[milkman55]

You did not mention what kind of Flatworm. If they are the common rusty red Planaria, then you have a little easier road than AEFW (acro eating).

I just treated two tanks today with Flatworm Exit for plain red FW. I have good luck with it and inverts, but I don't have magnifica, just RBTA.

I have tried six line and melanurus (2 times)wrasses and have not found one that has an interest. You can also just siphon out the FW's and stay with it almost daily until they die out. A painful process and not practical if you have a bad infestation or tank as large as yours.

If you do have AEFW, then search for that abbreviation and you will get a lot off direction.

 

[Deepsea2005]

Thank you all for your advices.
I don't know the name, but I have the one that stay on the rock and glass.
It's kind of flat and orange/brown.
my main concern is if I use chemical, I will kill the magnifica anemones.

Khanh,

 

[Blitzburggirl]

Hi Khanh,

I'm jealous of your sohal!! LOL

I have a 180, and last year, about this time, I found I had to deal with flatworms. I caught it early, and it was isolated to a few corals (softies, purple fw's), but.... rather than take a chance, with a large tank only treating what I could see, I decided to do a whole tank treatment. I used Levimasol. There are lots of threads on how to use it, and, my experience, with a fully stocked mixed reef, was very positive. It's much less expensive than FW exit, and it worked great!!!

In terms of nems and inverts.... I have a LTA, and it weathered the treatment just fine. I actually didn't see any adverse effects. To be thorough though, in terms of inverts, I didn't have many at the time, as my mystery wrasse LOOOOOOVED shrimp, so I can't give you feed back on that. But, my mystery wrasse, who was over 5 years in captivity, perfectly happy and healthy, disappeared shortly after the treatment. I think he may have been eating the flatworms, and, the dying ones poisoned him.

That's the one question I have remaining after treating for them, are they toxic when they are dying to fish that eat them? There are alot of people that express concern about mass quantities of them dying and releasing toxin, but, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't have very many to begin with. I am sooooo glad though, that I did a whole tank treatment.

So, to answer your question, my nem did fine with FW treatment

 

[Deepsea2005]

Thanks Blitzburggirl.

 

[bradam]

Flatworms are da-debil... I went round and round with them a few years back. The ONLY thing I've found that will consistantly eat them is the blue velvet slugs, but the problem with them is when they die they release a nasty toxin into the water that can be worse then the flatworms themselves.

http://www.bluezooaquatics.com/productDetail.asp?cid=83&pid=1211&did=2

Ironicly flatworms are the only thing the slugs will eat so when they do run out of them they will die. They are also very poor shippers, somewhat hard to acclimate, and only have a short life span of something like 3-4 months I think.

Flatworm exit is very effective at killing the adults. The problem is it dosen't touch the eggs so every few weeks you end up with a tank full of them again. They also get resilent to the chemical really fast so by the 3rd time you dose it you end up tripling the recommended amount just to start killing the adults.

There is a kind of bottom dweller that supposidly eats the eggs but not the adults. Thier name eludes me at the moment but they kind of look like a cross between a sand sifting gobbie and a mandarin goby. I bought 4 of those fish since no other fish I had tried seemed to touch them. After adding them and treating the tank I didn't get anymore hatch so I think they might have been possibly effective. In the end it took me about 6 months of treatments and (knock on wood) I haven't seen any since.

 

[Blitzburggirl]

Is there any documentation that FW exit doesn't kill the eggs?

 

[bradam]

Is there any documentation that FW exit doesn't kill the eggs?

Nope.. but there's also no documentation that says it does kill the eggs. I dont know for sure either way but I'm leaning towards it not effecting the eggs, its the only reason I can think of for them suddently reapearing a few weeks after treatment.

I still can't remeber the name of these offhand, but the LFS told me they'd eat the eggs tho

 

[bradleym]

Nope.. but there's also no documentation that says it does kill the eggs. I dont know for sure either way but I'm leaning towards it not effecting the eggs, its the only reason I can think of for them suddently reapearing a few weeks after treatment.

I still can't remeber the name of these offhand, but the LFS told me they'd eat the eggs tho

Red scooter blenny