No!i Have Flatworms!

TriniReefer

New member
No no no,I have flatworms.How do i get rid of theese without hurting my corals?I read that you could get a nudi to get rid of them but then the nudi's would eat my zoas,correct?I need to find a way to get rid of them.I thought they were harmless little things untill i researched them.They multiply really really fast.What are some ways i can get rid of them without hurting my tank?
 
The nudi you are refering to isnt actually a nudibranch. Its called Chelidonura Varians, and poses no threat to your zoos. The problem with CV is its diet is very specific, it only eats planaria flatworms, and it needs alot of them to survive so what ends up happening is it eats the flatworms until there's a very small population then it starves and dies leaving a few to repopulate if it doesnt get sucked into a powerhead first.

A product called flatworm exit gets mixed reviews, I've used it a few times and always there's a few that survive to repopulate. Also the worms are toxic and release their poison when they die so if you kill too many at once they can nuke your tank.

Now I just rely on regular siphoning in conjunction with a water change. I had read that eventually their population would drastically reduce or they could completely disappear on their own, and I believe this has happened for me. I used to siphon them out frequently at least a couple times a week. Now its every two to three weeks and even then there are hardly to remove.

So i would recommend patience and regular siphoning.
 
I use regular airline with a long enough section of rigid airline in the tank so my hands dont even get wet, also this pulls the water out slow enough to give you plenty of time to get them all in 5 gal bucket or less, depending on how many you have of course.
 
Well i think i jus killed majority of them.lol.They were all near the glass of my 12g, and i just squished all of the ones i could possibly see against the glass.Im sure there are still some left, but i killed majority.They just came about in my tank last night and today i saw about 15+ of them.
 
As I pointed out killing them in the tank is bad, they release a toxin which can be poisonous to other tank inhabitants.

Lets back up a little bit. The ones you have are the red ones correct?
 
how about a specific type of fish? i have a 125 that has a massive population of the red ones, ive heard mandarins and some others will take care of them. anyone know of any fish that will definitely eat them?
 
Aquaterrium,

welcome.gif


There are some fish reported to eat them, mandarins, yellow coris wrasse, some damselfish ( including some clownfish ), but they are hit or miss.
 
there is 1 six line wrasse and 7 green chromis in the tank-if any are eating them its not fast enough! ill try a yellow coris and a few mandarins. thanks!
 
Yeah I had them back in my old tank in CT. They appeared one day and went to plague proportions within the span of a week or two. I actively siphoned them out every day, using an airline tube to suck up as many as I could see. Within a week or two of this, their population was down to just a few here and there. I slacked off on the siphoning and they just disappeared on their own after that.

I notice that a lot of LFS around here get them in their display tanks. The one constant I see in these plagued tanks is that they do not have nearly enough water flow. Often these tanks show other typically low flow issues like cyano and diatoms. So just a suggestion, try increasing the flow in the tank.
 
i thought that might be the problem as well, so i increased to an iwaki 40rlt. there was such an increase in current i had to move the all the corals out of the path of the out, and the flat worms population went down but then went right back up again. the tank in question is my main coral selling tank so i cant change too much water or the corals will suffer.(i have a dual refugium both about 30 gallons or so) no nitrates or phosphates, calcium about 400 to 420,everything else is growing like crazy i just need to find something that i can put in the tank that is a natural predator of planaria. ive heard that head-shield nudibranchs will do the job but i cant find any. as always the members of RC have been a great help, thank you
 
Back
Top