red flea shaped organism infestation!

[rhenson]

I let my tank go for a bit and I've now got an infestation of these little red critters. They have coated my sand bed and rock - I thought was an algea of sorts, but they are actaully climbing up on my glass. They remind me of what a very fat flea would look like. I will post pictures tomorrow, but thought I might get a quick identification if they are common...any help is appreciated. I wonder how to get rid of them...:hammer:

 

[jtdesotel]

Sounds like flat worms to me, fairly easy to get rid of, a few wrasses eat them or you can but flatworm exit. Cheers

 

[Recty]

Do they have legs? If not, I'd bet it is flatworms as well.

Do a little research on flatworms, you can make traps to catch them. The problem with using something bottled like flatworm exit to kill the flatworms is you end up having a LOT of dead worms in your tank and you'll overload your biological filter.

 

[rhenson]

Yep...it's flat worms.

Yep...it's flat worms.

If you see the third image, you can see that the base of my tank is coated in them! I will look into a wrasse and flat worm exit. Thanks for the help!

 

[Chris27]

Before using flatworm exit, siphon as many of those little buggers out as you can. If you kill a whole lot of them at once, there is a chance you can have an ammonia spike.

 

[Recty]

Yep, that is definitely flatworms. For what it's worth, some people make some decent traps for flatworms, Do It Yourself type of thing, that can remove a LOT of them from your system.

 

[COreefer]

Many species of wrasse such as the sixline and the halichores will eat them.