Wants to throw in the towel !

CoralBeauty13

CoralBeauty13

New member
I'm sure I'll get a lot of love from RC reefers telling me to "Hang in there" and a lot of suggestions about what to do. I sincerely appreciate every single comment as you all have helped me this last year with everything from comfort after losing Mr. Magoo (Blenny),to aquascapes, to water control.

I have for the last three months been dealing with Planarian Worm infestation, infested to the core. I received great help from RC reefers but, gosh...still have them and bad. I have more now than when I did the first dose.

I have dosed twice with FWE within four days apart, and they have come back triple. I have wrasse that doesn't eat them. Planned to buy a another wrasse, but no guarantee either. My blenny is doing what he can as I have seen him go from a cute handsome little guy, to a blimp that rolls over with the current as his stomach is so big he can not hold himself up at times. He even goes get them off the glass . What a trooper !

Some say it isn't a problem but they are as my corals are so miserable from them crawling they refuse to do what coral do, you know ....open fully.

They are here with a vengeance and I have two fish that seemed to not do well with the dosing. Yes, i took precaution and ran carbon, and water change but they just seemed a bit twitchy for a few days.

I am about ready to give up. I have read so much about this worm but nothing has worked. What went from about 8-10 worm a mushroom to about 50-ish , and I have a lot of coral.

I hate the look of the tank now, just so depressing. My last option is to take it all down, freshwater dip and pretty much start over. In a 180gl tank, this will be epic...IDK :deadhorse1:

Yes, those white spots on the shrooms are worms. So sick of it.
 

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Maybe look at it as the chance for a system rebuild. Make a list of any equipment changes or sump alterations that you would want to make.. Get a stock tank. Put everything in the stock tank and the slowly rebuild your system. For me I would jump at that.. I'm a tinkerer and there are always changes and upgrades to be made.
 
This is the stupid worm...arrggg ! It's a pic from the web as I couldn't get that clear of a pic,
 

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Sorry bout ur troubles. Id love to have a reason to restart my tank. Im happy with it but have some things id like to do differently.
 
Are you running carbon right after you dose fwe? I had a MAJOR flatworm outbreak in my old system and it took me 4 rounds of dosing to figure out that turning my carbon reactor back on right after I dose was causing me problems.

5th time was a charm, I dosed day 1...kept carbon off, day 2 still kept the carbon off, same for day 3 and on day 4 turned carbon back on. Try and keep an extended dosing period because there are alot of eggs that will hatch after the initial dose and while you will kill a major portion of the population, they will come right back.

Flat worms were gone and didn't come back, my snails paid a price...try and quarantine as much livestock as you can during this time. Also, any corals that are not "glued" in and just sitting on rock, take out during this time and dip then also quarantine.

If you have to, buy some cheap 10 gallon tanks at petco/petsmart for the quarantine period.
 
Yes, I ran carbon at the 30/40 minute mark as instructed. I did everything to the "T" as I heard some horror stories using the FWE. I have no QT to put anything at the moment. I'm also worried of QT in buckets or a small container as I tried the bucket QT before for a week and fish still got bad case of ick. It was a drop off fish that I was not expecting,had to improvise. I was in the mood to rescape my tank for a while now as everything is growing wild, so I think I'll do a coral/rock dip while I'm at it. Dagnabit !
 
Try like a trio of yellow coris wrasse, perhaps? People say Halichoeres sp. wrasses will eat flatworms, no personal experience however.

Good luck with it, I'm sure I'd feel defeated as well. :/
 
Halichores wrasses. Give it a shot. You've got the room. I'd try melanuras from my own experience, but radiant and yellow I've heard success with. Those wrasses eat all sorts of pests, but there's really no guarantee.
 
I'll add that flat work exit works ok, but you must follow up all the time and not run the carbon too soon. In my experience they often make a come back if you don't have a natural predator.
 
cubsFAN said:
Halichores wrasses. Give it a shot. You've got the room. I'd try melanuras from my own experience, but radiant and yellow I've heard success with. Those wrasses eat all sorts of pests, but there's really no guarantee.
Click to expand...

Why not one of each wrasse? :D Just in case. :beer:
 
Had the same issues had 2 yellow coris they did nothing but look pretty everyday I would siphon them out any detritus I also added 2 mp 60 to increase flow .. I used a tube to suck up flatworms I could visual see did this for 3 months than I added a melanarus wrasse and started to see less added a 2nd full adult melanarus from a fellow reefer seeling his tank and have not seen a single flatworm in 6 months.. I think my issues started from added live rock from a untrusted source ... I dipped all my corals but not the rock lesson learned.. Fyi I still have 3 boxes of Flatworm ex that I never used was too gun shy..My tank is 300 gallons plus
 
cubsFAN said:
Halichores wrasses. Give it a shot. You've got the room. I'd try melanuras from my own experience, but radiant and yellow I've heard success with. Those wrasses eat all sorts of pests, but there's really no guarantee.
Click to expand...

1+
So hedge your bets. Ask the LFS to order in some wrasses. When you go to see them, bring some flatworms with you. Everyone asks to see a fish eat before they buy it, right? So just see if it eats flatworms. Pick the wrasse that eats the most. :thumbsup:
 
Sorry to hear about Ur troubles. As I tell my buddy's to hang In there, the oceans Wernt built in a day. However I can totally relate, I had a flatworm issue that took over my tank within a week of spotting the first lil bugger. It was without a doubt the hardest decision I had to make regarding the reef and after spending a week with my hand in every day moving rocks and doing the FWX it put a huge dent into the flatworm apocalypse. I definitely have to give a shoutout to my Mel. Wrasse. This things a tank and I believe that it snacked on the remaining flatworms since its been over 2 years without seeing one.
Don't give up though, like everyone of us there's alot of money put into these reefs. Sometimes you get the troubles no one wants to deal with but for me personally, without a reef in my house it would be like a deceased grandparent.
 
i had a terrible flat worm problem. added a yellow coris wrasse and he helped but there were too many for it to really make a difference. i added a vrolik's wrasse about a month ago and i am seeing very few flat worms now. he is constantly picking at the rocks. when i had him in qt, i gave him a rock that was absolutely covered in flat worms. it was cleaned off in an hour!
 
Maybe someonr has mentioned this and I didn't see it and I realize this may not be practical for every rock in your tank but iodine dips should knock back the worms quite a bit and allow a wrasse to catch up with them. For what it's worth I've seen pretty bad plagues dissappear on their own in newer systems as a system matures.
 
Get some Levamisole HCL on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Prohibit-Le...520?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43d3eeae00

Mix up a large amount of water for a change. Mix 1 teaspoon in a 500ML water bottle and mix. Siphon as many as you can get. Add 0.5ml per gallon of water in your tank. This is the same ingredient that is in FWE, but is many times more effective. Have tons of carbon ready to go. Also, be ready to siphon out a bunch of dead, slimy worms equal to the amount of water that you have ready for the water change... and maybe get a friend to help. I would not be shocked if you need to start running the carbon 2-3 minutes after you put the solution in - it is OK if you do, you need to get rid of them in stages. The idea for the first few treatments is knock down their numbers.

Since you have this many, the first treatment is going to be stressful on the fish. This is not because of the Levamisole, but because of the flatworm toxins. It is super important to get out as many as you can and quickly remove as many as you can once they start to die. Having 3-4 BRS or TLF carbon reactors might not be a bad idea - borrow some if you need to.

Do this 4 more times - 5 total. Each time, you will be able to leave the solution for longer and longer. By the 4th or 5th time, increase the dose to 1.0ml per gallon and you should not see too many worms - if you do, then treat again. One day, you will treat and you won't see any at all and you can leave the solution in the tank overnight just to make sure - the solution is quite reef safe.

Wrasses and natural control won't help with the amount that you have. Wrasses are better at getting one or two that might come in on a rock or frag plug before they become a problem.

If 1ml per gallon of this solution is not enough to kill them, then you don't have typical red planaria. 2ml per gallon is a standard treatment for acro eating flatworms, which are much harder to kill than most.
 
Wow, I would like to say thank you to all that are giving me solutions to help control this problem. I do have a yellow wrasse, but...I call him "Knucklehead" for a reason. As @Ihm Nole said, he does nothing but look pretty. Believe me, I don't want two of those things. It had me pulling hair once...But thats another story.

I have done the FWX, 2X's within 4 days with little effect, almost seems a stronger strain survived, Lol'. I will do doing some coral and rock dips today. I did tank temp freshwater dip a few times and it killed them dead in a matter of seconds, but It will be impossible to treat 180gl, if I did it one by one. I will check the worm eating wrasse method, but not sure they'd be happy with me bringing worms to through in..... I can see it now.... Thanks everyone so much. I will keep an update on things, and If I have to do a teardown, then I'll be sure to post about it. Thx Guys/Gals
 
jda said:
Get some Levamisole HCL on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Prohibit-Le...520?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43d3eeae00

Mix up a large amount of water for a change. Mix 1 teaspoon in a 500ML water bottle and mix. Siphon as many as you can get. Add 0.5ml per gallon of water in your tank. This is the same ingredient that is in FWE, but is many times more effective. Have tons of carbon ready to go. Also, be ready to siphon out a bunch of dead, slimy worms equal to the amount of water that you have ready for the water change... and maybe get a friend to help. I would not be shocked if you need to start running the carbon 2-3 minutes after you put the solution in - it is OK if you do, you need to get rid of them in stages. The idea for the first few treatments is knock down their numbers.

Since you have this many, the first treatment is going to be stressful on the fish. This is not because of the Levamisole, but because of the flatworm toxins. It is super important to get out as many as you can and quickly remove as many as you can once they start to die. Having 3-4 BRS or TLF carbon reactors might not be a bad idea - borrow some if you need to.

Do this 4 more times - 5 total. Each time, you will be able to leave the solution for longer and longer. By the 4th or 5th time, increase the dose to 1.0ml per gallon and you should not see too many worms - if you do, then treat again. One day, you will treat and you won't see any at all and you can leave the solution in the tank overnight just to make sure - the solution is quite reef safe.

Wrasses and natural control won't help with the amount that you have. Wrasses are better at getting one or two that might come in on a rock or frag plug before they become a problem.

If 1ml per gallon of this solution is not enough to kill them, then you don't have typical red planaria. 2ml per gallon is a standard treatment for acro eating flatworms, which are much harder to kill than most.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will also look up this method and see if I can find more information. Thank you
 
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