What is this?

[ThRoewer]

Clear/white flatworms are generally considered beneficial.
The red ones are somewhat between a nuisance and a pest.
And then there are those that sit on mushrooms which might be benign or parasites.
And finally there are those clearly parasitic ones that munch on corals.

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[ThRoewer]

6 line wrasse will work but some say it will become aggressive ...mine wasn't

Sixline wrasses are best kept with larger fish. Fish in their size class may get bullied, especially if they are seen as competitors for food.
Keeping the sixlines in pairs or harems helps to curb some of the general aggression, but not the aggression against food competitors.
They are actually my favorite wrasses because they are pretty and very smart.

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[Four drachma]

Ever wonder how flatworms multiply so quickly? All the spots are eggs!

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[Four drachma]

Here's the entire flat worm. This is the rust brown flatworm, identified by the orange spot on its back. Anyway, all the specks are eggs. I took this pic using my microscope, it's a great tool to have, and very interesting to check out things living in our aquariums.


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[OrionN]

That flat worm is not the red flat worm that plagues many tanks. I would not worry about it. Something will eat it and you won’t see it or it progeny other than rarely.

 

[OrionN]

Sixline wrasses are best kept with larger fish. Fish in their size class may get bullied, especially if they are seen as competitors for food.
Keeping the sixlines in pairs or harems helps to curb some of the general aggression, but not the aggression against food competitors.
They are actually my favorite wrasses because they are pretty and very smart.

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And very mean. The devil incarnated if you ask me.

 

[lbannie]

Here's the entire flat worm. This is the rust brown flatworm, identified by the orange spot on its back. Anyway, all the specks are eggs. I took this pic using my microscope, it's a great tool to have, and very interesting to check out things living in our aquariums.


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Very cool!


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[lbannie]

That flat worm is not the red flat worm that plagues many tanks. I would not worry about it. Something will eat it and you won't see it or it progeny other than rarely.

I hope you're right! I removed all the ones I saw on glass and haven't seen any in 2 days


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[eder10986]

Red Planaria.
It seems some dragonets eat them. I got the Planaria in the sump tanks of my 100 gallon tank but not a single one in the main tank where I have a pair of regular Mandarins.

And this is how it looks when it gets really bad:

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I have some in our sump too but very positive none in the display. I'm certain it's the refugium and cheato. You recommend using FWE and siphon or just siphon and keep them under control?

Have a yellow Coris and melanarus in display as well as a mandarin.

Thoughts?


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[ThRoewer]

If you know that you have fish in your tank who eat them then I would let them be or just siphon excessive clusters off to keep them in check. In my tank I suspect my mandarin fish pair to eat them and given how tricky these guys are to feed it would actually be a great food source for them.
In the heavily infected systems in the picture above I suspect my percula clowns to eat them as their tank has none.
So as long as I don't see any planaria in the display I largely leave them alone.

If you want to get rid of them you may take a number of actions:
- if acceptable to your other inhabitants in the affected tank, change the light spectrum or turn the light off entirely. Given that they get a good ammount of their energy from photosynthesis, I found the red planaria doing best in tanks with a more white or even grow-light spectrum while they don't seem to like a dimmer actinic spectrum.
- I also found that they are not too fond of high flow. You usually find the densest aggregations in low flow zones. Eliminating such low flow zones might help.
- If you go the chemical route (like flatworm-exit) to completely eliminate them from your system I would still advise following the steps above to reduce their numbers. I would also siphon as much of them off as possible. They might release toxins and certainly nutrients when they die so before dosing the tank you want to have their numbers down significantly.
See also https://www.melevsreef.com/articles/how-to-eliminate-flatworms-red-planaria

An alternative to chemicals would be the sea slug Chelidonura varians who eats red planaria, Convolutriloba retrogemma, (and nothing else).

 

[ThRoewer]

Here's the entire flat worm. This is the rust brown flatworm, identified by the orange spot on its back. Anyway, all the specks are eggs. I took this pic using my microscope, it's a great tool to have, and very interesting to check out things living in our aquariums.


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Nice shot, but the specs are actually endosymbiotic algae, which supply the red planaria (Convolutriloba retrogemma) with energy via photosynthesis.
While they can lay eggs they can also reproduce asexually via budding and binary fission - similar to Aiptasia. I would suspect the latter to be their primary method of reproduction in a reef tank.

 

[Four drachma]

Thanks for the clarification on the spots ThRoewer, when it was moving around under the microscope, I could see the green specs moving around inside the body of the flatworm. It was also releasing some, so I figured it was a survival mechanism trying to lay as many eggs as it could before dying..


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[eder10986]

Thanks fellas! Since I don't see any in our display and only in the refugium (very low flow) I think I'll let things be...for now. If things get out of hand which I don't see happening soon then I'll try FWE. Y'all are great!


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[ThRoewer]

The algae are the same kind (or very similar) as the algae living in corals and anemones. Excess algae are often released into the water to look for hosts in need for acquiring symbionts.
These algae are dinoflagellates and in their free state they are able to swim actively.
Next time you got one of these Planaria under the microscope and it releases algae have a closer look at those.

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