OH NO! Flatworms!

[MyReef]

As the title says, I have a small population of flatworms in my 400. This is the first time in 12 years that I have ever had them. What is the best way to eradicate them? I have the pod population to have a mandarin, if they will eat them. My current fish population is:

1 powder blue tang
1 purple tang
3 Lyretail anthias
2 Filament Wrasse (new additions)

This is mainly an SPS tank with a few LPS.....any help will be appreciated. TIA

[Mrs Smith]

My condolences...

Having battled these things for years, here are my 2c:

Siphon them out whenever you can.

6-line wrasses are occasionally known to eat them, but not often.

Mandarins are occasionally known to eat them, but mostly accidentally, from what I understand.

Chelidonura varians will eat them, but they are delicate little creatures that cannot withstand the currents in a reef, much less a SPS reef.

Tropic marin's Oomed will kill them; it may also crash your tank. I know someone who wiped out all his SPS with it, but it is somewhat safer with softies.

It seems that they are found in either plague proportions or not. I do not know why this is. They also apparently wax and wane, although they totally took over our 90 reef. After restarting, they are in our 135, but you have to search for them and they haven't taken off again.

Personally, I'd just do the siphon thing if it wasn' t that bad. Airline tubing works pretty well.

Just my 2c,
Danielle

[Geoff]

try this, i think the all knowing Spanky sent out this link, but this is as good of a solution as i can think of. i like the use nature against nature route.

Flatworm eating nudi

G~

[Spanky]

LOL (I know where the refrigerator and bathroom is, if that's what you mean)

Andy, try arrow crabs and lots of them. Don't feed them anything else.

[gumhead]

I have seen my 6 line pick them off my glass

I only had the clear flat worms tho, not the red ones. I say suck out what you can and get something to eat the rest!
Good luck !!!

[MyReef]

Thanks everyone. Jerel how large do arrow crabs get? Does anyone know if the nudibranch is reef safe, I glanced at the article and didn't see any mention of it.

THey are not as red as I thought they should be....that's why I just noticed them I guess.

[Mrs Smith]

That nudi is the one we had and I misspelled. It's a beautiful little creature, totally reef safe. The problem is that our reef aren't nudi-safe.

Ours lasted about a week, thanks to a blue leg. They really can't handle high currents, and that was in our softie-dominated tank. I can't imagine they'd be able to hang on in an SPS reef.

Danielle

[DuncanReefer]

I feel your pain!!!!!!!! I have had the blame things going on a year now. The one good thing is that they aren't harmful to your tank. I have had the best success by siphoning. I created a strainner over my sump and rubberbanded air tubing to the stainner. Than you just run the water through the strainner to collect the flatworms and let the water just run back into the system through the sump. With this technique you can pick them off all day long if you wish! If you do this techique on a regular basis it will keep the number down to a bare minimum. I even know of a friend that ride his entire system of them by doing this and changing his photo period(b/c they are photosynthic)

This is probably your best bet because you can't rely on the fish because they might not have read the book


Sorry for the spelling,
just my experience

Kevin

[Rick O]

Hey Andy. Sally just tried the Salifert Exit in her tank with good results. I haven't talked with her lately to see if they're still gone but you might give her a shout.

[Spanky]

OK that's it. I'm going to have to get a jug of those stupid flatworms and see if a arrow crab will eat them. I don't need you guys, I can find out for myself. (hehehehehe)

Andy, they get about 5-6" from tip to tip. If you try them, get small ones. When they're through, take them back.

I really am dying to try arrow crabs for those things. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't eat flat worms. They eat all of ours here.

Spanks

[Flatlander]

Andy;
My pair of six lines dont eat them. My leopard wont eat them and my manderin wont eat them. They do love eating frozen brine & mysis though.

I nuked my 170, got rid of the sandbed, no more flatworms. Set up my 225, flatworms are back. Moved everything out and nuked again with Oomed. Flatworms laughed at me.

No light and no feeding works. Temps down around 72 may work. Good skimming works. As you can see by the smilies, my views on these remedys.

I have been following the Salifert threads on RC. But even if it works, it seems hard to get, for now.

I would think the advise about keeping at them may be the best. Siphon when possible, good current over them, good skimming,{which you have, }, a bit lower temp if possible, perhaps reduced feedings, if possible, I dunno.

For myself, I am taking the 225 apart for the 3rd time. My poor sps frags are never going to get to attach, but that allows me leverage, I guess. I am going to remove everything, treat some of the rock in separate containers. Lightly treat the large corals in another vat. I am going to remove the aragonite crushed coral/fine sandbed completely. Hopefully bare bottom again and lots of current there, will keep them at bay.

I will have to sell my wrasses. I will keep my manderin, as the scrubber helps the pod population and I have several hundred pounds of live rock, plus he eats frozen anyways.

These have been my experience,s. Perhaps you can take something out of this rambling.

[Python73]

Well, since it hasn't been suggested yet...

SCOOTER BLENNY.

Two of them from the LFS into my 30g ate thousands of red and brown flatworms, and I haven't seen one since (3 months now). Gave one scooter away at a frag swap, the other is getting pretty skinny (though he eats other food). He will get a new home when I move the tank into a bigger setup.

Best thing is, they are like $8.

HTH.

S !

[CaptainCoral]

Wow, these little pests are showing up everywhere these days. You can count me in on this mess now too. I feel a little sick about all this. My problem is daunting.....
I have Them in my 55 gal display, my 20 gal undercabnet add-on and the 32 gallon garbage can refugium. These are alot of different places to be putting "fish solutions" into.
I've got mostly all softies, bubble tip anemone, and the can is supposed to be a pepperment breeder. I'm probably going to go with the Flatworm Exit if I can find it. Otherwise, I'll Go the Oomed way. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

[Rick O]

I have them in my 120 in small numbers. I'm curious as to why some people only have a few and other tanks have them covering every inch of the sand and rock. I've had them for at least two years and they've never been in large quantities. I have to hunt for them at times. Anyone have a theory on that?

[Flatlander]

Rick,
I would take a guess it may have something to do with available food and or predators,{now there,s a laugh, }.

I feed my tank a lot. I know that contributes to their population growth. I would suspect poor house keeping would also do the same in some tanks. Also effective skimming seems to assist. As good as my ATS is, I dont think it removes the same organics as a skimmer.

All my playing around with different skimmers has limited the use of them. Other factors that I am starting to think effect their population ,

- return back to the old style of mech filtration in the sump, removing much of the crap from the tank. A good skimmer, of course also removes particulate material.

-good water flow, esp. across the bottom of the tank and sandbed, really bothers them. This is one reason a bare bottom tank, with lots of flow, would rarely have a large flatworms problem.

Of course these are only my opinions, so can be taken FWIW.