Ewwwwww - Flat Worms!!

Rcpilot

Reef enthusiast
Went to the LFS yesterday afternoon. Saw my first flat worms. Lucky me, huh?

Their tanks are infested with flat worms. I didn't know what they were at first, because I've never had them and never seen one before. They were about 1/4" long and light tan or orangish/brown in color. And they were EVERYWHERE! Had to be 1/4 million of them spread out over 5 or 6 tanks. I had to study them for a few minutes until it hit me - THOSE ARE FLAT WORMS!!! :pooh:

So I asked the owner if the corals were discounted since they have flat worms. He's like, "Nope. Flatworms don't hurt anything. They come and they go. If it bothers you, just dip them before you put the corals in the tank." :shock:

I said, "No thanks. See ya later." WOW!

If he would have sold them to me at a discount, I was gonna spend about $100 and then just dip them before putting them in the new 29g frag tank. It's still empty anyway, so I would not have been contaminating my other corals. But decided it wasn't worth the risk if he wasn't going to discount them. I've never had any real pests other than the asterina stars. I can see why people get pissed when they find flat worms.
 
yea, thats just like the aipstasia farm that my lfs had going for a while... then they finally started dumping tons of shrimps in there, and the last time i was in there they were almost all gone...
 
Thats bogus service...now imagine if you didn't know what they were and thought they were a good pest...he would have sold them to you having you think that you had a good thing.
 
I will say this, the owner and some of the help at that particular store are, well, not who i prefer to talk to, but there is the one guy, and he's a no bs kinda guy, he knows what he's doing, and he fully admitted that it had gotten out of hand, but that he was working to clean it up... no one ever said it, but i kinda think that maybe he was "on vacation" for a while, cause i went in there several times while they were still spreading, and i never saw him... but now that i'm seeing him regularly in the store, the tanks are looking better and better every time i go in there... so.....
 
I was a little disappointed in my LFS as well. I knew what they were, but only because I've read so much about them here. But what if somebody didn't know what they were? The store would have sold them anyway. Thats BS!!
 
Yep mine LFS has a sod farm of hair alge all over the frags of zoa's.....I ask the same thing If I could get a discount cause of the work involved in getting that crap off......Big "NOPE"
 
they don't care because someone will buy it. i probably would but i would take the steps to kill all the critters. many people don't even know what they are and would just put them in there tank than wonder why their tank is being overrun by flatworms or some how get a sps Monti eating nudi or red bugs on their sps. it is just how smart the person buying the coral or fish is and if they want to take the time to rid their system of all pests. and on the lfs part i would want them to at least tell me that they have seen these pests in their tank so i would know about them and be able to fix the problem before i added a coral or fish from one of their tanks to mine
 
i think some of them do eat corals. there is also red bugs that live in and eat sps corals. as far as i know. flat worms are more of a pest when they die because of all the toins that they release. but to be honest i could be very wrong about some of them eating corals.
 
Some flatworms do eat corals.Some eat film algae and others eat detritus.But all release toxins when they die and if you get a massive flatworm die-off that you dont know is happening,it can crash your tank.
 
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