Red Flatworms.... hundreds....thousands.... *#&*&#*$&*

koda_dad

koda_dad

Mr. Paranoid
Well...I am super unimpressed at the moment... I have been noticing this tiny red specs on my sand and on the bottom of my glass for a few weeks... and honestly I thought it was tiny pieces of nori that had been chopped up into tin bits by the powerheads....

Well today I was thinking....there seems to be a lot more of these things... and on closer examination they also appeared to be all the same size which made me start to doubt my nori explanation...

Well after some creative googling I am pretty sure what I have are Red Flatworms.

I can only think that they came over with one of the corals I recently got... :frustrat::frustrat::frustrat::frustrat::frustrat:

With my new tank coming...I want these things gone before I move into the new tank. The only thing I read online was using a product called Flatworm Exit... doesnt sound like the safest approach...

I do have a sixline wrasse but I can say I have never seen him eat any...

Anyone have any advice? Some other details... (58G, no sump, tailspot blennie, sixline wrasse, 2 - picasso clowns, purple tang, purple firefish)

Currently they only seem to be on the glass and sand...but my thoughts are they have to be on some of the rock too....

Also anyone have any good photos of a tank infested with these?
 
Use the Flatworm Exit. It's actually pretty safe. I think almost all of us have had to deal with flatworms at some point! It sucks, but Flatworm Exit is pretty safe and effective, so there are worse things you could be dealing with.

If you have so many that you start to see them, then there are too many for a fish to handle. And fishes like mandarins and wrasses may eat them, but they may not.

If you can see them on the glass and sand, they are most likely all over your rocks and corals too. They blend in very easily and are great at hiding.

When you use the Flatworm Exit, just make sure you have some carbon ready to run for a few days afterwards, and that you have water ready to do some water changes right afterwards. The Flatworm Exit medication itself is not toxic to your tank, but the flatworms are when they die. That's why you should suck as many out beforehand as you can with some tubing attached to a powerhead, and suck up as many of their bodies as possible when they die.
 
BL1 said:
Koda, flatworm exit is reef safe. I just bought some because I'm seeing them on my glass now
Click to expand...

If you get a sec could you snap a photo? Just want to see if these are the same thing....they sure dont look like they are moving..or like worms....??
 
Do it ASAP. Anything you move to the new tank will be carrying the flatworms. Treat everything before you move stuff over. Unless you want to treat the new tank again later on...
 
I can't find the pic I took but, they look similar to this
IMG_8163.JPG
 
Bifferwine said:
Use the Flatworm Exit. It's actually pretty safe. I think almost all of us have had to deal with flatworms at some point! It sucks, but Flatworm Exit is pretty safe and effective, so there are worse things you could be dealing with.

If you have so many that you start to see them, then there are too many for a fish to handle. And fishes like mandarins and wrasses may eat them, but they may not.

If you can see them on the glass and sand, they are most likely all over your rocks and corals too. They blend in very easily and are great at hiding.

When you use the Flatworm Exit, just make sure you have some carbon ready to run for a few days afterwards, and that you have water ready to do some water changes right afterwards. The Flatworm Exit medication itself is not toxic to your tank, but the flatworms are when they die. That's why you should suck as many out beforehand as you can with some tubing attached to a powerhead, and suck up as many of their bodies as possible when they die.
Click to expand...

If you can't see them, how do you suck them up after they die? I actually haven't dosed my tank yet because I don't have a way of running carbon yet.
 
Yeah..I think thats them... suckers are small thats for sure.

I call around tomorrow and see if I can find that flatworm exit stuff.
 
Here they are in my old 46 bow.
Everything you see on the rocks that looks like brown/red algae is flatworms. Like you, i was looking at them for quite a while before i realized i had a problem. Flatworm Exit worked. I did have to do two treatments though.

455066147_gRhUp-O.jpg
 
BL1 said:
If you can't see them, how do you suck them up after they die? I actually haven't dosed my tank yet because I don't have a way of running carbon yet.
Click to expand...

They go into distress when the Flatworm Exit hits the water. They start moving very fast, writhing around, and they jump off of the rocks and glass, like they are trying to escape. They get very active right before they die. When I treated my tank, I was literally sucking the bodies off of the sand and out of the water column because dozens of them just jumped ship as soon as I added the medication. They started coming out of the woodwork! Luckily I didn't have too many in my tank -- I knew what they were when I spotted the first one, and got them when there were less than 40 or so in my tank!

I had to add 10 times the dose of the Flatworm Exit on the box, and it still didn't kill all of them. I finished off the last few stragglers by freshwater dipping the rocks and corals they were on.
 
Sorry koda_dad. Those things sound like a PITA. Good luck getting them all.
I'm sure once I get my tank up and running again, I'll get a plague of them since I haven't had them yet. :x: I'm trying to be the first here to have every disaster known to reefin'.
 
dcantucson said:
Sorry koda_dad. Those things sound like a PITA. Good luck getting them all.
I'm sure once I get my tank up and running again, I'll get a plague of them since I haven't had them yet. :x: I'm trying to be the first here to have every disaster known to reefin'.
Click to expand...

Coming from you....that actually does make me feel better. I just cant get over a)how fast the multipled... and b) the pure number of them...

My lfs has the flatworm exit stuff coming in for me....
 
Ok... this is interesting... I now have the flatworm exit and coral rx in hand... but when looking at the rock I cannot find a single flatworm... I still see 100's in the sand... but when this was posted originally there was easily a 1000 on the rocks?

Could my sixline be eating them? or could they just be dying off?

Thoughts? The more I read about flatwork exit the more paranoid I am getting about using it...

I am also thinking about getting a melanarus wrasse which eats them exclusively. Then if that doesnt work try that the flatworm exit.

I am perplexed as to how the population would be getting smaller not larger....
 
Flatworm exit works great. Just follow the directions and have a water change ready. I used it twice now and nothing but the flatworms died. Have a little tube with a filter bag attached to syphon out the dead bodies.

It isnt the flatworm exit that can be harmfull, it is the toxins from decomposing flatworms.
 

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