I had a massive plague of FW's back in June, '05. I followed the routine I'm about to give you to the letter and I've been totally rid of them since. It is important to follow this routine completely.
I did not see any negative impact from the treatment other than my corals close up and take about two days to reopen. My brain corals took the longest to reopen, but they did and with no harmful effects to them.
GETTING RID OF FLATWORMS:
- Prepare enough RO/DI water to make enough saltwater for three 25% water changes within one week.
- Have a method for running carbon aggressively in your system. Running carbon passively in a filter bag in your sump is NOT considered aggressive. I am using an MRC Fluidized Media Chamber for carbon. A Phosban Reactor 150 will work fine also.
- The Flat Worm Exit is not toxic to your tanks inhabitants. However, like alrha mentioned above, the toxins released from the dead/dying FW's are toxic. With this in mind, it is better to add an overdose of FWE to your tank than to add too little.
- I have a 75 gallon tank, 15 fuge and about 10 gallons in my sump, for a total of ~ 100 gallons. I used five full bottles of FWE during the treatment on my system. I didn't use them all at once, but I did use them all during the one week of treatment.
Ok, time to get down to the nitty gritty of eliminating the dreaded FW.
- Three days before you are ready to treat your tank with the FWE, you must begin siphoning out as many FW's as possible manually. They do not grab hold of anything in your tank. They will release whatever slight grip they do have VERY easily. Take a siphon tube (vinyl tubing) and siphon one of two ways. Either attach a lady's nylons to the end of the tubing and put the nylons into your sump (to avoid discharging a lot of SW) or just siphon out the FW's into a drain or bucket. Just make sure you have even more than 3 days worth of 25% fresh SW to replace the siphoned out water.
The above step is extremely important. After you've siphoned out as many FW's as possible, take a powerhead and blow behind your aquascaping where you can't reach with the siphon tube. This will get the 'invisible' FW's out into the open for you to siphon them as well.
- The above step is now repeated for the next two days as well. So in total, you will have siphoned out FW's for three consecutive days.
- Day 4 is the moment of truth. You must turn OFF any carbon during the treatment. Have your 25% water change ready. Get a bottle of FWE.
- With your carbon off, squirt one full bottle of FWE into your tank, fuge and sump (most of it into your tank of course), remember, this is for a 100 gallon system.
- Within about 10-15 seconds you will begin to see a massive die off of FW's. Begin siphoning these dead/dying FW's out of the tank immediately.
- About 20 - 30 minutes after the first dose of FWE add another full bottle of FWE. Use a powerhead to blow into all the dead spots you possibly can. The FW's will be blowing all over your tank now. Keep siphoning them out.
- About 10 - 15 minutes after the second dose of FWE begin running your carbon.
- By now you will probably have siphoned out about 25% of your tanks water. Hopefully you will have siphoned out as many of the visible dead FW's as possible. You can now replace the siphoned out water with fresh SW.
- This treatment is to be repeated three days after you did the FWE the first time. The amount of FW die off on the second treatment will be almost zero if the first treatment was done following the directions explicitly.
- One week after the first treatment you should do the treatment one more time (only one dose should be necessary on the last day, not the two full bottles). Remember to turn off your carbon each time. Also remember to do 25% water changes on the third day and one week treatment even though you probably won't see any dead FW's. This is just to remove any possible dead FW's and to be totally sure all toxins are removed from the tank.
By this time your water should be FW free and crystal clear with all those water changes and carbon running.
Good luck and welcome to a FW free tank. :approve:
Russ
.
