ID Please

[ellebelle]

I think these are flatworms, but I'd like confirmation.

 

[DontXtripNfall]

I believe so Lissa...

 

[NYreefNoob]

lisa hard to really tell without a closer picture

 

[m'akoyPINOY]

yup FW.

 

[ellebelle]

Okay, so I'm going to suck these babies out then use flatworm exit, right? How do I suck them out? With a turkey baster?

 

[LeslieS]

Yup....

 

[Josh]

Definitely flatworms. Jim told me some wrasses will eat them.

 

[ellebelle]

My wrasses are fat and lazy and prefer to hover under the feeding hole. You know what is weird though, I saw my blenny (Escenius stigmatura) eating one yesterday. I saw him picking some off of one of my leather corals.

 

[Domboski]

I wonder if a mandarin would try and eat them? The last Mandarin I had would go after bristle worms...even big ones.

 

[Awibrandy]

Dragonets are reported to be 1 of many fish who do eat them. My manderins, leopard, radiant, and who knows who else cleaned up the problem I got stuck with when I did two members a favor of holding something over night.
The only thing I did was to Dip my frogspawn once. Nothing else, the fish did the rest. Best wishes!

 

[asianer]

Lissa, my tank is infested with these as well. Jim (HOF) has 2 wrasses that eat them, I am meeting up with him sometime today if you want me to pick up for you it would not be a problem at all. I have also heard that blue-stripe nudibranches are highly effective against FW too. I use a turkey baster to suck them out but they seem to multiply incredibly fast.

 

[ellebelle]

I can't do any more wrasses. I have a m/f pylei wrasse pair and the female is extremely mean. Last time I tried to add another wrasse, I had to find it a new home. I would be really nervous about adding a mandarin to a tank as small as mine. I just got some flatworm exit so I'll see if I can syphon and treat my tank and see how I do.

 

[lfsmarineguy]

It depends on the level of infestation you have. If it's just a few I'd use wrasses, they will atleast keep the population in check. If it's of plague proportions you're better off siphoning as many as possible and then using the flatworm exit. Using animals however, as a means of remedying a problem is never surefire. Animals in captivity don't necessarily exhibit the same behaviors they do in the wild. Cleaner organisms usually get lazy with the constant source of food and lack of parasites/disease and cease their cleaning behavior if they ever did it at all. It's great when they do but there is never a 100% guarantee of the way an animal will behave.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

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

From this thread:


http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/general-discussion/9231-flatworm-exit.html

 

[ellebelle]

Fun.

Okay, I did my first round of siphoning. I need more filter socks. I'm going away this weekend, so I'll probably siphon every day then do the flatworm exit mid-next week. I am nervous.

 

[ellebelle]

Actually, I have another question.

I have been planning a tank upgrade (which may not or may not happen due to external factors). But suppose it does happen ...

Could I just dip all of my rocks and corals when I take everything out of my tank instead of treating the whole thing with flatworm exit? I would continue to siphon all that I could out until the time of the switch.

 

[meschaefer]

If it was me, I would want to deal with the situation prior to an upgrade to avoid transferring a potential problem.

 

[ellebelle]

Good point.

:sad2:

 

[bad coffee]

treating 40 gallons is easier than more than 40.

be careful treating with FWE. have fresh carbon and a 50% waterchange ready. Preferably have a 100% change ready.

After I nuked my tank with FWE, I added one drop every-other-day to get rid of the newly hatching eggs.

B

 

[ellebelle]

So now, that I know what to look for, I can say that my infestation is really, really bad. This makes me sad. I have spent an hour and a half in total siphoning today and every time I pull all of the visible ones out, the surfaces of the rocks are covered with them again an hour or so later.