Guys... help with these worms or pests? (pictures inside)

[a9reef]

Hey Guys!

I got some chaeto a few months back from a MR vendor to replace my caluperia in my refugium and soon after these redish greenish things started appearing. They move around and seem to stay in clusters. I have not seen any of them in my tank yet and wanted to check if they are maybe bad for my tank. Any help would be greatly appreciated because it seems that their numbers have grown recently. Thank in advance! :bablefish:bablefish :bablefish :chefico: :tongueani

Here are the pics taken with my iphone

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[prattreef]

Red Planaria flatworms. you want to get rid of them before their numbers get out of control. Since they are in the refugium ( they may be in the display already as well) I'd take the fuge off line and dose it with flatworm exit. This will kill of the worms and isolate the toxins they release when dying from the rest of the system. The chaeto should be unaffected. After treatment, run carbon in the fuge and then put it back on line.

You might need to do that a few times. I'd also consider getting a Halichoeres species wrasse ( melanauras is best) in the display to take care of any that may have creeped in before they get out of control.

 

[daisy]

Oy.

these look like planari to me. Red flatworms

They will not directly hurt your tank or anything in it - they do not feed on corals or fish.... But when they die, they are VERY toxic, and they can cause a tank to crash completely when large die-off happens. They reproduce dramatically, and if you're already seeing them in numbers, it is too late - you have them.

What you can do - read up on planaria. different people control them differently.

I have them - I suck them out with a turkey baster from time to time so that in the case of a die-off, they won't crash the tank.

I have a few fish in the tank who eat them. A melanarus wrasse and green coris wrasse ate the entire population in my kitchen tank, now the melanarus wrasse is getting to work on the population in the 75 gallon - this population is pretty well-established, so it's gonna take him a LONG time to eat them all - so I continue to pull them out.

Some folks use Flat Worm Exit - with mixed results. Russ (saltwatercritters/ masterswimmer) used FWE with total success. He did a double dose, and he changed the water a LOT - he lost some fish, but everything else survived (search for his thread on it).

Asianer used FWE and when the worms died, it nuked his tank. Ellebelle also lost everything when a flatworm die-off happened.

Be vigilant, take them out by hand, get fish who eat it, use FWE with caution and with heavy water changes, and GOOD LUCK!

 

[a9reef]

i will do that then.. will the FWE kill my little pods that swim around in my refugium too? i think i'll pull my refugium off for a a week and run it on a separate tank with FWE

 

[daisy]

...the FWE alone will not kill anything other than flatworm. What can kill everything else is the planaria toxin.

Best of luck!

 

[a9reef]

thanks Daisy and Pratt! will keep you guys updated. i'll give it a try tonight

 

[LeslieH]

Daisy's right on target. Manual control plus a natural predator will do the least amount of harm to your tank. Flatworm exit can also kill off other worms & CUC members & since most of them live hidden away you'll end up with an organic spike.

 

[a9reef]

i removed the refugium last night and dumped all the mud and chaeto in the trash... soaked the equipment/pump/mangrooves in the FWE just to make sure... thanks Jim (house) for letting me pickup some new chateo and mud/argonite

took about 2 hours but i'm glad i took the majoirty of them out of my tank already.. now i just need to treat my main tank later tonight

 

[Mr. Microscope]

+1 to flatworm. Bad news. Very toxic. Nuke 'em!

 

[fcamargo6thave]

how do you get these guys

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Yes they are flatworms. They need to go. Manually remove as many as you can see. Then use flatworm exit to kill them. Prepare water for a water change. Dose flat worm exit the next day as well and do a water change again.

 

[Bigun]

Yep you got the flatworms