Identification please..... Now have pics

[LuHockey2]

I have little "critters" showing up in my tank over the past few weeks, they look like small pink amoebas. Now that I am looking closer they are all over my mushrooms, and other soft corals. Mostly at the bottom or on the sandbed. I will try and get a good pic up, but does anyone have an idea from my award winning description?

Thanks in advance,

Brian

 

[DaveJ]

If your referring to the things on the glass, those are flat worms. You'll want to treat the tank with a flatworm treatment to get rid of them as they can explode in numbers and while they don't prey on corals etc, they can overwhelm them and cause them to die. The problem is that most flatworms expel a toxin when they perish, so you want to siphon as many of them as possible, do water changes immediately after treatment and run carbon to reduce the chances of killing fish and coral in the tank.

 

[melev]

Those are different from the type of flatworms we encounter usually. These aeolids are probably feeding on the mucous of the mushrooms, and may or may not be actually preying upon their host coral. Siphoning them out is the easiest method. Here's how I did it, using stuff I had on hand:

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[EL34]

Hey Brian, Dave's right, those are flatworms. I think the more usual variety is reddish-brown but there are pink ones too. Google flatworms and planaria and maybe add the word aquarium, you'll get lots'o'info.

There was one variety that actually could damage corals, not the reddish ones, but I don't remember which color identified the bad guys. Don't wait too long- Dave's right, they spread very fast, in a week or so there may be 10x more.

About a month ago I had to deal with them also. Theoretically a sixline wrasse will eat them but there's no guarantee and I didn't want to add a fish to my tank. I used the stuff Dave referenced, the one that worked for me was Flatworm Exit by Salifert, about $25. It took about 3 separate doses, a day apart, the last one being at least double the recommended dosage. The instructions tell you about the toxin released when they die and the strong advice to siphon out as many as possible before nuking them. It took more attention than I was expecting but I got rid of them. Not sure, but it seemed like it might have hurt the tiny hitchiker brittlestars I had, I don't see them anymore.

Marc Levinson has a good article on his website http://www.melevsreef.com

Bill

 

[LuHockey2]

Ok, so I had quite the breakout. I have siphoned the flatworms out two different times. What is an acceptable number of existing flatworms to make it safe to use the Salifert treatment without a major risk of their toxin hurting the livestock? I just want to make sure I siphon enough out before I perform the treatment.

Thanks,

Brian

 

[EL34]

Hi Brian, as always your results may vary. That's sometimes a thing about reef tanks. In my case I siphoned out most of what I could easily see before doing the treatment. There were a few left, maybe less than a few dozen that I could see but who knows how many were not in eyesight. After my first dose of Flatworm Exit I waited about 30 min then started a pretty big carbon filter, which was about a half pound of new carbon in the Fluval 404 filter dropped into my 46g tank. About the same time I did a big water change, maybe 40%. I did all that based only on what I read.

The next 2-3 times I dosed (next day) I didn't do the carbon or water changes, thinking that most or all of the worms were already taken care of and my additional doses were followups in case a few were still lurking. I didn't have any tank casualties but I did notice I no longer saw the little 1" brittlestars that had been in my tank.

Bill

 

[DaveJ]

@LuHockey2 wrote:

I don't know the answer to that question, but all I can say is even if you siphon the visible ones, there are almost always thsoe you don't see. I would keep siphoning for now and maybe wait a few days and see how many show back up on the sand or glass to see. Eventually you will have to do the treatment and if you follow the directions, do the water change and run the carbon it will reduce your chances of a problem. Unfortunately there is no quantification of numbers vs toxin levels that I am aware of.