War on flat worms

S

suboc

so ive had an infestation of red planaria for some time now, its been steadily getting out of controll. Ive been sucking them out every day over the past week and tomorrow im going to flatworm exit them. Is there any major concerns i should have about the dead flatworms? ive converted a huge canister filter into a carbon reactor it holds about 10 lbs of carbon. SO 10 lbs of carbon 50 gallons of water change water and my skimmer. AM i leaving any thing out? This is making me nervous [smilie=wondering.gif]Also would it be good if i fresh water dipped some of the live rock?
 
Have you thought about a mandrian? I had some in my frag tank but never say them in my main tank. and my mandrin was fatter then fat. i assume it was eating them like crazy.
 
Yeah I agree with Steve. When I had an outbreak, I bought a scooter blenny and a yellow coris wrasse. I was red bugs free in a couple of weeks. Well except for the refugium, but the display had none.
 
Melanurus wrasse will destroy them too. Only problem is it may turn on your CUC after its done with the flatworms. I havent had any issues with mine, but its something to keep in mind.
 
Ive got a 6 line wrasse and a mandarin they stay fat on them, but wont decimate the population. there were literaly carpets of flatworns on the sand. I thought about getting some velvet nudis but they are hard to find and once the flatworms are gone i wont have any thing to feed them..
 
How many gallons did you siphon out everyday? I had a 28g and I siphoned out 0.5-1g everyday that dropped the population pretty quick too.
 
about 10-20 gallons. thorough a filter sock to catch the worms. first 2 days i filled 4, 4"x12" filter socks about a quarter the way full of worms.
 
Man. I guess what works for one person, doesn't always work for someone else. I wish you luck. I don't have any experience with flatworm exit, so I can't help you there. Sorry.
 
Issue with FW exit is while its effective, releasing that much toxin can be problematic. If you do it, follow the directions and be prepared to run carbon and do a water change immediately following the expiration of the dose period for large infestations.

The alternative is to do a fish predator to knock em down and then FW Exit to finish em off.
 
How many do you have in the tank now, compared to before? Is it just an annoying 100 or so, or do you still think you have 1000s and 1000s?

The canister filter only needs 2 cups of carbon, max. That's enough to treat 200g of water, which is major overkill.

You should take a few out and put them in one gallon of water, add a drop of medication and move the water with a spoon or something. Keep adding a drop and stirring to see if you get a reaction out of them. Whatever number of drops affects your flatworms, that's how many drops per gallon you should use.

All filtration should be off for the dosage. Leave all the pumps on. No GFO, no biopellets, no skimming, no carbon. Within 5 minutes you'll see them dying. Siphon them out with airline tubing. You'll see some dangling off a weblike thread, and you may see 5, 6 or 7 of them on a strand of web. Siphon them out as they die. After a total of 15 minutes, start up the canister filter with carbon, and your skimmer. If you want to do a 10g water change, it won't be a bad idea. You can restart the GFO and biopellets next, around the 30 minute mark.

Here's my original write up, which is rather mild with the dosage and reaction time. I think you can be more aggressive in getting the water cleaned up, to remove the toxins they release. http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html

Honestly, before treating you want to have siphoned out the bulk of them. 75% or more should be gone, the less there are, the better.
 
Id say thousands and they are at 25% of the infestation at its peak. After siphoning today all i could see is a very few in the sand and several deep in the live rock. suprisingly there isnt very many in the fuge or sump. Man im kicking my self in the ass for not taking care of this when I seen them in just my sump.
 
What other fish could i put in there? On marcs site he mentioned a blue damsel. Im not to fond of damsels though.
 
You can add fish, but it's just easier to siphon them out every day for two weeks.

Let's see a picture of these things to gauge the infestation.
 
Definitely keep siphoning daily for now. Get it down by 75%. It won't take long, just another 7 days of siphoning EVERY day for 30 minutes.
 
The siphon tube you madeworked way better than the 1/4 inch tubing I was using. Heres what i pulled out today, this is a 5 gallon bucket.
 
That looks really good, and you didn't waste a lot of saltwater in the process.
 
i was able to pickup some velvet nudibranchs this week. they are super-duper fat, they will cruise around and gorge themselves. Then after eating too many they spit out a few dead worms and stick their heads in a hole in the rock and stick their bodys up in the water. they stay like that for a fw hours then start eating again. When the FW population gets low enough i will pass these on to another member with the same problem and hope they do they same.
 
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