Huge flat worm issue

[scott_r]

I've been about 1 1/2 years in the hobby here and things were going great till I noticed all this rusty colored specks on my sand bed and rock. I left it for a while and it got really bad and thought to google it and see what it was....UGHHHH was it a wake up.
So I go to the LFS and he sells me a product called "Flatworm Solution" tells me to double the dose, buy some carbon and all would be good. Well things went bad...really bad.
The chemical killed some flat worms which I siphoned out. I ran lots of carbon in my canister filter. I cleaned the filter out 1x after about 2 hours of sucking up these poisonous bugs. I changed maybe about 1/10th of my water.
Immediately all my sps and zoas closed and white slime appeared all over my rock. My tang went crazy and died 2 days later as did my Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish. My 2 Blood Red Fire Shrimp lost their whiskers and look crippled now and color is washed out.
Its now been over a week and all coral/zoa/mushrooms have bounced back and look good but I still have some of these worms. Im wondering whats the natural way I can get rid of the most possible then possible do a proper kill off with a chemical. I know I didnt get enough water out of the tank..my fault and these worms poison took its toll.
Can I take out my rock and treat it, then do a siphon then a kill off? What the best way to clean your rock? Im hoping to not see dead livestock again...I hate these red worms.

Cheers!!

[freeze]

There is nothing wrong with flatworm exit, the problem is that when they die, the release poison, which you know. I spend a week syphoning out all the worms I can see into a bucked running the airline tube into a filter sock then return water and keep going. Once you have 70-80 % out you will minimize the toxin released.

Once you add the meds, then suck out all that you can see.

Run carbon and then do 25% water change and then another 20-25% the next day.

In the boat your in, change water, lots of water and carbon. You might also want to remove anything alive and quarantine them. then treat your tank like crazy and then do lots of carbon and massive water changes.

[Coasting]

Get a wrasse! A useful one. Melanurus, Yellow Coris...

[whatcaneyedo]

A nudibranch that eats them is often available as well. I tried one once with a heavily infested 50gal. Within 2 months it ate 90% of them but then I think it couldn't find the rest and starved. I should have passed it onto someone else slightly before that happened then treated with Flatworm Exit.

[Scythanith]

Dose again, this time 2-3x the recommended amount. I'm not kidding. Have a large (50%) water change & fresh carbon ready to go.

I spent a week or two (like Freeze) pre-siphoning out anything I could see. I used airline tubing attached to the feeding probe. Sometimes I'd squirt a little water out of the feeding probe the loosen the nudi's off of the rock. Once you're happy with a couple weeks worth of back breaking siphoning... dose the crap out of the tank. The nudibranchs can become immune to lower doses, and all you'd be doing is ensuring the strongest survive if you dose at the same levels again. Follow the directions closely (aside from dose concentration) and wait until you see them coming off of the rocks. At that point I activated the carbon reactor, started netting them out of the water column with a fine mesh net, and siphoned them out of the nooks & crannies in the rock. I also took a powerhead and aimed it into the rocks to get out the remaining flatworms. Once you're happy with your work do the water change.

Best of luck.

[toytech]

Yellow coris wrasse ate all my red flat worms in no time , haven't seen one in months .

[scott_r]

Great!!! Thanks for the help people....Im preparing for round 2 of this battle today :twised:

[patpare]

You could get a jester goby
It did a quick job of my red flat worms.
One of the LFS in regina has a bunch of them.

[scott_r]

If I want to dip my live rock to kill of some excess red worms how would I go about this?

Cheers!!