Flat Worms

[Reef_Ready]

Looks like I have a bad case of flat worms in my 15gal nano. For quite a while I thought the little 1mm square things were a type of brown algae, but they are definately flat worms.

I siphon out a substantial amount when I do my weekly water changes but they still seem to be gaining. They are mostly on the sand and don’t seem to be affecting the corals… at least not yet.

Any recommended ways to eliminate these guys?

[Aquattro]

Six line wrasses have given good results for some. Tetra OOmed is a discontinued medication that also works for most people (if they can find it).

[zulu_principle]

Does anyone have a picture of what flatworms look like in the aquarium ?

I was trying to see what I would see in a tank if I found them.

Thanks

Zulu

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

I would let them be...flatworms are not really a big problem....until they completely cover your corals. They are just not really pretty -- maybe if they were multi-colour....

But, the best way is to siphon with a canister filter :) That way, you can spend more time sucking up flatworms without draining all of your water. It doesn't need to be a canister filter -- any filter will work.

Chemical control of flatworms is really dangerous -- it is known to be very bad for SPS systems. Biological control...it is not a good idea if you have not prepared the system for these animals. Popular fish that "may" eat "certain" types of flatworms include Mandarin and 6-line wrasse. It is a really hit and miss....more misses than hits. The other problem is that once the flatworms are gone...can you keep a pod-eater happy in a 15 ? Maybe, if you have a refugium of some sort.

Hope that helps.

- Victor.

[Aquattro]

Kinda like this.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/Aceol-flatworms-on-glass-web.htm

[Aquattro]

Also, read this..

http://rshimek.com/rogue's_gallery.htm#Red%20Planaria

**copy and paste this link into your browser

[SuperFudge]

RR,


Flatworms are not a problem,any more than bristle worms were 5 years ago,when everyone was trying to get them out of their tanks.

They are detrivours and will never feed on your corals or bother them.
If they do go on a coral,the coral is dead already,and are only feeding on diatoms on the dead portion.

They may go on the base(even then the very bottom) of some softies,such as a sarcophyton or capennella....but still are only feeding on the areas that diatoms may be present,not on the coral itself.

They thrive in low current and medium/low light,such as lower in your tank on the underside of rocks and on the sandbed.

They are truly not worth trying to rid yourself completly of them by a chemical treatment,this will do more damage to your system and sandbed fuana and still is not a sure fix.

They best thing to do,is make it not a flatworms optimal environment,such as heavier current in the areas that they are in abundance.
A little increase in water changes,or the addition of carbon will also take away from their food source.

Siphoning has also proved to be a waste of time,if you siphon they will re-populate immediatly and continue until they are balanced once again with your present nutrient load.

They can become an eyesore,and that is about the limits of thier trouble...but if a few small things are done to make it miserable for them to live,they wont even be that anymore.

And im positive that if they were a little larger and nicer looking,they would be sold as a welcome addition to your detrivour packs that people now purchase.

HTH,

[pocilipora]

Good call Mark!!

[Mak]

But, the best way is to siphon with a canister filter :) That way, you can spend more time sucking up flatworms without draining all of your water. It doesn't need to be a canister filter -- any filter will work.

Doh... your my new hero. Wish I had known this a few months ago :roll: . Thx

Also I'd like to add. When it's time to do a water change, do half the syphoning of the Flattys one day and the next day after lights on. Let the Flattys regather them selves, then suck the rest of them out. This really helps keep them in check pretty good.

[Doug]

Although I am one that used the Oomed treatment, Marc has put it pretty good. However they are more of a visual nuisance than bristle worms, which stay hidden unless feeding. :)

Many seasoned reefers when talking about flatworm infestation, shadow Marc,s comments. In a few cases, siphoning does help, but in most, they reproduce just as fast.

[SuperFudge]

A cannister filter may present even more of a problem.

Part of the problem with Oomed and the like,is that after the flatworms have died they release toxins (likely why they stink so bad).

So now not only are you killing fauna along with the flatworms,you are releasing all that they contained back into you water column.
Crashes many have had afterward are likely due to this aswell im sure.

Cannister filtering them out would present the same problem,they would die within seconds of getting sucked into the filter,and you end up spewing all that stuff back in the tank.

Id still have to say just make life miserable for them,is the only trustworthy way to keep their numbers in check.


Hey Doug,went to reefland to check out the tank.....nice job! (wheres the emoticon for envy ?)

[Doug]

Thanks Marc.

Anyone interested in seeing the toxin results Marc is mentioning, you can search under my name on RC or a recent thread named Oomed & flatworms, or something like that. :)

It has the posts on what happened to my fish as a result of flatworms toxin.

[One_Divided]

I had flatworms in my fuge for a good 12-14 months.. I never saw a single one in my main tank.. I beleive it was my 6 line that was taking care of them. About a month ago, flatworms entirely disappeared in the fuge.. I even dipped a small rock in water to test if any were present.. None.. I am almost starting to think that maybe flatworms work in some kind of cycle. They will thrive for only a certain amount of time in one specific area and if there is no where new to move on to, they will slowly die out.

[reefburnaby]

Hi Marc,


Cannister filtering them out would present the same problem,they would die within seconds of getting sucked into the filter,and you end up spewing all that stuff back in the tank


Hmm...so how do they die ? The floss filter should trap them...and keep them alive. The pump is usually on the other side of the floss so it usually does not become a blender. You could put carbon in there to suck up any foreign material that is in the water -- so toxins can be soaked up. As you know, flatworms are almost impossible to kill -- slice them in half and you get two live flatworms and not two dead ones.

Making their life harsh presents another problem : eventually, they will die and release their toxins in the tank. They will die slowly, but there is no guarantee that they won't die all of a sudden. The "all of a sudden " scares me because I can't prepare the tank with toxin traps. It can happen today...but it can happen three years from now.

IMHO, The siphon think doesn't really work because it has the same problems as using it to deal with algae problems. The siphoning helps, but the replacement water is suspect. The replacement water may contain enough ingredients to replace and to expand the unwanted algae or flatworms.

- Victor.

[Dale D]

I had them in my reef tank for about 2 years. They never got too bad and I kept them under control by syphoning with a piece of airline tubing, everyday or so.

My sixline wrasse and the heat wave this summer (tank got to 90 :shock:) seem to have finished them off. :D

[SuperFudge]

Hi Marc,

Hmm...so how do they die ? The floss filter should trap them...and keep them alive. .

I think its easy,place a few hundred flatworms on some foam within a 4-5 inch area....and pass a few hundred gallons an hour over it,see what comes out the other side.
Were not talkin halves here......more like flatworm paste. :wink:

And honestly,its not a theory.....
When you take the hose out after a minute of siphoning,place it in a salt pail.
It will have a nice red hue to it and to be blunt, a smell that`ll rival your best Saturday mornin beer sh!t. :shock:


Making their life harsh presents another problem : eventually, they will die and release their toxins in the tank. .

Thats the whole idea, then regular water changes can cope with the released toxins,unlike chemicals or cannisters,they arent released all at once.

Im not saying this will rid you of them totally,it just means they are no longer an eyesore,and cannot multiply so vigourously in an environment that is just not suitable.

[Acro]

I'd have to agree with Marc here. My personal feeling in my reef is they are a welcome adition. Don't get me wrong I don't think I'd buy more, but at the level they are at I don't mind them and feel they do their part. And if they do get to be a problem, you need to look at your reef and see what you can improve to make it less likley for them to multiply. Their was a time I didn't like them though. I've tried the siphon thing and that is clearly a waste of time unless your doing other things like improving water movement,skimming,less feeding and general water quality improvements.

Victor I didn't think you had flatworm or I don't remember seeing them at the meeting a while back. If you did was it the canister filter use that cured them?

[Mak]

Well I guess if you have a SPS tank with major waterflow they probably wouldn't even be noticable. In my Sump/Refugium (20g 2/3 full) where there is a 30-40x turn over rate, there are very few Flattys in there, unoticable unless you look for them. I have never syphoned even 1 single Flatty out of there. But with a Softie/LPS tank where you can't run that kind of turn over rate, you have to syphon them out don't you? Would you recomend that I stop syhoning them all together and see what happens?

I also believe they are good for the tank... it's just there are too darn many :P .

[Acro]

Mak,
Because someone doesn't have an sps tank doesn't mean they don't need desent water movement. Also if one can increase or change the flow to help increase flow to the lower flow area were they seem to group that would help. IMO the siphoning time would be better spent cleaning your skimmer and turkey basting rock that collects ditritus.Then do your water change while the ditritus is in the water column. If you siphoning them now, do you see a decrease in them or are they back to par when it's time to siphon again?

[SuperFudge]

Mak,

I bet your softies would love ya for the changes. ;)

As for the siphoning,

I would then refer you back to Dale D`s post....

It did work for him to keep them in check by siphoning.....but it goes on to say "every day or so"

Dale is a good friend and his tanks are among the nicest ive seen,and i dont doubt what hes says as true.

I just looked at it as a means to an end,rather than another daily chore to do.

[sumpfinfishe]

Nice work Marc-ever thought of running for "moderator" :lol: :wink:
Hey, I sent you a PM did you get it :?:
cheers, Rich

[Mak]

Jamie, In my pretty full 55g LPS/Softie tank I'm running a 16-20x flow rate, which I already thought was about at the limits ( thought that too much flow would stress them ). I guess I'll pick up another PH or two and start experimenting with some new flow pattern's. I regularily clean the skimmer and have very little to no detritus build up on my rock. So I'll pick up a couple smaller Maxi-jets to take care of the bottom water column. I just full throttled my other pumps to about 20-24x turn over.

When I do syphon them once and let them regroup and syphon again, it takes about 3 weeks to get there numbers up to what there were. Maybe I'm just a little picky but there numbers are not in the thousands, but maybe a few hundred.


Marc, syphoning them everyday like Dale is outta the question (really long work days for me :x ) ...maybe. I do feel i have them in check... but I'd rather eliminate them or get them to where they are almost unoticable like my Sump/Ref. I think this running a much higher flow rate will work, once I find the right flow rate/pattern :wink: .

Thank you both for your help. This is the best advice I've read on Flatworms, even better than all the threads I've read on RC.

[Mak]

Oh yeah, One_Divided you lookin to get rid of that evil little 6-line...LOL :oops: :twisted: .

[Reef_Ready]

Thanks for all the replies. I was down in Seattle for the weekend, but it looks like a great discussion. They are hanging around where the current is quite slow and I was thinking I could use another power head anyway.

[Diomedes]

Are the flatworms a red-brown colour? It sounds like it...These little guys are Convolutriloba retrogemma, a photosynthetic flatworm that can grow to plague proportions, and they are commonly imported on Indo rock. I have had them in my 20 gal reef and continue to battle them on occasion. They can get ugly, but they never bother my corals. One good way to remove them is to shine a small concentrated beam of light through one corner of the tank before you shut it off at night. C. retrogemma will congregate at that point, so you can siphon or better yet, scrubby them out into a separate bucket - (method courtesy of P. Wilkens, Netherlands) Using chemicals to control them is ill advised, as they contain a nasty chemical, and if the explode or break down in the tank in large quantity it can kill fish (Delbeek and Sprung 1994). Other biological controls cited in Reefs Vol. 1 include Synchiropus picturatus (spotted mandarinfish), Macropharygodon spp. wrasses (leopard wrasses) and a certain blue-black nudibrach that is hard to get. I have used the light method with success. Eric Borneman's latest book had some additional good advice, but I can't remember it...

Diomedes

[SuperFudge]

Nice work Marc-ever thought of running for "moderator" :lol: :wink:


Woooooaaa....Now thats where i draw the line!

Thats just downright name calling ! :wink:

Nah,i dunno if people would want me for one,I got issue`s.
:lol:

[SuperFudge]

and a certain blue-black nudibrach that is hard to get.

The Nudibrach is called Chelidonura Varians, they are jet black with blue lightning stripes down them.

I agree, they are next to impossible to get, i ordered some well over a year ago,and still they remain unavailable to me.
Some ive talked to have gotten them, and have said they are notoriously shortlived and difficult to keep, and really only get a moderate handle on the flatties in their usually cut-short life spans, unless you dont have many flatties to begin with.
Probably another "get rid of them method" you should save your self the trouble with trying.

I have tried 250w halogen worklight beam against a white plexi panel, in a Softy system.
(flash light is good for about 2 or 3 flatties.)
Not only did it not work good, I had to do this at night or shut down My tank lights for long enouph for some to crawl on it.
Bad thing about that try was, i kept sucking up 250 watts to find that one didnt work either.

Another few that havent been mentioned that were wasted time for me in the past :
Are to starve your tank of food, this only lasted 2 weeks before i gave up though...my only yellow tang in that system was suffering for it and population didnt change noticeably.
After that one,i got discouraged and dumped in 100 hermits and feed little in hopes that they would start to snack on them .
Nope.
I thought to put in a pair of Blue cheeked gobies to continuously stir the sandbed and maybe kill some flatties or reduce their food source, poor fellas died.
No doubt due to the toxins they were forced to eat. :(

Sixlines seemed to have worked for some, but im 0 for 2.

Jets of freshwater out of a baster killed them outright if a decent amount of freshwater hits them ,this eventually worked about as good as siphoning. :roll:

Heres a good one, i eventually tore that tank down and i drained it 3/4`s empty and left it for a week in the shop.(Not for a flatty test.....I was just too lazy :wink: )
Most flatties were still alive in that soup after a week of no light, no current, no feeding, no nothing ! :shock:

Ok, maybe that smell rivaled Saturday morning better..... :lol:

All in all, they all may have worked to a small degree...if you are interested in some make work projects.

Sorry im done ranting now, Heh :roll:

[reefburnaby]

Jamie,

Yupe. I had flatworms, but I had it was barely noticeable. Actually, they were in the tank when I had the club meeting, but I didn't say anything about them. I acted early and I eventually wipe them out.

The canister method wasn't invented by me...credit should go to Marineland since they sold a gravel cleaner with their magnums.

- Victor.

[Seriak]

Yeah Yeah, I know. Never use medications? However, if in the end you have tried every thing else and you are about to take down your tank and start over, try greenex. You can goto RC and do a search on greenex. It definately works, but your silicone also turns green.