I've had flatworms since day one with my first purchase of live rock..being a newb I thought "great, life already!" Despite following advice like increasing flow (one vortech and a PH later), decreasing feeding (hungry fish), and reducing nutrients (weekly 15% WCs), to my disgust they didn't go away but rather continued to multiply. Well after finally getting sick and tired of flatworms in my tank and decided to do something about it. I've read mixed reviews on the effectiveness of Flatworm Exit and the expense put me off a little so tonight I crossed my fingers and tried a new treatment: levamisole HCl.
I found the post on RC:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1
How I did it:
I mixed 1/2 tsp. of levamisole HCl in 250 ml of RO water (easier number than 240 ml described in thread)
I shut off my return pump as I did not want to be treating my sump/fuge at this time.
Cranked my Vortech to full flow to keep everything moving
Dosage was reduced to 0.5 ml per gal from the 1 to 1.5ml/gal recomended...yes I'm chicken!
so 60 ml of solution used in my 120.
Immediate results:
PANIC!
Within 5 minutes, there was a virtual snowstorm of flatworms floating around the tank, low flow areas in the corners developed a deep yellow film on the sand. I quickly grabbed my turkey baster and started sucking up this toxic soup off the bottom. I also used it to blast the flatworms that were now crawling all over the rock dieing.
After 10 minutes, I felt quite confident that the majority of the flatworms were either dead or soon would be. At that point, I restarted my return pump, dropped in 1 lb worth of fresh carbon and started the first of three 10% water changes.
Effect on livestock:
Fish: didn't seem to be bothered at all, but I was (am) concerned with my clownfish pair, as soon as the flatworms began losing their gripo and floating in the water column they thought it was feeding time and started chowing down on dead worms. They seem fine now (3 hours later) but I'm hoping they didn't injest too much.
Corals: (softies, shrooms, and zoanthids) all immediately closed up/ retracted. There was also some mucus buildup so they were definitely irritated. They are now starting to reopen.
Inverts: feather dusters closed up right away, but have since reopened and look ok, I did see several isopods floating around, not sure if the treatment killed them or if these were just molts disturbed by all the water movement and me stirring up the sand? Not sure on the effect on my peppermint shrimp as I rarely see them anyway..will keep an eye out.
So so far I am happy with this treatment technique, time will tell and I promise to report any permanent negative effects. I can say that I had grossly underestimated how bad my flatworm problem was and I am glad I had reduced my dosage below the recomended level. I'm also certain that I will need to redo the treatment again in a day or two to eliminate the last remaining flatworms, I think that if I had gone full dose for a 100% kill, the toxicity of the levamisole and dead worms would have been too much for my system to handle. I am amazed at how much cleaner my sand looks now.
