FLAT WORMS!!!

Flatworms are super easy. Get some flatworm exit from salifert. Follow the directions. Suck as many of them out before the treatment as possible. The medicine itself isn't harmful to the reef, but the dying flatworms release a toxin, so removing as many of them manually before the treatment is a good idea. Then make sure you have fresh carbon, lots of it, and turn it on as directions say, I think its half hour after the treatment or something along those lines.

Here's some tips I got from someone, it takes a little longer and a little bit of persistance but may help...
1)lower the water temperature to about 76 degrees( the flatworm multiply very very fast at high temperatures)
2) raise ph to 8.3 and do your best to keep it there.
3) maintain alk at high levels.
It took about 2-3 weeks to begin to notice that the population was
decreasing. I continued to Vacuum as many as I could each week when changing the water, and I have not seen any for several months.

+1 I agree completely! I had then 4 yrs ago and used as directed and haven't seen any since

downhill_biker wrote:   Why would you use smaller doses? Or gradually increase the doseage using Mark's method. The product works flawlessly how it was originally intended to be used. If anything I would say overdose it. The medicine itself isn't harmful, it is only the dead flatworms that are harmful. If you remove as many as possible manually before you dose it reduces the amount of toxins you will experience. I have never heard of someone having adverse effects if following the directions properly.

The method also avoids the costly death of some prized tank occupants because it avoids the immediate high levels of toxins caused by the massive die-off of all the flatworms at once.

See the Tips and how to's section of the link below for the full procedure. In this procedure, you are watching your tank during the entire process to be sure all is going as expected. It's not a set # of drops. Far from it.

Each tank reacts differently to the medication. This way works because it uses only as much of the chemical to start to kill some flatworms at first and with each succeeding dosage. This way you are in control and you can react immediately to any problems in the tank. Then the last treatment, usually the third or fourth, is a much higher dose than even the manufacturers instructions which totally kills off the last few remaining FW's without harming anything else in the tank.

This is similar to how Doctors and Nurses deliver medications in the hospital. They start with a low dosage and watch for the effect, adding more as needed.


Edited by Mark Peterson - July 05 2010 at 9:46am

A sixline wrasse.

Do you know this from experience or is it an assumption?
If it is true, that makes this method best when done quickly within a week, so that there are no offspring to develop a resistance.

The interesting thing about how we came across this method. Not quite half a dosage left in this 55 gal tank without AC or water change actually did in all those flatworms. We wondered if it made the flatworms unable to reproduce because after 2 weeks there were none.

Exactly, so that's why the last dose is a full dose or even 150% dose. Using Lavamisol instead of Flatworm Exit makes this more affordable, btw. 

Mark Peterson wrote: Exactly, so that's why the last dose is a full dose or even 150% dose. Using Lavamisol instead of Flatworm Exit makes this more affordable, btw.

It's the increasingly stronger doses with an eventual "overdose" and using AC alone without having to do water changes that makes this method different and actually safer than following the manufacturers directions
I promote this method because of the horror stories of dead fish and coral that have occurred using FWExit according to their directions.

Levamisole may still be available from my friend and hobbyist BillyBob here on the MB. I have a packet of the powder that I am keeping on hand for emergencies.