FLATWORMS GONE AFTER TREATMENT

With one day of just ambient light many of the flatworms moved to the glass like they did in Mark's tank.  Since Mark said that the Green Manderin seemed to be eating the flatworms also, and they look cool I purchased one and saw him inhale and exhale one.  Maybe he was sucking out the inards like I heard some things do.  Anyway the mat of flatworms on the rocks seemed to diminish and they also seemed to be migrating across the sand towards the light.  This may be dumb but I decided to keep the lights off and cover the tank with a blanket today and see what that will do.  I also put some charcoal in the tank in a bag thinking I must have some build up of something because my scooter blenny, six line wrasse and yellow watchman died.  I had the water tested twice recently and it tested OK.  I am planning on taking the blanket off this evening and then turning the lights on just a few hours each day.    It also seemed that the more water flow kept them off the rocks

On a little different subject and because I am a critter nut.  Does anyone have any information on horseshoe crabs?  I heard they can eat corals and are not that hardy.

Unfortunately the new version of the message board doesn't even have a new posts section.  One reason I have waited to install it.

Well here we go, I get to show my inexperience and my lack of patience.  After not having anything happen with the dose of one drop per gallon.  I called Asad and found out he put in 2 drops per gallon.  Not wanting to be outdone I went forward with my mistake.  The next day I started out with 45 drops for my 30 gallon tank.  There were a few movements by the worms on the glass but not much.  After ten minutes I put in 15 more drops and a few of them fell off of the glass.  (Many of them had congregated on the glass because the lights had not been on.) I waited a half of an hour and there were maybe ten now floating around in the tank.  This is where I made my mistake, I decided to put in more.  I put the squeeze on the bottle and the bottle put the queeze on me, a bunch dumped into the tank.  I am estimating about 15 more drops but it could have been more. So at this point I was probably close to or above 3 drops per gallon, yikes! That caused a little more wriggling on the part of the flat worms.  Seeing that they were not desintigrating before my eyes or all floating in the tank I reasoned something must be wrong. 

I this point I finally gained some wisdom.  Most of the worms were not moving so I decided to see if they were still alive.  I grabbed the closest tool available, a stirring spatula from the kitchen, don't tell my wife, and started fanning the water againest the rocks.  Lo and behold the flatworms came off of the rocks and started floating around in the tank, they were dead but were still attached to the rock.  Since I don't have a skimmer I took my net and started removing them from the tank.  I continued this for about a half of an hour until most of them were in the toilet.  The total time elasped was close to two hours. 

At this point I did a water change of ten gallons, and put the charcoal bag in.  All seemed to be fine at this point the only damage seemed to be the wood polyps which were burnt green on the edges.  In the middle of the night I turned in the lights to see how things were all seemd well except the yellow tang was acting strange by darting around the tank.  I went back to bed.  In the morning the bad news hit, my yellow tang and blue tang were dead, stiff as boards.  I changed four more gallons of water.  Later that evening the bristle worms started a symphony of white and red discharge that clouded up the tank quite well.  I was concerned but had no more water  available.  Luckily it was gone the next morning. 

If I were to have this problem again I would turn the lights off for a couple days wipe off the ones on the glass and cover the tank for one day before treating with greenex.  Turning off the lights probably got rid of 75 percent of them. I would fan the rock a lot sooner probably after a dose of 1 1/2 drops per gallon.   I did lose a clown fish to the dark I think, it was dead after the second day.  The whole experience cost me more than I want to think about, but maybe I can save someone else the pain by writing this.

At this time I don't think I have lost any coral but the Xenia and Green slimer are still a little burnt, the wood polyps are fine.  As far as my fish go, I still have a cardial, a firefish, a green chromis, a lemon damsel and the green manderin.  Right now I am just happy the massive blanket of worms are gone. Thanks for all the help from those involved!

Hi rodney,

First off congrats that you got rid of the flatworms. However, I do think that you could have saved the tangs by doing a larger water change. I would have done 3 or 4 10gallon water changes within the next few hours. A single 10gal water change was probably inadequate especially since The huge overdose. Carbon was a good idea but just the sheer concentration of greenex would overwhelm it, unless you used a whole bunch. Still looks like you had a good sucess even with the loss.

I strongly believe that the large water changes coupled with carbon had a lot to do with no losses in my case.

 

I wouldn't use any of those chemicals. I've had success with natural methods that I've been happy to share in other threads. Too many people have killed too much with chemicals.

But recently Asad had an interesting experience with Flatworm Exit. He had some flatworms reappearing and had only a few drops of FE left. He added them to the 55 and a week or so later all flatworms were gone. Nothing else, just a few drops of FE cleared them out without hurting anything without needing a big water change or carbon. Now that's cool.

I just spoke with Asad. He is getting a 400 gal tank today or tomorrow and has asked me to help. Here is what he suggests for 55 gals. Add about 5 drops of FE and see if the flatworms start moving around. If they don't move add a few more drops or one drop at a time allowing a few minutes for the chemical to spread. Repeat this until the flatworms start to move around. This movement is indicating that they are irritated. It may be that it interrupts their life cycle, possibly making reproduction impossible.
Oh and keep the skimmer going to remove the resulting toxins produced by dieing flatworms.

There are people that have had success with dosing these products as recommended, but why, when we can avoid the needless sacrifice of other tank fauna should we not try something potentially less harmful.

Edited by Mark Peterson

Here's a good picture of one.  The redish ones (photosynthetic), like the one in this picture, are the ones that can become problematic.  White/cream colored ones (nonphotosynthetic) never seem to multiply to epic proportions.

edit:  oh, they are about 1/8 - 1/4 inch long.

Edited by jfinch

so they're something that i'd definately notice that i had.

Then you would be very surprised to know that many reefers have them and never notice.  They don't move very fast so they often just look like spots on the glass or rock.  But, if you're the type of person who stares as live rock in the off chance you might see a mysis  then you're the type who will notice flatworms.