the good, the bad, the planaria

[Tadashi]

Just some thoughts but why do people consider flatworms bad. I have them but I have not had any problems. They do not seem to eat or bother the corals. I have had amphipods to the point they look like ****raoches all over the rocks bothering the polyps or copepod blooms all over the glass.

BTW, those with cyano problems - I have had some cyano but my nerite snails ate it all. I have one in particular that just hangs out in my overflow and eats it as it collects on the bottom of the box. It is not sucked up into the pump because I sat and watched him polish off a couple square inches in about 10 minutes.

------------------
Sometimes the majority means that all the fools are on the same side.
My Bonsai-reef site (http://www.geocities.com/ktchinn)

[Steve Richardson]

Your right - for the most part, it can be a cosmetic problem. Especially if you only have a few thousand of them.

The only real problems I see are that they can indirectly become a problem when they start covering things... They may not be obviously eating your polyps.. but they can get on them in such numbers that the animals begin to close up and suffer. It happens. They can litterally cover rocks, etc.

As for myself - I also noticed that my Pretty prawn gobies would rarely come out of their cave. I chalked this up to them being shy etc. (They also were getting pregnant ;) ) However, I suspect now that this *might* have been that they simply did not like sitting on top of a carpet of flatworms. My goby is out ALL of the time now, which I think is spectacular. :D

You also have that little tiny thought in the back of your head, that if for whatever reason they happen to go through a little population crash, that you may very suddenly be dealing with larger problems. Perhaps this is unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

So - my recomendations usually are if you have them (and by "them" I mean specifically C.retrogemma ), to go ahead and use all conventional/non medicinal means to get rid of them. In small numbers they are simply another critter to look at. If you get millions of them, and they begin to irritate your animals, you have a much harder situation to deal with.

some thoughts,

Steve



[This message has been edited by Steve Richardson (edited 05-01-2000).]