I'm in flatworm he!!

rplank · #1 04/28/2005, 10:28 AM

Ok, my tank has been completely taken over by the nasty little buggers. The time has come for me to stop waiting for Divine Intervention, and take care of business.
I have read somewhere that sometimes a six-line wrasse will take care of them. Is that a reliable proposition? I wouldn't mind having one anyways, but it would be great if it would clean house for me.
Otherwise, I need to nuke the little buggers. Anybody know if any of the LFS's carry flatworm exit?
Thanks for any info!

GotSalt? · #2 04/28/2005, 10:34 AM

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...ight=flat+worm

that was posted on here not to long ago to might bed of some help. i cant help[ though iv never had flat worm

JVHam · #3 04/28/2005, 11:34 AM

Since you have a small tank I would house your fish in a bucket or quarentine tank and treat the tank with Flatworm Exit. Do it over the cousre of a week because the initial dosage will not kill the unborn egg clusters.
My sixline and Mandarin both have eaten the clear ones that are not a nusiance but to get rid of a quantity of them you would need a couple hungry fish.

jonthefb · #4 04/28/2005, 11:58 AM

There are quite a few fish that are touted as flatworm eaters:
Six-line wrasses
mandarinfish
Yellow Chrysus wrasses (Halichoeres chrysus)
Leopard wrasses (of the genus Macropharyngdon)
Christmas Wrasses
Red-tailed tamarins
etc
all are hit and miss, however leopards are said to be the best, unfortunately survivability is an issue with these guys
FWexit works, we carry it here at the shop, however it seems like it takes several treatments to get rid of the little buggers!

if you do resort to the FWexit, make sure to do a through pre-siphon job, as well as continue siphoning as you are treating the aquarium. What works well is a peice of rigit airline tubing connected to regular flexible airline tubing. this doenst drain too much water and gives you great control while working in the tank!
make sure to run activated carbon and do a decent water change afterwards! the biggest problem with this med IMO is that you will find considerably more dead flatworms in the tank than you expected, and this is many time when things go awry. Make sure to have a larger siphon hose available just in case you get a massive die off!

p.s. do a search for the above named fish on www.fishbase.org for lots of cool info!

sorry to blabber on!
good luck
jon

rplank · #5 04/28/2005, 02:22 PM

Thanks guys!

pattylt · #6 04/28/2005, 08:27 PM

Just a few things to add to Jon's post.
If you have any leathers, they probably will not survive the treatments. In order to truely kick these guys a**, you will have to do 3 treatments and go way above the recommended dosage. To determine the correct dosage, use Jon's technique to siphon out several worms into a white bowl with about 1 gallon of SW in it. Add FW exit drop by drop until you see all the FWs slide off the sides of the bowl to the bottom... ie "die". that is how many drops per gallon you will need for your tank. There are 20 drops in a ml. My ~75 gal tank with 20 gal fuge used almost 3 bottles to treat. Turn off your skimmer but leave all your other pumps running. Remove any carbon or other filters. I treated for 45 minutes then did a 10% water change and started actively running carbon (alot of carbon in a canister filter). I did 2 more water changes in the next 12 hours and ran carbon for a week. I lost my leather, my blennie and my fire shrimp. I still occasionally find a flat worm but I really have to look and I had TONS. It is a very drastic remedy and it does work but make sure you are willing to pay the price of losing some livestock. I would try a natural solution before I would try FW exit but I have too high of a bioload to add another fish. My next tank will be planned around controlling algaes and FW's and I now add a drop of FWexit to all new purchases before aclimating to my tank. HTH,
patty

DrMilhouse · #7 04/29/2005, 07:21 AM

I used a scooter blenny. Went from being way out of control to much better in just a few weeks. I moved shortly after that and lost the blenny (and the flatworms too). HTH

jonthefb · #8 04/29/2005, 01:12 PM

As patty said, best bet is to take leathers out of the tank if possible becasue they definately seem to have a hard problem with the meds. We have treated several tanks at the shop and have had some leathers last through it and had others die very instantly. its a tocuhy subject to be sure....err on the side of caution and play it safe and remove any leathers to a holding tank, and do a very short diluted dip on them before palcing them into the holding tank!
good luck
jon