This thing......

[verytricky]

It is free swimming sometimes,
mainly on the glass surface.


The marks in the photo is 1mm intervals

 

[verytricky]

This is a better photo

 

[jimcroce21]

pics are a little fuzzy, but looks like a flatworm. not the best hitchhiker to find.

 

[verytricky]

Pics are a little fuzzy

!! The 'thing' is 3.5 mm is size !! What do you expect!!!! sheeeeesh!

Why is this 'flatworm' a bad thing?

 

[investigator1]

Where did you get your live rock from?

 

[verytricky]

This is going to sound WAY stupid, but I did not 'get' it anywhere....

I made my live rock. It is a crushed coral matrix which I made up in 'bricks' It is held together because it was bonded under high pressure.

The tank does not kave a 'natural' look as it looks like a damaged building ( this was my intention..) with the 'brickwork' falling apart.

My tank has seahorses only. I have no other livestock except for turbo snails, sarinth? snails and redlegs. The tank was set up in april 2002, and I have not added anything since then.

I only noticed these 'things' on Wednesday, so it has been a year since I added anything but live shrimp.

I do feed the seahorses frozen Mysis and live ghost shrimp, which I collect in the wild. I do quarentine them, first in fresh water, then in 1.015, before feeding them to the seahorses.

 

[Anonymous]

I have no dea what kind of flatworm they are, but I have the same thing in my baby clown tank. There is no live rock in there, it must have snuck in on a heater I removed from my main system to use in this tank. But I have never seen them in my main tank.

I think it scavenges of all the extra fish food the little babies miss.

 

[verytricky]

So do I kill them or leave them?

 

[investigator1]

I spent about 4 hours looking for that specific type of flatworm for you and guess what I found......NADA! I swear I looked at over 100 different species. So best bet..

:arrow: IF YA DON'T KNOW.....IT'S GOTTA GOOOO!!!!!

 

[jimcroce21]

For a more definitive answer, try Dr. Ron at R.C.

 

[verytricky]

Who / Where is R.C. ?

 

[investigator1]

REEF CENTRAL IS THE DEVIL! but Dr. Ron is nice. :wink:

 

[verytricky]

you have seen my avatar?

 

[Anonymous]

So do I kill them or leave them?

They haven't caused me any problems, and they seem to eat leftover food.

Plus I think they look kind of cool, like little ghosts.

 

[CraigLampe]

I disagree that they are harmless, I have had a couple of tanks get absolutely COVERED in these flatworms, they become quite a pest!!

there are several options for removal (which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND!):

1) suck them out with a siphon (only works if you have small numbers of them)

2) mandarin goby (Cool Fish!! will also eat these things, if you are lucky)

3) 6-line wrasse (will eat these)

4) some sort of chemical solution, I would avoid this, HAVE HEARD BAD, BAD THINGS!!

 

[verytricky]

I worry about adding fish to my tank. I have only got seahorses, and fish are usually agressive towards them.

I have only ever had a tiny box fish, and he used to attack the seahorses at feeding time, and then the seahorses would refuse to eat.

 

[DontYouJustWish]

I Agree with CL they are the devil. I am fighting them in my 65 gal tank. Kill them before you have thousands. I didnt. what do they say about hindsight??? :?

 

[verytricky]

FWIW:

They are eating tiny copepods. And to get rid of them a small amount of panacure - a dog dewormer killed them within a day. ( we are talking a 2.5 gram packet mixed in 500 ml saltwater, then 10ml of this solution in a 210 l tank...

On seahorse.org they are using higher dossages, for hydroids, but this kills snails and hurts corals....

 

[SnowManSnow]

get rid of them if you can. There are probably a lot more than you know in your tank. they dont always come in on LR.... lots of corals will have them from the LFS. If you find a lot of them on a coral I'd suggest a 4 sec FW dip. The FW will instantly kill the worms, they will loose suction, and simply float off.

If they aren't on a particular coral or rock you may try finding a fish that likes to hunt them.

B

 

[Mihai]

Relax man, they ARE HARMLESS. While flatworms in general can become a pest, this type of flatworm is harmless. It will also disappear (or almost so). It eat copepods and it will never find enough be become a pest. Actually those are a good sign, means your tank is maturing fine, the copepods are enough to support a few of those guys. They will die back and you'll see 1-2 every 2-3 weeks, nothing to worry about.

Don't put shitty chemicals in your tank, especially when you don't need them. You'll end up killing lots of other things that you need.

I had them more than a year ago (when my tank was 6 months old), they are just dandy:

http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=53762

Really, just let them be.

M.