Calfo please help. Mixed advice on flatworms.

[Gordonious]

The largest room in my house is filled with aquariums and in the next year I plan on moving into a green house. I decided a long time ago that aquaculture is what I was going to do for a living. A couple months ago I came upon a dilemma which I have been struggling with sine. Most of my aquariums and thousands of dollars worth of live stock are systems which contain flat worms. Convolutriloba I believe.

Your advice to hobbyist seems to be that they are in just about everyone’s tanks and that they are only a problem with an ill managed system(low flow and/or high nutrients.), so they are just going to be part of the background.
I plan on starting a business, selling to retail stores, and eventually direct to hobbyist. The advice I seemed to be getting is to take all the frag tanks I have put them in a very large display, keep them for looks, never sell anything, and start over with new tanks for propagation.

I plan on continuing to be aggressive with attempting to remove them, but I could discuss my plan in another thread. Here I wanted to ask you if I need to remove them or start over. Many of the LFS I would be selling to get 99% of the corals and live stock out of the wild and take the risk of bringing in new pests every week. Do I really need to offer them product that has one species per bag with not a single hitch hiker in it even the beneficial or neutral ones? (I hope to do this, but meanwhile my tanks are filled to the rim with animals I have divided many times over)

I realize proper qt would have prevented this, but I put my system together by combining two hobbyist tanks that were getting out of the hobby and I have had these things since the start. All of my new animals are qted 3 months or more. More background info in threads below. Please advise.

Jon

Related thread:
http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic76778-11-1.aspx
http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic24988-13-1.aspx

 

[Maxx]

Jon,
I have battled Red Planaria flatworms in the past....albeit in a single small system. The only way I would suggest breaking everything down is if your rocks, corals, and substrate are one writhing mass of flatworms.
Is your system completely linked/integrated, or can you isolate some tanks as you go?

This will be a PITA, make no mistake, but it can be done. I'd suggest siphoning as many flatworms out as possible, daily, over a period of several weeks to minimize their overall population. Then dose that tank with at least a double (preferably higher) dose of Flatworm Exit. FE does not affect corals, anemones, clams, fish or crustaceans. It will mess with your snails and your bristleworms. Wont kill them, but will make them appear "drunk". They recover fully shortly after the treatment is completed.

If you can isolate tanks, or better yet, they are not all integrated into one large system, I would suggest going one tank at a time. Once you have one or more tanks clear, I would look at the possibility of moving the livestock that you can from the next tank, treat it in a seperate container before putting it in one of the "clean" tanks, and shut down the lights over the tank you just removed the livestock from. Red Planaria are photosynthetic, so shutting down the lights will assist you in getting rid of them. Keep in mind that when dead/dying Red Planaria give off a toxin that is hazardous to other critters...so you will need to do water changes after treating with FE....

I would also suggest that you consider what I and several other people do...
I give every coral that goes into my tank a bath. Starting with FE, and then changing out water 100% and doing a Red Bug treatment/Interceptor dip to prevent Red Bugs. I will finish up with a 10 minute dip in Lugols to knock off any Acro Eating FlatWorms if the coral is an acro of anykind. I know several people who will go so far as to cut the base of new acros off, discard it, and remount the coral to a new clean (dried out) mount to ensure no AEFW's get into their system.

You can get through this, its just gonna be a PITA....

Nick

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Have had great success with Flatworm exit is 1.25-1.5 recommended dose and left in for 1-Weeks before carbon use or water change. If you do this, WATCH your water quality and the fish's health for distress. I prefer stir them up with a powerhead and to use a filter sock to collect them, rinsed out ever hour or if possible more frequently.

 

[Gordonious]

Well fortunately all most of the systems are separated and all can be separated. They are also bare bottom and some are fishless. I have been considering removing all of the corals from the rocks they are mounted to(where possible) and remounting them, dipping, and moving them into a system with live rock from a different FW free system. All of my animals have been part of little frag systems and I have not had them in a "display" system for a while which may make this a bit easier. The pain though is that there are a lot of them.

Perhaps I should make a little web page with exactly what I have tank/animal wise, what I have done, and what I plan to do so that people can help me re-examine every little thing I plan on doing.

One of the unfortunate things about this is that many of the local hobbyist have these little worms and most don't know about it.


Maxx are you sure what I have are photosynthetic? Have you read through the other related threads?

Thanks for the input both of you.

 

[dnjan]

Personally, I think it would be best to treat/do everything you can to make sure there are no flatworms, etc. on the corals you are planning to sell commercially. Sure, it is the buyer's responsibility to quarantine. But people have a way of remembering for a long time that flatworms, etc. showed up right after getting a coral from ______. (I still remember where I got mine from, and that was over seven years ago! And no, I didn't know better back then and did not use a q-tank.)

Plus, I think that the brief description of what you do to keep flatworms out of your tank would be a good advertising point on your website. Along with warning people that they should still quarantine for themselves as well.

 

[Maxx]

Maxx are you sure what I have are photosynthetic? Have you read through the other related threads?

Jon,

I have never tested the photosynthetic part out, but I did read it several times in Dr Shimek's forum when he was over at RC. I can however, honestly say that after treating like I have described above, never again had Red Planaria Flatworms in my systems. I do see the gray Acoel flatworms, but their populations are very small. They are predatory to small pods, and dont build up to dangerous levels.

I have had several instances where I killed small numbers of Red Planaria hitch hiking in on incoming corals. They were killed when I treated with FE.

I cant speak for anyone else. But I can say that I dont think your Red Planaria situation is as dire as you were led to believe on Dr Shimek's forum.
I've beaten them, so its definately possible.

There is one thing that I did forget to mention, that was brought up on the MD forum however....you need to make sure you kill all the Planaria the first time, cause there are numerous reports of them getting resistant to FE after a few treatments.

I would suggest setting up a bucket w/ fresh saltwater made up and dosed with a 4x reccomended dose of FE. Take your corals out and place them in the bucket. watch flatworms fall off and die in droves. Move corals to a clean (Flatworm free) tank. Siphon up as many of the flatworms as you can over a period of about two weeks. Nuke the remaining Flatworms with an overdose of FE. Leave the lights off the tank for 2 weeks. The tank should only contain snails, (if you pull them from the tank, they need to be dipped along with the corals)/crabs, pods and live rock. Do the appropriate water changes after treating.

After the two week period of no lights on the tank, see if you can find any flatworms. I'd be very surprised if you did.

Try it once. If it works like I;m sure it will, you can do the same on your other tanks. If not....then you're free to assume I made the whole thing up for my amusement...

You can beat them.....trust me. Whether or not you get them again depends on how you QT and treat prior to putting corals/rockwork/algae (This includes Caulurpa & Chaeto...I got mine from caulurpa I picked up at the LFS to seed my refugium.) into your system.

HTH,

Nick

 

[Gordonious]

Well like I said the tanks are just frag tanks and are bare bottom. I plan on reseeding new tanks with LR from another tank. The tanks that the corals are in now will have there rocks placed in boiling fresh water and the tanks will be emptied and completely washed out.

Unfortunately one of the tanks that does have FW in it has been treated with FW exit before unsuccessfully. I plan to be very aggressive with this tank.

Thanks for the advice all, will keep you all updated.