Euphyllia eating flatworms!!

[treehugger]

I'm going to first apologize for not including a picture. About a month ago I put a beautiful 15 head torch colony in a customer's tank. They had another small hammer frag in the tank as well. A week after the torch went in, the hammer just blew apart. Two weeks later, the torch colony (which I had in my system for over two months with no problem) started blowing up. First it was a head here and a head there but within a month, half the colony was gone. This past week we arrived at the tank to only find 3 heads remaining. At the base of one of these heads was a flatworm that was easily over 2 inches long and an 1 wide. It was feasting on the base of the flesh below the polyp. We carefully removed it and put it in a jar to examine further. We didn't have a camera but I will try to get a pic posted. Just wanted to know if anyone out there has ever encounter such a pest? My partner said he had seen one other one in the past on a frogspawn colony that came in a shipment from indo but it was removed before it ate any of the coral or caused any real problems.

 

[treehugger]

here are some pics i found online...these are definately close to what we found. The one we found was serisously over 2 inches long and an inch wide.

 

[WA coral]

I have seen those before but have never seen them eat anyhting and as well never gave them the chance, just killed em

 

[trido]

Wow! Those suckers are ugly and bad***. One more known pest to worry about.
When are we going to find the "Flat Worm Eating Flat Worms" to combat all of these flatworms?

Thanks for sharing Jeff. Sorry for the losses.

 

[vinny2261]

Looks kind of leachy.

 

[diverphil71]

What's up!!! Haven't heard from ya in a while. Hope everything is well.. Give me a call... and sorry about the corals.