Nudibranch ID

[seattlereef]

So I've had my system setup for almost a month now and am finally starting to see some life in my refugium / Algae Turf scrubber. Tonight I was looking over things and I noticed what appears to be Nudibranch growing in the refugium. Anyone have any ideas on what they are?

Video

 

[1guydude]

actually not a nudi.
That is a flatworm....got to lionfishlair.com and look at the hitchhiker section for more info!

 

[seattlereef]

Thanks for pointing me toward a flatform. From my research this guy appears to be an Amphiscolops sp. and is reef-safe .... Unfortunately looking over the other stuff I spotted in the refugium it appears I also got some "Red Planaria". Any advice beyond siphoing on how to get them out? Looks like a recommendation to try Sailfert Flatworm Exit.

 

[1guydude]

not sure how to treat it sry....

 

[jrgilles]

flatworm is correct. The white ones are fine, red ones can be bad.

I guess you have two options.

1)leave them, and syphon if they get dense, hopefully it is a cycle and they will die back

2) treat them

I also had them in my fuge when I started. Since they were ONLY in the fuge, I decided to treat. You have to treat more than once, as FWE won't kill eggs. In total, it took me 3 treatements to erradicate them. But, since they were in the fuge, it made it relatively easy.

First treatment:
Shut off the flow to my fuge to begin with, to isolate it from the tank
2X recommended dose of FWE (Flat Worm Exit) into my fuge. Waited an hour or two, then removed a good portion of the water from the fuge and refilled.

Second treatment:
about a week later, repeated step one.

Third treatment:
maybe waited another week or 2, then did a 3X dose of FWE. Removed water from fuge and refilled.

Never seen another red planaria.

Really pretty easy, depending on the size of your fuge. For the 2X treatment, there were no casualties except flatworms
For the 3X, there was some copepod death, but I think it was necessary to fully remove them.

You may be able to get by without removing all the water, as it should be relatively safe for the tank (as it will be diluted when it mixes with the rest of the tank/sump water.) But, my fuge is just 20 gallons, less when you take into account rocks, etc., so I just decided to treat hard and then totally remove the water.

Hope that helps.

 

[jrgilles]

I have some of the white ones. I think they are very cool to watch in the fuge. May want to think of moving a few if you want to keep them around and are planning on treating with FWE

 

[jrgilles]

I also see some cyano in there on the chaeto. More flow should help clear that up, and the chaeto really likes a lot of flow (you can see it kind of looks like a saltwater tumbleweed.) My fuge is low flow, and the chaeto never took too well. I have caulerpa mexicana and grape caulerpa in my fuge also (which like low flow) and it grew so much faster than the chaeto, that it has mostly knocked it out of the system. If your flow is low, you may want to think about caulerpa. Only downside is you will have to keep the lights on 24H a day so it doesn't go sexual, but that has never really bothered me (24H a day fuge light)

 

[seattlereef]

Thanks. My tank, sump and refugium are all separate so I should be able to just treat the refugium, thanks for the idea jrgills. Right now I don't have a ton of the red ones just thinking if I'm going to treat I should do it sooner rather than later. I like the white ones and my wife thinks they are cool but kinda figure they are going to get hit with the treatment. I could try capturing some of the white ones and moving to the Display tank but concerned they are just going to die once I renable the display tank flow.

On my flow I've actually got a Eheim 1260 running. So at ~6 rise should be around 600gph. But as you can see in the picture I've got a baffle plus running it through the ATS so have a decent flow in fact my Cheato keeps getting caught in the teeth of my overflow.

DT: 145 Gallon
Sump: 55 gallon
Refugium/Algae Turf Scrubber : 55 gallon

Display Tank

Sump

Refugium/ATS

 

[jrgilles]

Nice setup!

Yea, right after I posted that I noticed it was in a corner under rockwork, probably not a very representative spot to judge flow by. Chaeto sounds perfect.

Looks like you can pretty easily isolate the fuge there. Hopefully they are still only there in the fuge. Can shut down the return pump, treat for a few hours, then use a maxijet or some pump to remove most of the FWE, a small amount isn't going to hurt anything. That will let you treat it with 2-3X the rec. dose, which I found way more effective. the 1X dose had an effect, but not quite enough in my experience.

Good luck. Take the red planaria out early IMO.

That said, I do have a friend who has had them in his system for 6+ years. They mostly stay in the fuge, and have never caused any problems. They are only an issue if:
1)There are so many they form mats and block light from your coral
2)they grow into huge numbers, deplete some trace nutrient they need, and have a mass die off.

besides that, they are relatively harmless. With high flow going through your fuge like that, I would imagine it would never get to dangerous proportions.

Some wrasses also eat them I think, but couldn't tell you which ones

 

[seattlereef]

Thanks I think I'm going to plan on transplanting the white flat worms into the main display and doing a treatment on the refugium. Seems then that the flatworm exit dosen't seem to hurt the pods too badly.