Gozer_1

Have any of you dealt with flatworms before. I have a growing number of little reddish flatworms. They don't seem to hurt anyhing but are multiplying fairly well. I've seen photos of tanks covered in flatworms and don't want to get to that obviously. I know a Blue Velvet Nudibranch will eat only the worms but I don't want it to die after the worms are gone. Basically a last resort. I try to vacuum off the ones I can but they're tiny little things and can hide fairly fast.I have been slacking on sand cleaning. I vacuum a bunch of gunk out today. I need to keep up on that. Would probably help by keeping a food source to a minimum. I've been hesitant to actually dig in to the sand with a siphon because I didn't want to suck out the live stuff. I've come to the decision that I have enough other media that the sand doesn't need to be all that live. I'm just going to start treating it like regular gravel. A good healthy siphon once a week on atleast half.

Anyway, any help on the flatworms would be great.

Wolfgang8810

they are the bad kind that munch on corals if they have red pots on them here is some literature on flatworms http://web.archive.org/web/200206140...wb/default.asp

I have also heard of a product called flatworm exit that wont disturb any corals or fosh but you need to vaccum the dead worms out before they realease alot of nitrate.

Gozer_1

Hmm, yeah, I've read good stories and very bad stories about peoples experience with Flatworm Exit. They're plain ol Acoel worms. Not harmful, in fact some what beneficial algae eaters. There's just so many of them. Sounds like the best thing to do is keep their food to a minimum and suck em out at water change. I've had a lot of build up in gunk in my sand lately. My water quality is good but there's a lot of organics built up in my sand. All the worms stay fairly low. I also found I could stick the sprayer off a spray bottle in the tank and "dust" off the rocks while I clean. I always have trouble cleaning out the snail "crumb trails" and other stuff in the nooks and crannies. I think if I just get that under control it'll go a long way to slowing the worms. They can stay as long as they stay under control. I want a Green Mandarin and I've heard they might munch on them, so that may help too.

agsansoo

Can take any pictures of the little pests ?

Gozer_1

Well, I'll try. They're itty bitty little things. I haven't learned enough about my camera to take good upclose pictures of small things behind glass lol. I bought it to take distance photos lol. They look like these Amphiscolops sp on this page. http://www.wetwebmedia.com/flatworms.htm Mine are more reddish pink but the same type.

After doing some reading I'm not as worried. They're harmless mostly if you keep em in check. It has to be the gunk in my sand. I vacuumed out a ton of stuff I didn't expect to be there. Mostly snail poo. Man can those things leave a trail. I just didn't take it into account because it wasn't effecting my water tests. Just nutrients sitting in the sand bed. I don't have anything that really cleans out the sand. Just snails to stir it. Hopefully my new sand bed maintenance program will help. I fell behind because I used to use an Eheim Sludge extractor. It broke so I started slacking. Shame on me lol