Hey there, well since the writing of this, I have come to my own conclusions about what makes flat worms rapidly reproduce, and really become a pain to the hobbyist. I no longer think destroying the pod population had Bering on what caused my issue. There were two main factors that caused this break out for me. #1: I changed my 400w mh out and left town for a week, the new bulb burned hotter, and caused a 5 degree temperature increase, as well as the intensity of the light increased. This weekend my corals defense mechanisms. #2 I had the first release of the gyre, and my power cord had cracked, and was releasing a small amount of voltage into my tank...found that out by a cut on my hand. I think this also played a crucial role in weakening my acropora. Just as trees release pheromones when stressed that attract wood borers, I feel acropora must release some sort indication to pests that they are also stressed. And hence, their population exploded. Fast forward to now, it has been probably about three months, I have corrected these problems, and 99% of my sps have made a full recovery and are growing rapidly again. I never dipped or quarantined any of the colonies. I still see very small damage in a couple corals from time to time, but nothing significant, the color has returned, and so has the growth. I also added flat worm stop by zeovit, which I think strengthened my corals enough to get over the hump. I now believe many large acro tanks probably have flat worms present, however, if the tank has high flow, and is well maintained, and possibly has a wrasse that pokes around, the flat worms will not have a large impact. I feel that many of the horror stories we read about flatworms, probably started by some sort of internal issue within the system: i.e. Chemistry imbalance, heat, stray voltage ect. One the sps are weakend by the original problem, the flat worms present in the tank are allowed to take over and decimate the weak acros.
