Does anyone know what these are?

DereksReef77 · Oct 23, 2016

I have begun to notice these guys. They look like some sort of flatworm. I'm not sure, they seem too eat the pods that are on the glass. Coral pointer in second pic for size reference. Any help greatly appreciated.

KJ · Oct 24, 2016

Flatworm - Acoel

DereksReef77 · Oct 24, 2016

KJ said:
Flatworm - Acoel

Thanks for the reply. Anything special for eradication? Flatworm exit?

Lionfish Lair · Oct 24, 2016

How old is your tank, Derek?

DereksReef77 · Oct 24, 2016

This one is only been up a couple of months. Just a deep blue 30 frag tank. Basically just a quarantine for lps, frogspawn,hammer,torch,acans,wilsoni. Had problems in my other tank these corals came from. Had developed brown jelly and lost alot of acans. Figured I have some bad bacteria in previous tank that caused all my lps problems. Now these flatworms are visible in the deep blue 30. There are also no fish in the deep blue 30 just lps, pods,and now flatworms.

Lionfish Lair · Oct 24, 2016

They love pods. New tanks have more diatoms which pods love. The pods in turn feed the flatworms. When the pods naturally decline in numbers, the flatworms should too. Yet some flatworms have the "lovely" feature of being able to utilize your light and use it for energy once the pods are gone. Personally, I wouldn't do anything yet, especially where this is a QT. Others may have different ideas for treatment, should you choose to go that route.

DereksReef77 · Oct 24, 2016

Hello Renee,
So you dont think that I should nuke them with flatworm exit. I don't know if I have had them in the previous tank or not, will have to inspect closely when I get home from work. They might have just showed up also. Two weeks ago I gave some dwarf brittle starfish away and was presented with 5 sps frags in return. I dipped them in bayer and also removed them from their plugs and glued them to my new plugs. I put them in the deep blue 30 cause I already had issues with the lps.

djd3mon · Oct 24, 2016

Flat worms. I have read that reddish ones are bad and clear ones will not hurt anything. Either way good or bad I would get a 6 line wrasse. They love flatworms. I would not take a chance on them multiplying. Get rid of them now while you can.

Lionfish Lair · Oct 24, 2016

DereksReef77 said:
Hello Renee,
So you dont think that I should nuke them with flatworm exit. I don't know if I have had them in the previous tank or not, will have to inspect closely when I get home from work. They might have just showed up also. Two weeks ago I gave some dwarf brittle starfish away and was presented with 5 sps frags in return. I dipped them in bayer and also removed them from their plugs and glued them to my new plugs. I put them in the deep blue 30 cause I already had issues with the lps.

I would not use it, no, so I defer that advice for others to give. It's your QT, so I guess it doesn't really make a difference either way. If you treat the QT, don't add anything else to it, or you'll have to dose the tank again. If you don't dose now and it does become a problem, what have you lost? You just go ahead and dose the medication at that time. It's a little different with the Convolutriloba species, as it's actually safer to dose when there are only a couple present. That species releases a toxin when they die and it can mess up your tank if there's too many. The type of worm you have doesn't have that issue, so their deaths don't have the same negative impact.

DereksReef77 · Oct 25, 2016

Thanks to those that helped with my inquiry. I did end up using flatworm exit yesterday and nuked them. It is a quarantine tank yes but I thought quarantine is for ridding corals of pests and diseases so not to introduce them to ones main display. So for that reason I did what I did to rid the tank of flatworms because I don't see the sense in keeping a quarantine tank running if your not gonna eradicate any pest or parasite one may encounter. Why wait? Just doesn't make any sense.