Euphyllia Eating Flatwoms?

[sbutler08]

So after a few weeks of watching my torch frags slowly wither away to nothing, I finally pulled out my last remaining frag and inspected it. I had been wondering how one person could lose over a dozen Euphyllia frags with all proper parameters. This is what I found... These bad boys are just shy of 3/4" long and probably 3/8" in width. I wish that I would have looked closer at the other frags before discarding them to the trash.
I've never seen anything quite like these before and I have no idea where they could have come from. They seem to only be on euphyllia thank goodness!
I can tell you that they almost immediately died on contact with Bayer dip.

 

[Tahoe61]

I have heard of flat worms predatory to Euphyllia but it was usually Polyclad, guess you just never know. There are thousands of different types of Planarians so it really is not a leap to see them eating LPS, specially Euphyllia. Planarians may also suffocate LPS and prevent photosynthesis by covering surface area, there by reducing gas exchange and depriving zooxanthellae from providing nutrition to those hermatypic corals.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[dkle]

I actually just killed one myself. My yellow torch bought three weeks ago did not seem to open up fully. Just last week, I saw a patch of eggs at the tissue rim at the base and thought to myself "hmm, that's odd". I picked it up to inspect and sure enough, found a fw that looked exactly like in your picture. I tried to picked it up with a pair of tweezers; but it moved super fast and hid inside the polyps. I killed it by dipping it in bayer. I scraped the egg sack off. Needless to say, from now on all euphyllia will be dipped in bayer before going into the tank.
By the way, you might have known it already, but it looks like there is an egg sack at the 12 o'clock position.

 

[Reefhunter007]

I actually just killed one myself. My yellow torch bought three weeks ago did not seem to open up fully. Just last week, I saw a patch of eggs at the tissue rim at the base and thought to myself "hmm, that's odd". I picked it up to inspect and sure enough, found a fw that looked exactly like in your picture. I tried to picked it up with a pair of tweezers; but it moved super fast and hid inside the polyps. I killed it by dipping it in bayer. I scraped the egg sack off. Needless to say, from now on all euphyllia will be dipped in bayer before going into the tank.
By the way, you might have known it already, but it looks like there is an egg sack at the 12 o'clock position.

Yuck don't you hate the way they move like a blob movie!!lol makes my skin crawl"