Flat worms help!!

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podman1973

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Sep 1, 2008
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165
Location
oklahoma city, ok
Hello guys I am in need of some advice. I have a flat worm (red Planaria) problem it has gotten very out of control, I am thinking of useing flatworm exit. My concern is 1. will it kill every snail in my tank. 2. will it kill my anemones. are there any other ways to deal with a problem like this? I am not gogn to treat for a couple of days so any tips/suggestions befor i starte would be app.!! Thanks Guys!
 
First, I'll say good luck. I've been battling flatworms for months, so I'm tagging along. I'll give you my experience and what I've learned researching.

Flatworm eXit in itself won't harm anything but the flatworms. However, when the flatworms die they release toxins, and that's what can cause your tank to have serious health issues for your corals and your fish.

Get a long piece of regular airline and a media bag. Tie the bag around the airline and place it in your sump. Take the other end of the airline and hold it against a powerhead until you get a siphon started. Now, start sucking the little buggers out. They come offf the rocks and corals quite easily, flow down the airline and get captured into the media bag. It's almost enjoyable, actually. Suck up as many as you can. Wait a day, do it again, etc etc. Until you can't see anymore that you can reach.

Once you've done that, start treatments with the flatworm eXit. Follow the instructions, especially the part about having fresh activated carbon ready to go. The Carbon will help to remove the toxins being released and help to protect your inhabitants.

Now, for my story. I've done this so many times I can't count them anymore. You don't even want to know how many bottles of eXit I've gone through. The worms die when I put in the eXit (I actually dose 2x the recommended dose) and it sure does appear that they ALL die. They, however, keep coming back and I cannot explain it.

I can say that after at least 7 or 8 treatments that I've done, I have not lost a single invert, coral or fish. I do notice that my pod population has significantly diminished, however.

So, After seeing what I've seen, I can attest that the flatworm eXit does in fact work very well, but that the little buggers are stubborn as all get out. The less of them you have in the tank when you dose, by siphoning them out first, the lower your risk is.
 
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Get a long piece of regular airline and a media bag. Tie the bag around the airline and place it in your sump. Take the other end of the airline and hold it against a powerhead until you get a siphon started. Now, start sucking the little buggers out. They come offf the rocks and corals quite easily, flow down the airline and get captured into the media bag. It's almost enjoyable, actually. Suck up as many as you can. Wait a day, do it again, etc etc....

This is what I did to get rid of my problem a few years back. I didn't use FlatWorm Exit or any chemicals, but sucked them out every few days and kept pristine water conditions. It took a few months, but eventually I got the population down to where they couldn't sustain themselves and they just disappeared. They haven't come back and I'm reeeallllly careful examining corals now before adding them to the tank. (No... I don't QT them. I know I should!)

You CAN eliminate them without chemicals - it just takes a lot of determination and time.
 
mel. thanks for that art. I've read it and will be on my second day of just manually removing them with a vac. Then I'll treat and have 40% W/C ready with 2'lbs of AC going my corals are starting to die off anyways (not sure its the worms) so i dont have much to lose
 
mel. thanks for that art. I've read it and will be on my second day of just manually removing them with a vac. Then I'll treat and have 40% W/C ready with 2'lbs of AC going my corals are starting to die off anyways (not sure its the worms) so i dont have much to lose
Can you give us some parameters on your tank and some information on your problem? Maybe we can help.
 
sure thin! I just added a calcium reactor about 3 weeks ago so my para. were a bit in a "seing" until recently. AkL.= 9.6, Cal.=420, all baddies= 0 (amn, nit,ect) I did notcie the new salt i was useing didnt have regular lvl's of MAG. and I thoguht it did so for about a month my mag had been slowly going down when i did chech it it was 1000. I brought it up to 1350 over 3 days, but now its in check.
 
my ALK is steady at 9.6 my ph gose from 8.4 in day to 8.25 at nite but when i firs got my cal. reactor it waantlikethat. my alk went to 15 did w/c got it down to 10 and so on
 
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well i finally treated its been 24hrs and no deaths! When it says do not underestamiate the number of worms in your tank they are not kidding! I followed the directions to the letter and did a 33% W/C and so far the ony things dead in my tank are those worms!! In the future i will put alot more effort into prevention!!!
 
I've had the flatworm problem too. I never tried flatworm exit because I was afriad of the toxins the would release. The method I had the best luck with was siphoning them out with a with a vinyl hose (like a gravel vaccume). I had to do it once a week for about three weeks because they multiply so rapidly. I also got a melanarrus wrasse but if you try getting rid of them by a fish, the fish isn't a guarentee that it will eat them and they may multiply faster than the fish would eat them. Good luck.
 
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