Coral Sitting

[patchin]

I'm planning on treating my nano this weekend with FWE. Dr. Lee has offered to treat and babysit my corals my corals while I treat. Most everything in there is frag sized. Would it be more stressful to move them and have them stored under somewhat different conditions or just leave them in the tank during treatment. I do plan to suck out as many as possible ahead of time. Thanks for your input.

 

[tuberider]

What type of flatworms are you having trouble with? It sounds like more work than necessary.

 

[patchin]

Regular old red flatworms.

 

[seminolecpa]

Corals should be fine with plain old FWE. No need to move them it you do it right. Snails, hermits and shrimp are another story.

 

[tuberider]

Do you have any fish in there? I use yellow tailed blue devils they eat em up like hot spaghetti

 

[patchin]

Yes, there are snails and no, there are no fish. If I go ahead with the FWE, should I remove the Chaeto for any reason? Interesting fact that a lot of the flatworms are on or around my frag tray made of the white egg crate.

 

[seminolecpa]

It won't hurt the chaeto but will likely wipe out your pods. You will need to reseed it once you are done. Wait maybe that is interceptor I am thinking of. Actually FWE should be pretty ok for about everything I think. I treated for them maybe 3-4 years ago in tank with no problems at all to anything else.

Just make sure you:

1) syphon out as many as you can before
2) run lots of carbon through after (preferably through a canister filter or even a phosphate reactor.. though I just used the sump)
3) prepare to do a good water change (the biggest problem you can have is when these little suckers die not from the medication necessisarily) syphon out as many dead bodies as you can.

 

[tuberider]

Don't count out the damsel, even if you chuck one in to thin the herd, then dose FWE. There is some risk to using FWE...

 

[Gomer]

Does FWE kill your snails?

 

[tuberider]

Not IME

 

[Dyngoe]

Steve,

Do you have flatworms or planaria? I get red planaria in my frag tank every so often. It is usually a result of over feeding and bad flow. I just cut back the feeding for a few days and figure out which frag is blocking the flow and they disappear. Never been a problem for me and from what I read planaria are harmless in low numbers.

 

[Natterjak]

FWE should be fine for snails and shrimp (interceptor is what will harm them, I believe). My ceriths would always fall off the glass, but would be fine shortly after treatment. Shrimp didn't seem to care. Most things should be fine with the FWE itself, it's the toxins released by the flatworms that will harm stuff, so you have to be diligent about siphoning out as many beforehand (use a turkey baster to blow them out of crevices/holes in the live rock), and siphoning the dead bodies during treatment.

Wrasses seem to enjoy eating them - I had a yellow coris wrasse that was always hunting them (poor thing jumped through my egg crate a few weeks ago ). I treated my tank with FWE three times, and never could completely eradicate them. The fish seem to keep them in check, so I just leave it. A lot of times I don't even see them. Their numbers do seem to ebb and flow over time.

 

[patchin]

Matt,
This is what I have, red planaria. [ftp=ftp://http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html]http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html[/ftp].
Thanks for all the help, everyone. Now I just need to make my decision ???

 

[sfsuphysics]

Also in my experience with FWE it also kills bristleworms as well, as I saw them curling up and dying pre-red-dawn of toxin outburst.

 

[stubbsz]

Fwe won't kill much of anything except the flatworm*. The toxicity is what is released from the worms themselves. I didn't have huge numbers so a bit of carbon and good use of a net to grab all the worms that let go of the rocks, kept everything else alive. I had a serpent-star curl up like a pretzel but he survived it just fine. But the worms came back about 9 months later. I just suck them up as I do water changes, the numbers don't get out of control so they stay this time.

It's interceptor that nails the pods... I had crabs survive it; those that I couldn't find as I put all my crabs and chaeto in another tank.

-Adrian

(*) I'm not saying it doesnt kill bristle worms. I rarely see mine and didn't notice it.

 

[sfsuphysics]

well only reason I came to the conclusion that it kills bristleworms was because I saw them dying within minutes of using the stuff, who knows maybe my bristleworms ate flatworms so it affected them too I did lose my beloved foxface (algae eating champion of the known universe!) and a bicolor angel due to the numbers of flatworms I DIDNT see and released toxins... my water definitely got noticeably red from the toxins that were released.

Now everything I remove/move I dose with FWE in a smaller container (might higher object/water volume ratio) so I use less of it, plus if I put too much it'll definitely take care of the flatworms.

Also I really don't buy the whole "you feed your tank too much" philosophy as to why flatworms will thrive sure it might help but isn't the only reason, because I put a few minicolonies of zoas in a nano tank, where I didn't feed it at all ever over the period of a month I did see them buggers still kicking it around without any problems, after all they are photosynthetic.

 

[Ibn]

Get a sixline wrasse and don't the sucker; should find plenty to eat w/the pods and everything in the tank. I had a springer's dottyback for awhile and never fed it; it just fed off the pods is in the tank. Unfortunately, it decided to jump out of the tank and I went and got a sixline to replace it.

Haven't fed the sixline ever since picking it up about a month ago and it's happy and fat still. It's been living off the pods in the tank and it apparently feeds off the flatworms and planarias in the tank. I've been seeing very little of them around ever since adding the sixline.

 

[patchin]

We bought a sixline for the big tank, but I can't get it to stay in the corner and not eat while I'm feeding the other fish, though ;D. I know the situation would be different in the nano. I could hear those thoughts going through your head.