Parasitic Flatworms: What to Do?

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Please let's continue on the subject of parsitic flatworms.

Some topics:

Quarantine and wait
Reef Safe Kill Agents or Dips
ID and Pictures of the worms and their eggs
Signs of the worms, base baldness, polyp retention, etc.
LFS and Hobbyist Responsibilities

 

[joefitz]

Quarantine. Yup. Carefully inspect. Keep informed of what is happening in the industry so you learn about new pests and related 'cures/treatments' as quickly as possible. Buy from vendors that you feel do the best job of all of the above because this will provide an additional safety factor without absconding each hobbyist's responsibility to keep their own reef healthy.

In terms of LFS/industry related issues, I am all for improvement in these regards. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the only way for this industry to change is for the customers to demand more and that will never happen; most hobbyists simply aren't educated well enough to understand or care about these issues -- the vast majority of consumers aren't BRS members or reading RC.

Barring that, the only other hope is for LFSs to "band together" and demand the wholesalers make improvements which would result in the wholesalers making demands upon the suppliers. All of these things would increase the cost but if they happened at the front of the chain it would be a significantly better situation than we have today. But LFSs aren't likely to band together either for a great number of reasons.

So, I don't expect anything much to change in the industry. I think consumers have become accustomed to the industry practices and shortcomings. For instance, take Ich...clearly one of the most common issues facing the hobby. Consumers have generally either come to the realization (and acceptance) that pretty much every fish purchased will carry Ich or they probably don't even know what Ich is...either way, the result is the same...it ends up being each hobbyist's problem.

I'm not saying I wouldn't love to see improvements in the industry and its practices. I like the idea of coming up with practices vendors (LFSs, wholesalers...) could implement that would prevent or at least minimze the variety of problems we face with livestock health. If we can find economical ways to do so they will surely be implemented as it doesn't really serve anyone's best interests to sell infected livestock. We heard a few interesting ideas in the other thread, such as fallow tanks and things of that nature. I'm sure smarter people than I can/have/will come up with other ideas to address improve livestock handling and I look forward to hearing them, especially if they could also be applied to my own QT system (which is non-existant at the moment).

I think aqua-cultured livestock could also be a good answer; however, that would only work if those vendors took the necessary precautions to make sure their systems were (and remain) pest free. One could make the argument that buying livestock from other successful hobbyists may be a good way to go but then again, how many of us take the necessary precautions to ensure our livestock is pest free? And how could you really know that prior to making a purchase?

I guess I have high hopes and extremely low expectations when it comes to seeing improvements in the industry. The numbers just don't add up for improvement.

I think it all circles back to the first few item in your list...quarantine and wait. Visually inspect. Use appropriate treatments on the QT system. Acquire slowly. Keep yourself as well-informed as possible.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

Great advice Joe.

For me all this means:

No new corals for at least 6 months
No coral frag trading or selling for 6 months
No fun for six months

And...

Quarantining everything that enters my system in my new QT setup.
10 gallon tank PC lighting, hang-on skimmer, hang on filter, UV sterilizer and heater.

 

[nitrofish]

id like to experiment with some infected pieces . does anyone have some that that are going to dispose of? theres got to be something that will kill these things.

 

[~Flighty~]

You can give frags to me if you are really jonsen for a trade I just have one little piece of milli that could be effected, but that is questionable.

Seriously, what I am woried about is an invisable juvinile stage which it sounds like this bug has. Is it possible that the whole tank will go if the conditions were right for them to reproduce? someone here said that the research shows that they can even reproduce when they are still too small to see with a magnifying glass?

My system is nearly acro free and it will eventually be an anemone dedicated tank (if I can get a couple of nice magnificas to make it) So I could conceivably do testing on biological controlls in my system without fears of losing mature colonies now or in the future. I just don't really want to do that unless there is a good chance of discovering something new.

 

[NateHanson]

Cindy, I don't think you're going to want to put all kinds of experimental treatments in your system anyways. A small separate setup is needed for tests like this.

 

[~Flighty~]

Yes, test systems would be better for that, I'm talking about biological controlls. Maybe it is sea urchin larve that controll them in the wild or something like that. There is some difference between systems that these guys go crazy in and systems where they die out. I'm just betting it is biological not chemical.

 

[NateHanson]

good thought. I think what we need to do is sponsor a diving trip to deliver infested colonies to Bali, and see what critters show up to feast on them.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>I'm talking about biological controlls. <

I'd think fish, or perhaps specialized nudibranchs might work. Trouble with fish is that once you put them into a reef tank you might have a he11 of a time getting them out.

 

[Greg Hiller]

From someone on RC:

I only had these on 2 colonies and they never had a chance to spread because my sixline was picking them off like a "crack head in their mommas house after midnight".

There's your biological control. In a later post the guy mentioned he specifically SAW the wrasse eat them.

 

[Greg Hiller]

Here's another one from RC:

'Each day I have found fewer FW's and some corals appear to be free. I would normally blast the coral out of the tank, but my velvet wrasse gets really excited and gobbles up each and every worm until he is fat. '

 

[Daragon]

Here's a thought (please read my sig)...

Would these parasitic flat worms die going through a UV sterilizer? I think Chuck mentioned that the flatworms would not die in the dip he used but did release from the coral. What if then it was sucked up by the UV sterilizer?

 

[Greg Hiller]

Someone on RC said no. Problem with UV sterilizers is that they only work will on micro-organisms, and are dependent upon contact time. For sure UV would kill them, but it might take a much larger dose than they would normallyl get. Small particle filtration would likely remove them (sufficiently fine filter pad).

FWIW, one comment about the wrasses that I left out was that apparently the wrasses do not at first recognize them as food. You may have to 'train' them by blowing some of them off and into the water column at first. Once they identify as food source you are probably all set.

In reading on RC, it sounds like these flatworms are a lot easier than the red-mites were to blast off. A powerhead or turkey baster will blow them off pretty well apparently.

 

[~Flighty~]

Has anyone tried Mandarins? Mine eat regular flatworms like they are going out of style and they are designed to eat stuff off of the rock.

 

[JeremyR]

Wrasse control is part of the reason we have 4line wrasses in our sps tanks, hoping that if any come in on anything that they will eat them... but the problem is I'm betting that if the wrasse dies or is removed, the fw will come back.. I doubt they will totally kill off the entire population, and not everyone wants a wrasse. Hopefully soon we'll have a dip or qt med that can kill them off without killing the coral, making it possible to pre-treat for trading/selling/adding.

I doubt a nudibranch control would work, the regular flatworm eating nudis don't really survive in reef tanks.. they have no stick-em power and get blown off the rocks and end up in your filtration... generally they'll live long enough to eat a few flatworms, then you go to bed and never see them again.

 

[stang8s]

good thought. I think what we need to do is sponsor a diving trip to deliver infested colonies to Bali, and see what critters show up to feast on them.

I love this idea! Im in!

 

[Aqua Addict]

With our luck we will end out causing an infestation in that reef and lose the whole area....

Mike

 

[DanStL]

parasitic controls

I too ran into this problem a while back, getting "bali-aquacultured" LFS stock. 6 months later everything is dead save an indestructible open brain, and two fish. I am long over it though, but back when I was researching the problem one thing occured to me:

Why don't these worms destroy a healthy reef the way they can our reefs? Of course the answer is the natural balance of predation. The problem I think we may be seeing with the aquacultured stuff is that they are not grown in a natural reef ecosystem. from what I gather, each frag is grown-out independently in shallow waters. This would provide little cover for wrasses and other parasite eating fish, and it is surely not their natural habitat - as it not the natural habitat of the corals being grown. So it is an artifical ecosystem like our tanks except that they cannot limit parasitic infestations.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>Wrasse control is part of the reason we have 4line wrasses in our sps tanks, hoping that if any come in on anything that they will eat them... but the problem is I'm betting that if the wrasse dies or is removed, the fw will come back.. I doubt they will totally kill off the entire population, and not everyone wants a wrasse.<

Good point. For someone just trying to control them in a tank this type of biological control should be fine. For someone attempting to eradicate them from some type of holding system/propagation system probably won't work. At the same time though, if the fish learn to target the eggs as well, I suppose eradication is possible? Also, many wrasses will learn to eat alternate foods. Could you have a Large number of wrasses in the system, feed them well with alternate foods, then every time you add an infected coral stop feeding for a few days?

FWIW, I figured as much on the nudi's, the ones I tried for bryopsis years ago were a bit of a disappointment, and I've heard the same about the ones that eat the C. retrogemma.

FWIW, I like the way this thread is going compared to the last one.

A question I asked over on RC....do they lay eggs on live tissue, or only on the base/dead tissue? Could you 'dremel' off all areas of dead base skeleton, and therefore leave no place for eggs to hid? Alternatively, could you dip the dead base sections in something? On the occasions when I've had some critter I didn't want on the base of a rock/coral I would dip (or spray) just that section with 70% ethanol, wait about 20 seconds, then rinse the ethanol away with a bit of tank water. The ethanol effectively instantly dehydrates and kills EVERYTHING it touches. I've done this (very carefully) even with Tridac clams that I've gotten from people that were riddled with bryopsis, bubble algae, and other things I didn't want.

 

[JeremyR]

We use ethanol to kill bugs on orchids. I'm sure there are many ways to get rid of eggs in that manner.. yeah, you only see them on dead skeleton as far as I can tell. That doesn't mean a coral with no obvious dead areas won't have a small live one or 2, which is why a dip med would be nice. I think if people know what they are looking for, they can maintain their aquariums even if they end up with the worms.. you just have to be proactive.. been thru the monti nudi thing a few times going back many years, and you can beat them as well if you are proactive in the cleaning of "infected" corals, even if it's just removing the coral, manually removing eggs & live nudis(flatworms in this case), and putting it back. Harder to do obviously if your corals are super encrusted into a live rock structure that was cemented together.

The other problem with wrasses is not all of them will eat flatworms, even with "training". Some just don't seem to like them, even when others of the same species eat them like candy.

The bali aquaculture thing is interesting for sure.. I've also thought about the manner in which they are cultured making them possible targets for parasites due to lack of natural predators, but not all bali shippers seem to have this problem either. I won't name names, but there are certain places I would never buy SPS from and some I've never seen any issues with at all. I would hate for people to refuse to buy any "bali aquacultured" corals on the fear of something they can get from many other places, especially since the bali aquaculture corals do so much better than their fully wild counterparts... the losses we take incoming with bali corals is very low, and many of the pieces you see in the store have been here for months.. so we aren't taking long term losses either. I've come to the conclusion that pest management is going to be ongoing for all of us in one way or another. Not too long ago, I saw alveopora eating nudibranchs. I"ve seen SPS eating snails that leave white patches in random locations. I keep making a comparison to the plant industry.. they have pesitcides that kill everything, but bugs still happen and you have to be able to deal with it when it does. Bugs also evolve and become resistant to treatments, so it's possible that something that works this year won't work 5 years from now.