Hydroids and Flatworms - help?

[ahmer1781]

My tank has been up about 6 weeks now, cycled in about 2, 90 gallon, with 30 sump, added 25 lbs live rock, with 50 lbs of dead rock, current livestock:

4 baby clowns
3 peppermint shrimp
15 hermits
15 snails
5 nassarius snails

everything seems to be doing just fine then I noticed on my glass 2 issues:

flatworms
hyroids

my camera can't capture these properly but the hydroids look like in medusa stage, there are starlike shaped things on my glass. they seem to be multiplying though I can't really see any evidence of them on my rocks.

i have definitely noticed flatworms, maybe 8-12 on the glass in the bottom left corner, i looked all over the rock, cant really see any anywhere else.

WHAT SHOULD I DO??? i read that the hyrdoids would go away on their own and I also read that if I get a six line wrasse, he'll eat the small number of flatworms. I only have 2 zoa frags and a polyp frag so not much coral at all, any suggestions?

Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 10

 

[PSU4ME]

You could treat with flatworm exit if you'd like. With a young tank there isn't too much risk

 

[JohnK]

Yup, FW exit usually doesn't do much harm, particularly in a newer system. (then again it often doesn't fully kill the little buggers off so I guess it doesn't necessarily do the FWs much harm either).

Can you describe their appearance? (color, shape, size). Some FWs are much more invasive than others. There are mid sized, opaque ones that aren't photosynthetic that almost never cause any harm or bloom enough to become a nusiance. Sometimes a system will have a few FWs and they never really become an issue, other times they take over to the point where you can't even see your rocks anymore.

 

[ahmer1781]

Small brown with a tail that looks like 2 appendages. This link is pretty close to what I have:

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[JohnK]

Looks like that link didn't work?

 

[ahmer1781]

it looks like it didnt work, but if you copy and paste it, it shows you the pic that my worm is similar to

 

[ahmer1781]

i'm getting a lot of mixed info, sounds like the hydroids are harmless and will go away on their own and the flatworms are the rustic brown kind so they are not that bad, but a 6 line wrasse would help with keeping their population in check

 

[PSU4ME]

yeah the rusty brown ones are not terrible but keepign a wrasse around really helps. FWE will knock them back as well.

Choice is yours.

 

[JohnK]

If you do opt to run some FW exit, keep in mind that the FWs will release toxins when they die so it's a good idea to first siphon out as many as you possibly can before treating, and then run a good amount of carbon for a while once they do start dying off.

 

[ahmer1781]

i only see about 5-8 flatworms on the glass and i cant really see them on the rocks, now may be a good time to use FWE, thanks for your help folks!

 

[JohnK]

Yup, earlier is MUCH better than later. That said, if you can see 5, there are probably more like 50-500 you can't see. A good strategy is to siphon out all of them you can find every day for a while and then treat when hopefully most of them are gone already.

Also IME going up to at least 1.5x the reccomended dose works better.

 

[ahmer1781]

The 2nd post has a pic:

http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f6/baby-flatworms-171310.html

also 39 seconds into this video, this is what I have:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dvn0YVr00o

 

[JohnK]

OK, brown usually means photosynthetic, but IME the skinny ones like in the pic and the video are less likely to overrun a tank than some of the other variations of FWs.

There is no black and white answer at to what you should do at this point. A lot of people would try to kill them off via FW exit. Others would prefer to avoid putting iffy chemicals (FW exit) in the tank and would rather let things be and with a little luck they will never become a problem. Personally I'd probably treat with FW exit, but that's because I'm more FW phobic than FWexit phobic.