Acro Flatworms

[Brion]

Well Friends
Turns out i've discovered the acro flatworms in my aquarium. and as it turns out they are responsible for the death of one of my favorite corals that i hought was lost due to heat issues. I have now found the worms on a different colony part of which i was able to remove from the tank and did a quick freshwater dip for confirmation (which was little needed as there were eggs all over the thing. When i dipped the coral (a mille) in freshwater about fifty little whitish flatworms came pouring off of the thing... i have no signs that it's on any other coral but am not sure. Again i've deemed the flatworms the cause of this.


i dipped the colony in the second picture and flatworms cam off of it too. so i let it dry out.. luckily i have several frags of the coral growing out free of the worms in another tank.
Any suggestions on what i can do would be great. i'm going to keep trying the freshwater dipping as it does send them packing but does absolutely nothing that i can see to the eggs. THanks
Brion

[prodman]

You can also dip the coral in a strong iodine. Mix seachem reef dip until the water is dark yellow and leave the coral in for around 5 or so min. The corals seem to handle this better than the fresh water.Then blow it with a turkey baster. That will get the worms on that coral but not the eggs. They need to be scraped off the base or discard the affected coral completely. I have been witnessing these fw in a friends tank for some time now. You might consider dipping all acros. And then repeating every couple days until you get the upper hand.

[Brion]

unfortunately dipping all acros would mean a total tear down of the tank... many are large colonies and are attached to several rocks as they have all grown from frags.

[G.Alexander]

Brion, try to add some 6-line wrasses also. If you put them all together in the tank it will not end up in a fight.

Here are some information about the turbellaria, also called flatworms from the hobbyists:

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=875

For the infected coral I would recommend to remove the corals base if possible. There are eggs, they are not affected by the dip, which will infest the coral again while you will not be able to remove all of them. Just keep some healthy branches as fragments, dipped before you reintroduce them in the tank.

I also observed they do not like the slimy Acropora corals. Most corals, loose this slime over the time in our tanks so those are the corals which are preferred by the turbellaria, especially if they are not 100 % healthy. After dosing CoralVitalizer for some month, all my Arcropora corals produce the slime which they normally have in the wild. This would not be a quick fix to the problem, but it could be helpful as a general precaution for further infections.

I had also a strong fight some years ago in my present tank and they completely disappeared. Please read what I have done in the above linked thread.

G.Alexander

[Brion]

Thanks G. most of those procedures have already run through my mind, The sixlines would be a tough one. afraid they'd starve my mandarins (happened before) but i like my corals better than fish anyway so we'll see... I did cut off some of the branches of the purple prostrata and they are growing great.. even part of the base that was unaffected is growing back but now they are visible on a very cool mille that would be a heart breaker to frag apart but an even bigger one to lose completly (never seen one like it) well it will be broken from the rock and dipped and all eggs removed tonight. let you know what happens.

[Funkyskunk]

Sorry to hear that really is a awesome coral !!!! Good luck !!!!

[gqjeff]

6 lines and yellow and green coris wrasses.... Also try a fluke dip...

Jeff

[nyfireman3097]

I had a Freind that had this problem he did the iodine dips scraped off the eggs and aded a 6 line and he won over his problem