Euphyllia eating Flatworm!!!

My walling hammer coral has been receding on one side... but the rest of the coral has been doing great with great extension and color...

Well, tonight, I was looking in the tank with a flashlight after hours and found this flatworm that was just at the edge of the receding tissue!!!

With the help of my lovely wife/assistant, I promptly removed the coral and got the flatworm off with a pair of tweezers... when I first touched it with the tweezers, it started crawling fast; so I pulled it off, looked for more and rinsed the coral with fresh water.

I only found the one, let's hope there's no more... and I hope this was the cause of the problem with the coral... there's some other folks that have identified this flatworm eating euphyllia:

Euphyllia eating flatworm! - Reef Central Online Community Archives

here's the best picture I got, shown with the red arrow:

 

That no good, glad you found it though! Hopefully now your Hammer does even better!

 

I suggest you pick up and use Saliferts flatworm exit -- flatworms are like mice, if you see one you have many more. They multiply fast and are toxic when they die. I have used Saliferts product in the past sucessfully - pick it up and lots of activated carbon and treat the tank befire your population grows

 

Thanks... What are the side effects of running flatworm exit?

Will it kill my infauna/ copepods?

 

I will also add that this is the only flatworm that I have seen and the hammer is my only coral that seems to be affected. My frogspawn and plate coral, both LPS are doing great!

Also, in my research, it seems that these flatworms are usually found in small numbers... I know that's contrary to many other types of flatworms, which are usually found in large numbers... but maybe this one gestates more slowly, and MAYBE I caught it early enough.

I think before using a product like FW exit, I'll watch everything for a week and see if I can find any evidence of more FWs...

Any suggestions are appreciated, though. Thanks!

 

Here’s a decent blurp on the topic with mention of Saliferts product.

Reefkeeping Magazine - Flatworms and Other "Bugs" That Make You See Red

They do say that most feel the dosage is too low and I agree, I have always doubled the dosage on the package. I have had no ill side effects and I did let the product flow through my refugium.

 

6 months later, An update to an old thread...

I never ran flatworm exit... the hammer coral ended up receding until the whole thing died about a month after the flatworm was spotted; though I never saw another one of these flatworms on it, I have no idea what killed it off... I have other LPS in my tank including a frogspawn that is doing excellent, and no sign of these flatworms whatsoever...

maybe this one large flatworm came in as a hitch-hiker on the hammer, and I caught it in time before it could reproduce... or maybe I have a small population of these things in the tank biding their time... Keeping my fingers crossed that it's not the latter... That being said, I wouldn't suspect that there are any left in the tank with no visible sign of them anywhere, as they get very large, this one was probably 10mm long and clearly visible when looking for it.

 

Was this a polycald worm rather than the typical flatworm, and did you ever see it on any other corals ?

TIA

 

Wall ancora have a pretty dismal success rate anyways. Sory to hear about your loss but grats on no more flatworms

 

my guess is that it's a polyclad... if you look at the picture in the first post, you can see it... it's at least 5mm long. It was very flat, and does not have the typical "casper the ghost" shape that many smaller typical flatworms do.

I have NOT seen another one in the tank since it was removed, and I have looked... I'm pretty good about spotting things in my tank, for example, I found this 1mm sized nudibranch recently that pagojoe identified for me: Nudibranch? ID please. - Reef Central Online Community