willisd
Community Member
TLDR - I did flatworm exit with successful results and have a couple of questions about carbon removal and repeat treatments at the end of the post.
Background:
I have a redsea reefer 850 xxl that has had a flatworm infestation for a little over a year. I live in atlanta and the tank is back in texas with my family, so I have been working with my tank maintenance guy to attempt manual removal but this was leading nowhere. here is my welcome thread for those curious on the tank.
I was very nervous about the flatworms possibly hidden in my sump/equipment as well as the large population of baby brittle starfish that I have in the tank (hundreds if not thousands and they love to spawn) and the 2 large brittles i have had 15+ years. Supposedly brittles are very sensitive to toxins released, so this was a big concern that kept me from trying chemical removal. However after spending hundreds on Berhengia Nudibranches that would not survive more than a few months or fix the issue and never getting enough manually I finally decided it was time to try the exit. We had been attempting spot removal and large removal without any measurable success, and the open top made wrasses impractical.
Treatment Timeline:
Initial Major Removal : 12/21
When I returned home for the holidays last week we did a major water change to get out as many of the flatworms as possible. First we blasted the rocks with a turkey baster to free as many as possible then really focused on hitting the sand as hard as possible to get them out. For this sand style removal we used a large gravel vac and allowed the sand to settle and grabbed just the flatworms out by kinking the hose. I may be a reef tank veteran of almost 20 years but the experienced hands of my maint. guy were INCREDIBLY helpful, and you can't believer how good you can really clean a tank after years of doing it as your profession.
All in all we did a 60 gallon water change focusing on the sand and removed everything we could.
Secondary Spot Removal: 12/26
The big clean removed most of the visible population and we were very enthused by how the sand bed did not seem to repopulate with the scourge as quickly as it usually did. Unfortunately with the holidays I was not able to do as many manual sweeps as I had intended, but the day after Christmas I was able to do a large sweep with airline tubing into a filter sock and removed all that I could find. For those curious on this technique, using a small airline tubing is very helpful to avoid removing excess water and in theory doing this directly into a filter sock allows you to re-use the water. Ultimately I did not trust the filtered water and had plenty of spare salt on hand I just replaced with NSW.
here is a link to melev's reef where my buddy Marc has documented the filter sock system I used.
Treatment Day, the Big Bang: 12/27
Helpers:
For this massive effort my cousin who is a fellow reefkeeper that has used exit in the past came to help, our tank maint rockstar, and my amazing mother who maintains the tank while I am away was available to assist but could not put her hands in the tank due to an injury. I mention this because having at least 2-3 people was critical for our success and I would NOT recommend flying solo on this.
Prep:
After years of reef keeping I always keep 40 gallons of salt mixed on hand in jugs, and I have a mixing room where we had prepared 30 gallons of freshly mixed salt and 30 gallons RO available. This is a luxury most don't have but I can't stress how important having the excess water on hand was and I ended up mixing up the remaining RO after we realized we were going to be short. Here is a shot of the mixing room for posterity's sake:
I also had the flatworm exit, a turkey baster and two fine nets that we located to pull out the flatworms from the water column. Not pictured is the variety of siphon hoses and gravel vac tubes that were also used as well as 2 containers of carbon ready in 4 separate media bags washed and good to go.
Draining and Cleaning the Sump:
The biggest worry I had going into this treatment was the hidden reserve of flatworms I knew were present in my sump. Previously I had a dino experience that I fixed with the "dirty method" of increasing pods and competition so I have a refugium with a large amount of live rock and a box full of rubble. Before starting the treatment today I removed the basket of live rock and additional rock into a trashcan with water from the sump and a circulation pump before setting it to the side.
I then proceeded to drain the sump and use the opportunity to clean all of my equipment. For anyone who hasn't done this in the past, using a sump pump or powerhead is a great way to do this, but ultimately at the end a shock-vac becomes your best friend to pull out the last bits of water. To insure that all the flatworms stuck on the sides were taken care of i then ended up adding some RO water near the end to keep things wet and hopefully stun them further.
Once the sump was completely clean I then put the 40 gallons of water from the garage buckets back in the sump and started up my chiller pump/heater to fix the temperature while we focused on the display. We did realize that the chiller itself had not been cleaned and some could be present in there so we went ahead and added the flatworm exit to the cleaned sump for safety. Heres a shot of the sump now after the cleaning... it hasn't been this clean ever.
Treating the Display:
With the sump drained and clean we now moved our focus to the display. I have twin tunze powerheads for circulation that remained running through out the entire treatment for oxygenation and to spread the medicine through out the tank. The reefer xxl 850 claims to be a 160 display and a 40 gallon sump, so with displacement and we estimated the total volume of the actual display was roughly 120-150 gallons so I decided to treat as if it was 150 gallons and used two heaping capfuls. Based on other's experience needing to overdose I did not consider this risky and would lead to a more effective treatment.
I added one heaping capful to each side of the tank by a powerhead and we waited a couple minutes and began to see some of the flatworms detaching. On the fly we decided to have one person blasting the rocks/sand with the turkey baster while the other two had the fine nets and worked to catch as many of the flatworms out in the water column as possible. I am convinced that using this technique helped us catch many of the flatworms during the "stunned" stage before actually dying and releasing toxins, and it was INSANE how many flatworms we pulled from a tank that looked practically pristine before starting... do not underestimate your hidden population. We pulled out at least a thousand, if not more.
During the netting phase we ended up needing to empty/clean the nets many many times which is where my mother was an invalable asset. For anyone doing the netting portion of this I would recommend just doing a figure 8 style circle and not even looking for the actual worms. They will be everywhere just get them out. After roughly 30-45 minutes of this exercise all of our fore-arms were completely shot from the baster and net work so we moved over to the water change. Since removing flatworms/toxins was the goal we kept the return off.
However we did want to keep siphoning out more for safety, so we ended up pumping as much from the sump back up into the display once the powerheads were exposed, and used displacement to artificially create more water to pump up. This was the point where we realized our water level was going to be an issue and I mixed up the additional 30 gallons of RO to salt. This water was freezing (68), so we added it directly to the sump with the tank heater and added my mixing heater to fix the temp as quickly as possible which took about 10 minutes.
At this point we added in a big bag of carbon to each side of the tank near a powerhead to remove the toxins and any latent flatwormx. The other two bags of carbon were placed in the sump and once the water was heated we turned the return pump back on for full circulation. Once the carbon was in, the return was on and our netting was over the corals were actually very open and the fish seemed scared and reserved but OK. All of my coral (primarly LPS, zoas and leathers) seemed completely fine during the treatment outside of our aggressive basting/netting. Many of the other inverts seemed almost drunk or stunned, especially the starfish. However in the hours following they seem to have recovered and I expect a full recovery based on my research.
Here is a shot of the tank post treatment:
Cleaning the Sump Contents:
After we were confident in the status of the display we moved to the contents of the sump that had been in a trashcan with 10 gallons of water. We added 150% of the recommended dosage to this container and allowed it to sit for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes the basket of rocks, cheato and individual rocks were all swished heavily in the treatment solution before then being washed in clean-ish tank water and returned to the sump. Interestingly enough there did not seem to be a large population down there but we did pull out quite a few.
Final Results and Questions:
In the end things looked calm after the treatment was complete. The carbon amount seems absurdly high but I have kept it in the tank for now. Ultimately we used the 40 gallons of saltwater in jugs i had on hand, 30 gallons of salt i had mixed ready to go and the additional 30 gallons I made mid treatment to total to 100 gallons. I would strongly recommend having at least 25% more water than you think you may need.
Q1 - How long should I keep the carbon in?
I am a little concerned about possibly stripping too many things out of the water but out of an abundance of caution I have kept all the carbon in for now. Should I go ahead and pull the excess tomorrow?
Q2 - What is the lifespan of planeria, and when should i be looking to do followup treatments?
It is my understanding flatworm exit only kills the live planeria and those in their egg stage. Do we know how long the egg stage lasts, and how long it may take before hatching and laying additional eggs?
I have the ability to do a treatment with my cousin in roughly a week, or I could have my maint. guy do a treatment in 2-3 weeks. For these followup treatments I am expecting a much lower volume and will likely lean heavier on the carbon and water change to remove the toxins and less of a manual effort to baste/net but still getting as much as we can.
Q3 - Should I consider increasing the dosage for the subsequent treatments?
I feel as though this would be wise, and was planning to do 3 capfuls which "should" be enough for 225 gallons, and my total system is likely closer to 160-180 after displacement. I know using a dosage too weak can result in resistance, but I would also assume too strong could produce a second
Q4 - Which wrasses are most snail/hermit safe that could help insure this doesn't return?
I am planning to add a custom lid to the tank soon for a variety of reasons, and now that my cleaner shrimp have perished I am not as worried about adding in some wrasses to help combat the issue. I was thinking about a pair of canary wrasses, as i know my old melanarus used to graze on my cleaners constantly. Would a leopard wrasse also be a decent option?
For all those who made it this far thanks for reading and hopefully this helps others. I will post updates in the coming days and as we repeat treatments for those following along.
Thanks!
Willis
Background:
I have a redsea reefer 850 xxl that has had a flatworm infestation for a little over a year. I live in atlanta and the tank is back in texas with my family, so I have been working with my tank maintenance guy to attempt manual removal but this was leading nowhere. here is my welcome thread for those curious on the tank.
I was very nervous about the flatworms possibly hidden in my sump/equipment as well as the large population of baby brittle starfish that I have in the tank (hundreds if not thousands and they love to spawn) and the 2 large brittles i have had 15+ years. Supposedly brittles are very sensitive to toxins released, so this was a big concern that kept me from trying chemical removal. However after spending hundreds on Berhengia Nudibranches that would not survive more than a few months or fix the issue and never getting enough manually I finally decided it was time to try the exit. We had been attempting spot removal and large removal without any measurable success, and the open top made wrasses impractical.
Treatment Timeline:
Initial Major Removal : 12/21
When I returned home for the holidays last week we did a major water change to get out as many of the flatworms as possible. First we blasted the rocks with a turkey baster to free as many as possible then really focused on hitting the sand as hard as possible to get them out. For this sand style removal we used a large gravel vac and allowed the sand to settle and grabbed just the flatworms out by kinking the hose. I may be a reef tank veteran of almost 20 years but the experienced hands of my maint. guy were INCREDIBLY helpful, and you can't believer how good you can really clean a tank after years of doing it as your profession.
All in all we did a 60 gallon water change focusing on the sand and removed everything we could.
Secondary Spot Removal: 12/26
The big clean removed most of the visible population and we were very enthused by how the sand bed did not seem to repopulate with the scourge as quickly as it usually did. Unfortunately with the holidays I was not able to do as many manual sweeps as I had intended, but the day after Christmas I was able to do a large sweep with airline tubing into a filter sock and removed all that I could find. For those curious on this technique, using a small airline tubing is very helpful to avoid removing excess water and in theory doing this directly into a filter sock allows you to re-use the water. Ultimately I did not trust the filtered water and had plenty of spare salt on hand I just replaced with NSW.
here is a link to melev's reef where my buddy Marc has documented the filter sock system I used.
Treatment Day, the Big Bang: 12/27
Helpers:
For this massive effort my cousin who is a fellow reefkeeper that has used exit in the past came to help, our tank maint rockstar, and my amazing mother who maintains the tank while I am away was available to assist but could not put her hands in the tank due to an injury. I mention this because having at least 2-3 people was critical for our success and I would NOT recommend flying solo on this.
Prep:
After years of reef keeping I always keep 40 gallons of salt mixed on hand in jugs, and I have a mixing room where we had prepared 30 gallons of freshly mixed salt and 30 gallons RO available. This is a luxury most don't have but I can't stress how important having the excess water on hand was and I ended up mixing up the remaining RO after we realized we were going to be short. Here is a shot of the mixing room for posterity's sake:
I also had the flatworm exit, a turkey baster and two fine nets that we located to pull out the flatworms from the water column. Not pictured is the variety of siphon hoses and gravel vac tubes that were also used as well as 2 containers of carbon ready in 4 separate media bags washed and good to go.
Draining and Cleaning the Sump:
The biggest worry I had going into this treatment was the hidden reserve of flatworms I knew were present in my sump. Previously I had a dino experience that I fixed with the "dirty method" of increasing pods and competition so I have a refugium with a large amount of live rock and a box full of rubble. Before starting the treatment today I removed the basket of live rock and additional rock into a trashcan with water from the sump and a circulation pump before setting it to the side.
I then proceeded to drain the sump and use the opportunity to clean all of my equipment. For anyone who hasn't done this in the past, using a sump pump or powerhead is a great way to do this, but ultimately at the end a shock-vac becomes your best friend to pull out the last bits of water. To insure that all the flatworms stuck on the sides were taken care of i then ended up adding some RO water near the end to keep things wet and hopefully stun them further.
Once the sump was completely clean I then put the 40 gallons of water from the garage buckets back in the sump and started up my chiller pump/heater to fix the temperature while we focused on the display. We did realize that the chiller itself had not been cleaned and some could be present in there so we went ahead and added the flatworm exit to the cleaned sump for safety. Heres a shot of the sump now after the cleaning... it hasn't been this clean ever.
Treating the Display:
With the sump drained and clean we now moved our focus to the display. I have twin tunze powerheads for circulation that remained running through out the entire treatment for oxygenation and to spread the medicine through out the tank. The reefer xxl 850 claims to be a 160 display and a 40 gallon sump, so with displacement and we estimated the total volume of the actual display was roughly 120-150 gallons so I decided to treat as if it was 150 gallons and used two heaping capfuls. Based on other's experience needing to overdose I did not consider this risky and would lead to a more effective treatment.
I added one heaping capful to each side of the tank by a powerhead and we waited a couple minutes and began to see some of the flatworms detaching. On the fly we decided to have one person blasting the rocks/sand with the turkey baster while the other two had the fine nets and worked to catch as many of the flatworms out in the water column as possible. I am convinced that using this technique helped us catch many of the flatworms during the "stunned" stage before actually dying and releasing toxins, and it was INSANE how many flatworms we pulled from a tank that looked practically pristine before starting... do not underestimate your hidden population. We pulled out at least a thousand, if not more.
During the netting phase we ended up needing to empty/clean the nets many many times which is where my mother was an invalable asset. For anyone doing the netting portion of this I would recommend just doing a figure 8 style circle and not even looking for the actual worms. They will be everywhere just get them out. After roughly 30-45 minutes of this exercise all of our fore-arms were completely shot from the baster and net work so we moved over to the water change. Since removing flatworms/toxins was the goal we kept the return off.
However we did want to keep siphoning out more for safety, so we ended up pumping as much from the sump back up into the display once the powerheads were exposed, and used displacement to artificially create more water to pump up. This was the point where we realized our water level was going to be an issue and I mixed up the additional 30 gallons of RO to salt. This water was freezing (68), so we added it directly to the sump with the tank heater and added my mixing heater to fix the temp as quickly as possible which took about 10 minutes.
At this point we added in a big bag of carbon to each side of the tank near a powerhead to remove the toxins and any latent flatwormx. The other two bags of carbon were placed in the sump and once the water was heated we turned the return pump back on for full circulation. Once the carbon was in, the return was on and our netting was over the corals were actually very open and the fish seemed scared and reserved but OK. All of my coral (primarly LPS, zoas and leathers) seemed completely fine during the treatment outside of our aggressive basting/netting. Many of the other inverts seemed almost drunk or stunned, especially the starfish. However in the hours following they seem to have recovered and I expect a full recovery based on my research.
Here is a shot of the tank post treatment:
Cleaning the Sump Contents:
After we were confident in the status of the display we moved to the contents of the sump that had been in a trashcan with 10 gallons of water. We added 150% of the recommended dosage to this container and allowed it to sit for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes the basket of rocks, cheato and individual rocks were all swished heavily in the treatment solution before then being washed in clean-ish tank water and returned to the sump. Interestingly enough there did not seem to be a large population down there but we did pull out quite a few.
Final Results and Questions:
In the end things looked calm after the treatment was complete. The carbon amount seems absurdly high but I have kept it in the tank for now. Ultimately we used the 40 gallons of saltwater in jugs i had on hand, 30 gallons of salt i had mixed ready to go and the additional 30 gallons I made mid treatment to total to 100 gallons. I would strongly recommend having at least 25% more water than you think you may need.
Q1 - How long should I keep the carbon in?
I am a little concerned about possibly stripping too many things out of the water but out of an abundance of caution I have kept all the carbon in for now. Should I go ahead and pull the excess tomorrow?
Q2 - What is the lifespan of planeria, and when should i be looking to do followup treatments?
It is my understanding flatworm exit only kills the live planeria and those in their egg stage. Do we know how long the egg stage lasts, and how long it may take before hatching and laying additional eggs?
I have the ability to do a treatment with my cousin in roughly a week, or I could have my maint. guy do a treatment in 2-3 weeks. For these followup treatments I am expecting a much lower volume and will likely lean heavier on the carbon and water change to remove the toxins and less of a manual effort to baste/net but still getting as much as we can.
Q3 - Should I consider increasing the dosage for the subsequent treatments?
I feel as though this would be wise, and was planning to do 3 capfuls which "should" be enough for 225 gallons, and my total system is likely closer to 160-180 after displacement. I know using a dosage too weak can result in resistance, but I would also assume too strong could produce a second
Q4 - Which wrasses are most snail/hermit safe that could help insure this doesn't return?
I am planning to add a custom lid to the tank soon for a variety of reasons, and now that my cleaner shrimp have perished I am not as worried about adding in some wrasses to help combat the issue. I was thinking about a pair of canary wrasses, as i know my old melanarus used to graze on my cleaners constantly. Would a leopard wrasse also be a decent option?
For all those who made it this far thanks for reading and hopefully this helps others. I will post updates in the coming days and as we repeat treatments for those following along.
Thanks!
Willis
