DavidA
Community Member
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2025
- Messages
- 67
- Reaction score
- 68
- Location
- Minneapolis
- What state or country do you live in
- Minnesota
Is this Claude summary accurate? It essentially says that we have no established scientific knowledge about "euphylllia eating flatworms" including taxonomy, life cycle, mechanism of damage if any and dependence on euphyllia for survival.
My mixed reef is 14 months old with a preponderance of softies, hammers and torches (and a handful of montis). My parameters run Ph 8.1, dKH 8, nitrate 10, phosphate .2, calcium 440. The hammers and torches have thrived but recently I lost 2 hammer heads over 2 separate nights. The many other hammer heads and the torches looked great and were fully open. Because of the losses I inspected the LPS and found many reddish brown flatworms (see photos) which appeared to be around 5mm. I dipped all LPS in Coral RX (with turkey basting) and the corals shed hundreds of worms. I dipped again the next day and many worms were once again shed.The LPS continue to fully open and have no evidence of recession.
I used a Google search and found inconsistent information. In general instead of asking questions of Claude I ask it to write a scientific paper. This guarantees a predictable structure, citations and and a review based on established science.
The lack of scientific information surprised me and makes me wonder if euphyllia eating flatworms really exist or we hobbyists make up causation when we encounter an LPS problem and as a result examine the corals and find incidental flatworms. It is hard for me to believe that the hundreds of flatworms that were shed are harmful if the corals look good with no evidence of recession. That said, I plan on assuming that they may be harmful and will do 6 weekly dips
My mixed reef is 14 months old with a preponderance of softies, hammers and torches (and a handful of montis). My parameters run Ph 8.1, dKH 8, nitrate 10, phosphate .2, calcium 440. The hammers and torches have thrived but recently I lost 2 hammer heads over 2 separate nights. The many other hammer heads and the torches looked great and were fully open. Because of the losses I inspected the LPS and found many reddish brown flatworms (see photos) which appeared to be around 5mm. I dipped all LPS in Coral RX (with turkey basting) and the corals shed hundreds of worms. I dipped again the next day and many worms were once again shed.The LPS continue to fully open and have no evidence of recession.
I used a Google search and found inconsistent information. In general instead of asking questions of Claude I ask it to write a scientific paper. This guarantees a predictable structure, citations and and a review based on established science.
The lack of scientific information surprised me and makes me wonder if euphyllia eating flatworms really exist or we hobbyists make up causation when we encounter an LPS problem and as a result examine the corals and find incidental flatworms. It is hard for me to believe that the hundreds of flatworms that were shed are harmful if the corals look good with no evidence of recession. That said, I plan on assuming that they may be harmful and will do 6 weekly dips
