Tiny reddish flat worm?

[Smacks21294]

Tiny reddish creatures on frag plugs and crushed coral bed. They come out when the flow is off. Move quickly along the surface. Under magnification they look green. While moving they have the 2 prong like tail of other flat worms. Only zoas and shrooms in tank which look fine. Have not seen them on the corals. Also 6 line wrasse in tank but have not seen it eat them. Attached is magnified too small to take pic in tank but they are vidible to naked eye. Look like algea magnified but definitely cral along media.

any ideas?

 

[EnterName]

Here is a comparison image I took of a quite typical "ghost flatworm" under DIC microscopy. Don't mind the "hole" in its center (it tried to eat an ostracod but it ripped out of it stomach).

In your image it looks quite deformed, probably because it was in the middle of changing swimming directions or so. The slight color difference will be due to the light and the DIC prisms, etc. I also took a very small specimen (the image should be 200x magnification).

As long as the flatworms don't sit on coral tissue or skeletons they are usually fine/harmless. You can also compare yours to the ones mentioned in the hitchhiker guide.

 

[Smacks21294]

That's a match the photos I took were a little bit after making slide. Think it may have died

 

[EnterName]

That's a match the photos I took were a little bit after making slide. Think it may have died

They look like this on the glass and are harmless. The only thing that annoys me is that they are eating Copepods, but if you have the right fish, it will get rid of them for you.