Red Planaria Flat Worms And Your Beloved Fish

I am sure many of us have heard of these flatworms that can quickly and easily infest our tanks. But many are finding that the consequences of getting rid of these pests are catastrophic. So catastrophic in that they can and will wipe out your fish population in less than 24 hrs. Yikes!

A lot of people have the misconception that the medication, such as FlatWorm Exit, kills the fish. In fact, the medication doesn’t even have an effect on the fish. It is the toxins released by these worms that have a negative impact on the fish’s neurological state. By eradicating the worms, you allow them to release an unknown toxin. I tend to believe that they behave as such for self preservation, as it is their only defensive response.

Here is a story from Taqpol, on RC:

I have been having planaria flatworm troubles for a few months now so yesterday I finally pulled the trigger on dosing my tank with Salifert Flatworm Exit. For two days before hand I siphoned out every visible flatworm I could see and yesterday at 6:00pm I added three capfuls (twice the recommended dose, standard practice for everyone I’ve talked too) of Flatworm Exit straight to my 120 gallon approximate system volume tank. Within five minutes the tank had literally turned red from floating, dead flatworms and a yellow chemical was settling down to the bottom. I immediately started skimming wet, ran a TLF reactor full of carbon, and started a ~15g water change, all while netting out/siphoning out as many flatworms as I could. All coral polyp extension shut down immediately, but most of it was back within six hours.

I woke up this morning and both tangs (Powder Blue and a Scopas) looked absolutely horrible. They were slowly swimming in circles in the middle of my tank, pectoral fins flapping, with their stress colors completely out. They refused to eat a any of their favorite nori or any other food. At this point I did another 5 gallon water change.

It is now 4:30, both fish are still floating behind the rockwork and under the overflow, they seem completely unresponsive and extremely pale. Both fish have dark color expanding backwards from behind their eyes.

Sad, really. Those fish are gonners.

Here is another horror story from TheReefTank.com :

I am posting this not to say Salifert FWE is a bad product but to warn anyone else that may be considering it’s use to be extremely cautious . I have suspicions as to where I got the flatworms but they are now

out of biz so I won’t go there.friday and LPS tank last softieI HAD a very beautiful 200 gal

Anyhow, I read and read and read before I used the product because I have a Sea Apple and I didn’t want to piss him off.

I blew off the rocks and vac’d up FW’s and blew and vac’d several times and then I thought I was safe.

I put in the FWE as directed and within 5 min the tank had turned very yellow. I started the carbon and a 25% water change. All of my corals closed up immeadiatly, the fish all went into hiding and the skimmer went crazy.

Things were not looking good. I ran to Walmart and bought another 50 gal of water and mixed up another batch real quick and as soon as the readings were OK I changed some more water. I drained 75 gal but replaced 50 so I would have a better concentration of clean water.

I spent ALL day Sunday moving rocks and corals and cleaning. changed out another 50 gal and this morning I am left with One Sea Apple, a small blue with yellow tail damsal and I saw my mandarin goby at some point while cleaning. All the other fish are history Purple Tang, Light Blue Tang, Pajama’s, Lawnmower Blenny, Scooter Blenny, Cleaner shrimp, 10 Peppermint shrimp

, cup coral, candy canes, Zoos all gone.frogspawns, I even saw bristle worms writhing and die. Not one of my corals has come out of it yet,

I am certainly happy that my favorite animal the Sea Apple seems to have come through this but I am so saddened by this I am considering calling it quits. This is my first real loss in the 8 years I have been tending to my ocean and it hurts real bad.

The moral of the story is if you have FW’s and are thinking of FWE. put all of your fish and inverts in a hospital tank. Maybe do a separate dip of your corals. and PRAY.

I hope that in some way my loss will help someone else in this situation. FWE is NOT as safe as the box would have you believe.

Some might say that the sea apple was the culprit for all of this. Sure that may be the case, but while treating your tank,  you must be aware of what types of invertebrates are more sensitive to these types of treatments.

But, there are some sucess stories, just like this one from Reef Central:

I broke down today and went forward with a flatworm treatment. I was very apprehensive after all the horror stories that I have read about….. I followed the usually steps of siphoning off as many visible flatworms as possible. I would say that I had a moderate infestation. I replaced carbon and GFO in my 2 tlf reactors yesterday and ran the entire time when proceeding with the treatment. After dosing with the FW eXit, I started doing water changes from my RODI resevoir. I did one about every half hour for two hours. Every time I removed hundreds if not thousands more flatworms. Fish seemed a bit stressed within 20 minutes. Coral polyps retracted as well pretty quickly. Now about 6 hours later fish seem to be returning to normal but still a twitch now and then. Coral polyps are beginning to come back out. There are still a few visible flatworms on the sandbed, not sure if they are still alive, dying or healthy?? I plan on doing another treatment in a few days if even one FW is visible. I would have to say that my diligence in consecutive water changes had significant benefits… If I didn’t and just let the little buggers die out in the tank I think the tank would have crashed. I will keep everyone up to date, so far things are looking good… Keeping my fingers crossed that they continue!!

The common theme for most of the success stories seems to be to do a lot of water changes. Frequency and quantity are the key. Notwithstanding using a lot of carbon, and syphoning each of the flatworms from the water column.

If you are still scared, I would suggest to use a couple of fish for control. Either a Spotted Mandarin(Synchiropus picturatus ), Seagrass Wrasse(Novaculichthys macrolepidotus), Sixline Wrasse(Pseudocheilinus hexataenia), and/or Christmas Wrasse (Halichoeres ornatissimus). They were all reported to hold them at bay.

So try some natural methods of eradication, before you apply the chemical. If you have some tips for our readers, please share them in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. A Transparent Head On A Fish?
2. Three fish that don’t belong in any aquarium
3. Fish, Bags, and The Double Check
4. A Proper Quarantine Tank Setup
5. MACNA Day 2: Getting your fish to eat

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