Thinking of breaking my reef down - here's why.

[MikeP]

Due to two pests in my tank and an impending redoing my floors (taking up carpet and doing tile) I may be breaking my 215 down for the near future. First problem is flatworms - somehow I got them I think in a trade I did with someone and after siphoning them several times a week and striking out on all attempts to find a fish predator I'm about to give up. I do not want to use flatworm exit - I'm paranoid about damaging my corals.

The flatworms are nothing though compared to bryopsis! I know where this came from - I bought a nice sized green acro colony from someone and it had some on it. I should have known better but I assumed my rabbitfish would eat it. Fast forward 4 months and it's popping up all over the tank. Any attempt to manually prune it inevitably seems to make it spread. I also had a incident with a powerhead churning up the deep sand bed in my attached refugium and I can only assume that's helping fuel the growth. I can't keep ahead of this stuff and have had no luck with predators - got two lettuc nudibranchs from reeftopia and they have hardly touched it. The algae is now starting to encroach on my sps and I'm having a fit.

Any suggestions on getting rid of this stuff before I just ditch all the rock and move my corals into my newly acquired 58?

[matt]

Can't help with the bryopsis, but I can give you some advice with flatworm exit. I have a feeling that if you have a deep sand bed, you need to re stock it heavily after using this stuff. That might have been one mistake I made when my acros crashed; the lack of sand bed life led to a build up of nutrients which the SPS could not tolerate. Now that I've restocked my sand bed heavily, including 50 bristleworms and several pounds of "invert sand" from inland, my tank is beginning to come back to health; the few SPS frags I have left are doing much better.

Good luck, Mike!

[reefer]

aquadome has a sea hare for sale in thier display "lagoon" upstairs.

[MikeP]

Hmm maybe I'll give that a try. I could live with the flatworms but the bryopsis is really really really annoying - worst algae I've ever had. Josh I am going to check Aquadome tomorrow after work and if they don't have one I'll do in ona split order with you for MDLive.

[BA]

how much are they at aquadome?

[MikeP]

Going to head to aquadome later this afternoon and see if he has any seahares. I spent two hours siphoning out flatworms into a filter bag in my sump last night. I took the bag outside to clean it in a tub of bleach and water and it turned the entire tub orange!

On the plus side I sucked up some orange and yellow zoanthids and made 4 nice frags I'll be able to give away / trade in a few weeks :)

[matt]

Mike;

You better think about getting rid of those flatworms, if they're the red planaria type. They will outcompete other sand bed animals for food, seriously depleting your sand bed diversity, and I feel certain that as their population grows and decreases, they leave a low level toxicity in your tank. Maybe if you get the bryopsis under control, you can concentrate on the flatworms. It takes a few treatments to get 'em all, and I have some suggestions for a specific process; IOW maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

[MikeP]

Mike;

You better think about getting rid of those flatworms, if they're the red planaria type. They will outcompete other sand bed animals for food, seriously depleting your sand bed diversity, and I feel certain that as their population grows and decreases, they leave a low level toxicity in your tank. Maybe if you get the bryopsis under control, you can concentrate on the flatworms. It takes a few treatments to get 'em all, and I have some suggestions for a specific process; IOW maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

Matt, I am just hesitant to use any chemicals. Between the kalkreactor and you ca reactor my stonies are taking off and I'd hate to have anything happen now. I am going to keep siphoning them down over the next week or two and when I have almost none I'm going to do FW Exit then a 60 gallon water change and some carbon.

If you have other suggestions based on your experience I'd love to hear them.

[matt]

Keep siphoning; you want to use the flatworm exit to only get ones you can't see. I would also use a 150% dose; i.e. for your 215 at least 300 drops which is basically the whole bottle. Go ahead and get 2 bottles, and keep as much water available for a change as you can. A 50% water change after treatment is not excessive. Once you dose the whole bottle, many more flatworms will become visible as they die and rise off the sand/rocks. Siphon those out as well as you can. When I did my tank, I siphoned about 20 gallons of water through tubing about the size of airline tubing. Then, wait an hour or so before starting up the carbon, especially if you've done a good job siphoning, make sure you have really good circulation during this time. The typical problem is that if your circulation isn't great, there will be low flow area in your tank in which flatworms survive; that's really hard to avoid. Okay, make sure your carbon is in a canister with some pressure, and use ALOT, like 4 lbs for your tank. Probably you're looking at 2 canisters. For the June meeting, I'm making one of those as a demonstration of acrylic fabrication, so if you can go to that, you can make a couple your self; they're cheap and easy. (Just like some women I've met....)

Then, after running the carbon and changing some water, you can let your tank recover from that for a week, and check for survivors. There are always a few. At that point, you can dump in the other bottle, and let it circulate for several hours. At this point it's much less toxic because there are far fewer flatworms. Anyhow, siphon out any you can see (unlikely) and after several hours, maybe 6-12 depending on how things look, run new carbon/change some water. Then, after another week, I'd seriously recharge your sand with some new live sand. Running carbon and big water changes are probably not a bad idea.

I know this is a labor intensive process, but I think it's probably the best way to use the stuff. "Think" is the operative word, though; i really still don't know what caused my problems. Shimek and Borneman both replied to my posts that is was probably the flatworms releasing enough toxins into the water over time as to disrupt the function of my sand bed. I also think I never stocked the sand enough, and fed heavily as I introduced several large colonies into the tank when I first set it up. I.E., old corals, new sand bed, plus a pretty sizable fish load. Throughout this whole process, the clams and LPS corals did fine; I think they may be a little more tolerant of dissolved nutrients. Just a guess; now I have a much more stocked sand bed, and far fewer corals to feed. Although my tank is still accumulating a little nuisance algae, it's MUCH better than it was at the worst of my situation.

There you have my experience, and I hope yours is better! Good luck.