red mites on zoos?

[scuba_steveo]

I just noticed some little red bugs on some of my blue zoos. I only have one acro frag and they are not one that. I do not have a camera right now (sent to canon to fit screen) but i will in a few days. Could it be red mites? What ever they are they have made several of my blue zoos close up and I am affraid they will continue to move through the colony. When I touch them they move and hide. Please help.

[Tim Marvin]

These red mites live on acro's that we have dealt with. They are so tiny you almost need a microscope to see them, and they only live on certain acropora. I can almost be certain you don't have them.

[scuba_steveo]

ok, well if its not that (and I do not think it is either), then what are they? they are bugs of some sort. the individual zoos that they are on are closed. they are small but large enough to see with the naked eye easily. i will try to get pics soon but just imagine a bunch of small red slug like bugs

[Gator]

could they be flatworms

[matt]

Better hope they're not the dreaded planaria flatworms; red/brown with three "points" along the posterior end. Ron Shimek has a good flatworm ID article linked to from his author forum on reef central.

BTW Gator, so I don't leave you with nothing but bad news, your kalk reactor is coming along nicely and should be finished by the weekend. I came up with a cool (I hope) solution to the input problem, and we should be good to go soon.

[scuba_steveo]

if anyone know about these things, can you please come over to id? i am starting to get worried!

[Instar]

I tried again to upload a picture but can't load into the general discussion forum any more. Don't know why, can load them everywhere else.
Anyway, I'll id them for you. Sounds like it may be some of the bugs I've been trying to get my hands on, so, please don't wipe them out. Anyway, wiping things out sometimes has consequences, so it should be planned anyway. What city are you in, your profile is not filled out?

[scuba_steveo]

I looked at some pictures of red planaria at RC and I read some of Dr. Ron's info on them. He says that they are not red but more brown. What I have are red for sure. So I am still trying to figure out what exactly they are before I can choose (with the help of this board) a course of action.

[scuba_steveo]

:o

[scuba_steveo]

Thanks to Larry who came over last night and helped me out. So they were red planaria flatworms. So far I have only seen them on the end of my red tunicate encrusted in blue zoos. Attached is a pic of it when it was healthy. We removed the piece from the tank and put it in a small container with tank water. We removed as many flatworms that we could and then performed a 10 second RO water dip. I container of RO was filled with flatworms. We performed another RO dip after letting some time go by and this time there were not as many but still a lot of flatworms that came off. On the third RO dip no additional flatworms came off and the piece went back into the main tank. So far (knock on wood) I can’t see any more flatworms in the tank.

The zoos were susceptible to the flatworms because my branching hammer had grown over to the zoos and were stinging them. The only zoos that had the flatworms on them were the ones in contact with the hammer. The hammer did not, as far as I can tell, have any flatworms on it.

I will keep this thread updated on the success or failure of the treatment.

Larry thanks again.