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flatworms in sump...WWYD? (1 Viewer)

BEAV9900

BEAV9900

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I've had red flatworms for a while. Noticed them in my display so I started the routine of siphoning them out. Then I picked up a starki damsel who from I have seen has wiped them out of my display. My problem now is there is an abundance of them in my sump/refugium. Since the sump us on the ground, it's hard to siphon anything. I'm worried about using flatworm exit since it will be tough to siphon out the dead worms. Could throw a wrasse in there but with my skimmer and no top I'm worried it would be destined for death. Any thoughts?

Refugium is packed right now with lots of LR, DSB, basketball size amount of cheato, some random frags, other macro algaes.
 
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I do actually. I used it once with my hose outside. Maybe I wasn't using it 100% correctly but it just seemed to waste so much water to get a little out of the tank. Might have to try it again though.
 
Can I ask where you found the Starki? I've given up on my Melanurus or Six line wrasse they seem to have no interest in the red flatworms in my tank. Anyone interested I'm thinking to Re-home both of them and maybe I'll try a Chromis wrasse and or the Starki
 
Jen @ new wave was able to find me one. They were a little harder to come by but definitely touch base with new wave. Check with Travis on here
 
Maybe try to get one of those bucketheads from HD. It's a cheap version of a shopvac. I have on specifically for my aquariums
 
cheezybuda said:
Maybe try to get one of those bucketheads from HD. It's a cheap version of a shopvac. I have on specifically for my aquariums
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Dang it Dustin! You beat me to it!
I also use a Buckethead vacuum specifically for cleaning out my sump.
If you add a nozzle attachment to the hose you can siphon with more control and get into tighter spaces.
 
Are the flatworms actually causing any problems? I realize sometimes they can get super abundant, and sometimes they can bother corals, but personally when I have had them in the past they never hurt anything (even when they were pretty abundant). Maybe I was just lucky though.
 
At least twice a year, I use a pump to drain out as much of the sump as possible. The rest I get with shopvac ( actually the buckethead mentioned above ). You could take the sump offline do the flatworm treatments, carbon and replace as much water as possible. Bring it online after a few days. Showtank should be fine short term without a sump, just move the heater and temp probes to the showtank for a few days.
 
capman said:
Are the flatworms actually causing any problems? I realize sometimes they can get super abundant, and sometimes they can bother corals, but personally when I have had them in the past they never hurt anything (even when they were pretty abundant). Maybe I was just lucky though.
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Not really. Just unsightly I guess. And I'm looking to add a frag grow out section to the sump so I'd like to eliminate them as much as possible so I don't pass them along to other people.
 
David Grigor said:
At least twice a year, I use a pump to drain out as much of the sump as possible. The rest I get with shopvac ( actually the buckethead mentioned above ). You could take the sump offline do the flatworm treatments, carbon and replace as much water as possible. Bring it online after a few days. Showtank should be fine short term without a sump, just move the heater and temp probes to the showtank for a few days.
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That's probably the plan. The sump is in need of a good cleaning anyway. I'm assuming since I have a DSB in my fuge area I want to avoid disturbing that as much as possible?

Would doing a 20 gallon water change cause any problems? That's close to 50% of my total water.
 
BEAV9900 said:
Not really. Just unsightly I guess. And I'm looking to add a frag grow out section to the sump so I'd like to eliminate them as much as possible so I don't pass them along to other people.
Click to expand...

Personally, I always sort of thought these flatworms were kind of cool little things. I do understand wanting to rid them from a frag tank in particular though, for the reason you stated.

David's suggestion makes lots of sense.
 
Update. Last night I used a 25 ft piece of airline tube and ran it out the window and down a floor in order to create the siphon from my sump. I got out as many flatworms as I could see. Then took display tank offline and started with 20 drops of FWE. It recommends 4 per 5 gallons. I waited a while and didn't see any floaters, per their instructions I added 10 more drops. Again didn't see any dead FW's floating around. I didn't want to add any more product so will check around tonight and evaluate.

I noticed the FW's were congregating in my cheato so I diced to toss half of it out and then dipped the rest in a 5 gal bucket separately with some FWE.

Not really sure it worked? Or maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. I'll do some digging around tonight and then decide if I'll do another treatment next week.
 
Without any predation down there, they will likely come back as well as you think the fish is doing in the show tank they likely still exist in very small numbers and will just reappear. Like others have said, drained and dried my sump to keep under control or remove the light source.

This what what happens with refugiums eventually, all the pests critters and pest algaes ( like the red cotton candy type stuff ) end up down there and really more trouble than it's worth. I don't do refugiums anymore for this reason.
 
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