Explosion of tiny creatures.. Many questions

[Scottii2coope18]

Hi all

 

Look I've had a nano up and running for roughly 2 months now. And I've had my first ever in counter with flat worms......

 

I can feel every reefer shuddering

 

So I've sucked all the little suckers out well as much as possible? And waiting on flatworm exit to arrive in the mail.

 

So my question is could flat worms effect things that much like the horror stories I'm sure many have read...

 

Also I've got an explosion ATM of Copepods the glass is covered and at night my tank looks like a horror movie of little bags crawling everywhere!!!!!! And one or two bristleworms

 

Should I be concerned?

I know they are natural creatures found in the ocean and as reefers we strive to get our tanks to be as natural as possible inside 5 panels of glass.

But is to many bad?

 

Some information on these topics be awesome as the information out there is rather conflicting.

[Cubeman]

I have endured flatworms in several of my past setups and they never reached plague proportions so I didn't worry about them. However I had a 90 gallon all sps tank that had an infestation so large that the corals weren't getting enough light so I resorted to using flat worm exit. After doing a lot of reading before using it I found a lot of reefers stating they had to use triple and quadruple the dosage for it to be effective. After 2 treatments I found I also had to use 4x the stated dosage to get a complete kill. My advice on flatworms is unless they have become extremely unsightly or are affecting the tanks inhabitants the population will sometimes find a natural acceptable level.

 

Regarding the explosion of copepods you will likely find in about a month this will have passed. The population can become so large that it becomes untenable and reduces to a sustainable level. Pods are great and the more you have the better but they do go through up/down cycles which is also affected whenever you ad pod eating livestock. Bottom line - just enjoy them.

[flyntus]

I wouldn't be too concerned about the copepods (zooplankton) outbreak. Same thing happened with my nanocube after about two weeks starting up. The population exploded and must have reached an unsustainable level. Many of them died and became exoskeleton snow. After three months now, they occasionally pop up, but are happily consumed by my firefish goby!

[Seiryoku]

Careful when you use the Flatworm Exit as flatworms release a toxin, from what I understand, when they die. Too many in your tank die at once and it is bad for the inhabitants. I'd siphon out as many as possible before using the Flatworm Exit and have water change water ready to do after using it.

[kismetsh]

What kind of flatworms are they? Not all of them are harmful.

[xerophyte_nyc]

It's all part of the infamous "cycle" - some stuff you see, like pods and flatworms, some stuff you don't see, like bacterial fluctuations. Let things develop on their own and enjoy the show!

[Loud_Silence]

There was a site that was recommended to me when I was starting and it helped me a lot when trying to determine what is considered "good" and "bad".

 

http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml

 

Hope this helps you.