Flat slug thing?

[Bobalouy]

I was walking past the side of my tank, and saw what looked like some kind of mold on my LR. Then it started moving, looks like slime crawling around. I took some quick pics, but the flash scared it back into a hole. It couldnt fit all the way in its hole though because it had a big lump. after about 10mins I came back to find an empty baby stomatella shell by the hole.

 

The white lump is the stomatella.

Close up

[janasleah]

Some type of flatworm????

[Bobalouy]

Oh yeah it was about 1.5 Inches, do flat worms get that big?

[reef hugger]

That appears to be a flatworm. I don't have an exact id for you because, it is very hard to tell from that pic the majority of the body characteristics. All flatworm are predatory. If it did eat the Stomatella snail then it is probably not going to be reef safe. I would try catching it cause, chances are that you don't want to leave it in your tank. If you do catch it, I would love to see some more pics of it.

[Bobalouy]

Thanks, Yeah now that I looked at http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~bu6/ is definatly a flat worm.

 

This guy looks pretty close:

http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~bu6/flat0165.html

 

I'll try to catch him if I ever see it again, but this is the first time since I set up the tank.

[Bobalouy]

Well for an update on this guy, I have not seen him since, but all of my stomatella are now dead. Nothing left but shells. Even the biger ones that were an inch in length.

[Caesar777]

Wow. Yeah, predatory flatworm. And they can get very big, depending on the species. Post on Dr. Ron's forum, ask him how to catch it.