Well I lost most of my fish to flatworm exit

bnalamarie

bnalamarie

New Member
I feel so bad I think I might just give up and sell whatever is left in my tank!!
I did everything in the instructions and I lost things I have had for 6 plus years, my corals are all pretty burned and what fish I have left are blind and will die a slow death. I am just sick................Whatever anybody does dont try that stuff!! it isnt worth it I think my urchin might have ate the flat worms ever since I had my tank once he died the flat worms took over?? I wonder??
 
S

stevenpro

Guest
You are not the first person/post I have read where the tank crashed after dosing with something to kill flatworms. The problem is with the flatworms though and not necessarily the treatment. The common red flatworm is deadly toxic. Killing them in mass releases those toxins and takes out a lot of other things in the process.
 
poniegirl

poniegirl

Active Member
Originally Posted by cjml
:help: Hello-what are flatworms????Thanks!
Search the forum for flatworm. cjml, we don't have them. We have wrasse fish, instead.
 
puffer32

puffer32

Active Member
Wow, I don't know what happened with your treatment, but it doesn't make sense since you followed all the directions :notsure: I had a bad infestation in my 150 DT and my 15 gal nano, and used flatworm exit, nothing in either tank died but a few tiny slugs. The 15 gal was the worse, when the flatworms died it looked like my tank was raining red drops, and the sand was literally covered with dead worms,made me nervous so I did a 50% water change immediately. Syhoned the dead ones off the sand. I think thats was the key. People are afraid to change out that much water at a time, but if you have a good bioload and a healthy tank, it doesn't hurt at all, have heard of people doing even larger water changing when the need arises. I did a 30% water change in the 150 because the infestation wasn't as bad as the nano, so not as much toxin.
I am so sorry this happened to you!
 
my way

my way

Active Member
When you say you did everything in the directions, did that include adding fresh carbon and water changes after the treatment?
 
chipmaker

chipmaker

Active Member
For osme reason or other, I just can not fathom all those losses. I have used Salifert Flat Worm exit on numerous occassions and have never had a problem. I kow lots of folks who have used it and never had a problem. Evidently there was some parts of the directions that were not followed as defined as its just not that harmfull.
I helped the lfs here dose a bunch of their tanks one day and one tank in particular was heavily infested with flatworms, so it took considerable time to syphon out as many worms alive as possible before treating, and after they started to die we syphoned up as many as possible as we could as well. Getting rid of as many live worms before hand and as many dead worms after is important, as is using activated carbon and a water change or two.
 
Chasmodes

Chasmodes

Member
I don't know about the interactions of flatworms and fish. It's possible that blindness could result from some sort of parasitic infestation, but IMHO the fish may have suffered from nutritional blindness. Fish that require a lot of sponge or veggies in their diet often fall victim to nutritional blindness (angelfish for example are notorious for this). That isn't to say that you didn't try to feed them properly, rather, the fish may not have eaten enough of what you fed them...
Don't give up. At some point this hobby brought you great joy or you wouldn't have stuck it out this long. Hang in there Marie!
Edit: ah, I just thought about this a second, there could have been an internal parasitic infestation in the fish that could cause nutritional deficiencies leading to blindness.
 
jon321

jon321

Member
Ive never see/heard of problems with it myself. Why did your urchin die? They basically do not die of old age as they can live from 30 to over 100 years depending on the species. Mabe something else is to blame?
Jon
 
chipmaker

chipmaker

Active Member
I have it on good source that all Flat Worm exit is, is Ivermectin........a you guessed it a common wormer used to erradicate worms in cattle, pigs, horses etc as well as heart and other worms in dogs. Now if thats the case those ocmpanies sure are getting rich on it as a 100ml bottle of Ivermiextrin is only like $25 at local farmers co-op.....and that little bottle will surely fill a bunch of the small containers they package flatworm exit in. I have sucked up a bunch of flatworms oout of a tank here, and still want to get a few more but probably have more tha enough in a 2 gal piico tank to run a test on, and I will see first hand if it is Ivomec or not, as I will dose them along with a few corals and maybe a ***** $3.49 damsel and see what happens. Hopefully by Monday I should know it works or not....
 
cjml

cjml

Member
Originally Posted by PonieGirl
Search the forum for flatworm. cjml, we don't have them. We have wrasse fish, instead.
So we are safe from these bad creatures?? Love my wrasses!! :happyfish :happyfish
 
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