What the HECK is This. ID Plz. It's Killing My Leather

euphoria

euphoria

Active Member
Hi everyone,
My leather hasn't been looking its best lately, it's all dangling down and unhealthy looking.
Today I found this stuff around the base of the leather, and the base had kinda turned black and was eaten away.
This stuff I found was bunched up in a big pile around the base. Each one, as can be seen in the pics, is about half an inch long, and has the shape of a tree leaf. It's milky white in color and kind of transparent in some places. The texture is very slimy. They are moving around slowly, so I'm positive they are some sort of worms or parasite or something. Some were separate, and some, as can be seen in the last pic, were piled up on each other in a group.
Please ID this if you can and tell me what it is. If you need more details let me know. Also, when I touched the leather's base, there was this white milky fluid coming out of it, kinda like the color of smoke. Can that damage other corals?
Thanks
:help:
 
euphoria

euphoria

Active Member
more, sorry for the quality, but that's the best I could do.
Also, when I look closely at them, there's this stuff inside the body that looks like the branches of a tree, except white in color. Kinda resembles how veins spread inside our bodies.
 
sweetreef

sweetreef

Active Member
Madarins eat flat worms and velvet nudibranch as well but i wouldnt put a madarin in your tank unless you have a mature sandbed other wise they starve
 
euphoria

euphoria

Active Member
I have neither of those. Are flatworms bad for the tank or the corals? Do any other fish or inverts eat them?
 
firedad720

firedad720

Member
every thing i've heard about flat worms is bad. not an expert though. they sell a "flatworm exit" i think it's from salifert. i've heard it works good.
rick
 
bigarn

bigarn

Active Member
I think the white ones mainly eat pods. The darker ones are the bad guys, they'll eat corals and such. :D
 
sweetreef

sweetreef

Active Member
you can try and siphon them out... And detritus and other nutrients are flat worms main food sourse...How offten do you feed your fish and corals in your tank?
 
007

007

Active Member

Originally posted by sweetreef
Madarins eat flat worms
yeah . . . not really though. Mandarin fish eat live copepods. Not flatworms.
Also, many flatworms are photosynthetic. This is why you will see them sunbathing on corals which is how they can kill them.
What you have in the picture to me looks like a variety of nudbrach that feeds on sarcophyton corals. The only method of removal that I am aware of is manual removal. Do you have a lot of leathers in the tank?
 
flatzboy

flatzboy

Active Member
My guess would also be some sort of nudi I'm not real familar with them though but they don't look like any flatforms i've seen. :D
 
euphoria

euphoria

Active Member
I have only this one leather in the tank. I manually removed all of them, but the question is how did they show up there in the first place? What causes them to be created?
Also, I'm not sure what the final verdict is, are they flatworms or nudibranch?
The part of my leather that they gather around on, it was damaged a week before from my bubble coral being in contact with it. The part went black and I could actually use my finger to peel off the damaged black skin. After that I started seeing the white s*** all over that spot. And when I move the branches around, this milky stuff comes from inside of it. I don't know what it is.
Anyways, thanks for all the inputs guys. Any more info would be helpful. So far I don't see any of them inside, but since they appeared out of nowhere, they will probably appear again.
So what do I do?
 
euphoria

euphoria

Active Member

Originally posted by sweetreef
you can try and siphon them out... And detritus and other nutrients are flat worms main food sourse...How offten do you feed your fish and corals in your tank?
I don't feed my corals at all. I feed my fish every other day or sometimes every day (just to spoil them a little) and small amounts, so as far as overfeeding, that's not a problem.
 
007

007

Active Member
they can hitchike their way in on anything that you put into your tank. If you only have the one leather, and it is easily moved, place it into a higher flow area to blow the open wound site. You want to keep it from building up detritues and rotting. The milky stuff you are seeing is the corals attempt at a band aid.
As long as you don't see any at the base, place the coral into a higher flow area and keep an eye on it. Leathers are hardy corals so its likely that it will recover. Just keep a close eye on it for the next couple weeks. It could take a month or two for it to fully recover depending on the severity of the damage.
 
euphoria

euphoria

Active Member
For now it's in a high flow area, but still looks wilted. I will wait out and hope it will recover :D Thanks
 
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