Red slim moving about the tank? animal or algae?

OhioOilMan

OhioOilMan

AC Members
Mar 1, 2008
314
0
0
Portsmouth Ohio
Real Name
Ryan Lore
Greetings everyone and hope you had a Great Holiday season.
This morning as I turned on the lights for the day I had noticed what appeared to be a light red colored patch of some sort of algae but within a few minutes of having the day lights on it quickly darted back into a small hole in the live rock. at first I thought I was seeing things but as I poured in some frozen brine shrimp at feeding time I noticed it crept back out slowly as if it had smelled the food. I'm not new to salt water but this is the first time that I have noticed anything like this. It has no relative shape its flat and covers an area of the live rock like algae. any suggestions?
 
I keep the digital camera close to the tank so that if it comes out I will post a pic for yall.
 
I am thinking it may be a flatworm. It is red in color and I had only noticed it a few times whenever I was feeding the other critters in my tank. its almost a red to dark orange color. If this is a flat worm are they predatory? will they harm my corals or other inverts? should I try to get rid of it or should I just let it live out its life in the tank?
 
Ok I have done some google searching on this and it appears to be a flat worm. but when I read some of the info on them some say they are harmless in a reef tank some say to remove and kill then as the feed on small feather dusters and other smaller inverts. should I remove it or just let it be???
 
Flatworms in very small numbers are harmless, however, they reproduce like wildfire, and effectivly block out light to photosynthetic corals...thus, causing damage...always best to get rid of them..
 
OhioOilMan said:
Ok I have done some google searching on this and it appears to be a flat worm. but when I read some of the info on them some say they are harmless in a reef tank some say to remove and kill then as the feed on small feather dusters and other smaller inverts. should I remove it or just let it be???
Click to expand...

How big is it? If it is one of the polyclads, which are larger, it's probably bad news. They are all predatory on one organism or another.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom