I had a thin branching stag of Acropora sp. that has been STN'ing on me very slowly since being introduced to the tank 1 1/2 months ago. This coral is a wild caught colony so I had attributed the STN to that along with the fact that my tank is currently only 5 months old. The necrosis has been so slow that it has spread less than 1 inch into the colony over the past 1 1/2 months. The necrosis began spreading up a couple of the branches so I decided it was time to frag up the colony in hope that it would stop the STN. After fragging I was mounting the frags and noticed something interesting on one of them.
Can you see it in this pic?
How about now?
In the first pic you can see it on the long horizontal branch just above where the branch forks out. In the second pic you can see it just above the tweezers on the right side of the branch and right in the middle of the pic. Out of the water the flatworm just looks like a little slime on the coral. I thought it was wierd that the coral was only sliming up in one spot so I put it in a bowl of water with some Seachem Reefdip. To my suprise the spot started moving and that is when I realized it was an SPS eating flatworm that I've heard about in the past. I inspected the frag as close as I could for about 5 minutes and could only find a single flatworm. I then added some more Reefdip to the Cool Whip container filled with tank water (added a total of 1 capful of Reefdip). The flatworm still hung on. Then I vigorously shook the frag in the water and was amazed when I saw 3 more flatworms fall off the frag along with the one I already saw.
Here are a couple of the flatworms at the bottom of the Cool Whip container.
The one at the top left is curled up as I think the dip has stressed it out.
Here are some pics of the base of the main colony after fragging to show the damage caused by the flatworms. In some of the pics you will notice that about 2 weeks ago I had applied superglue to some of the affected areas to try to cauterize the wound and stop what I thought was STN.
