weird orange flakes in my tank HELP!

pics would help

 

Yea can't realy tell you much without some pics.

 

I have seen small orange / pink looking things on the bottom of my tank before only a few here and there they are usually gone in a hour or so.
I think they are the skeleton of a shrimp shedding. this probaly not much help.
like they say a pic is worth a _____ I don't know how many words.

 

might be flat worms

 

i was kinda thinking flatworms too

 

is this what you have
http://images.google.com/images?q=red+planeria&biw=1362&bih=560

 

Agreed, sounds just like planaria/flatworms. Look on your soft corals, such as mushrooms, any zoas, but they also will sit on lps such as frogspawn. There is a product called Flatworm Exit, but its rather pricey at ~$20 for a tiny bottle. Better maintainance can help get rid of them, check your parameters and make sure nitrates and phosphates are ok. I've also read keeping your alkalinity up in the 8.5-6 area helps. Some say certain wrasses eat them, I dunno though, probably one of those hit or miss things whether they will or not.

 

yellow corry wrasse will decimate em. no hit or miss, its all hit.

 

I have heard that a six line will eat them.

 

oops, meant to say pH ~ 8.6, but that was probably obvious /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif

 

Use a piece of airline and siphon as many as you can out when you do your water change. This will reduce their numbers.

 

That's pretty much what I do. I use a turkey baster to blow them off the rocks, then siphon off the sand. It keeps them pretty well in check. But a predator like a wrasse would be better to eliminate them. Hung at Sea of Marvel puts a yellow damsel in all of his reef tanks to keep the flatworms under control. 

 

I had tens of thousands of them when I started looking for a soln to the planaria problem. Every inch of rock was covered with planaria layered ontop of eachother maybe even a hundred thousand in a 75. I got a small h.. melenurus wasse and they entirely dissappaered in about 2 weeks. I still have them in a biocube that's attached to my main tank so I'm certain he gets a feeding of them occassionally. 4 years later he's my fav fish and about 6" long, fat and happy, and tough as nails!