Stinkin' Planaria! NOT Harmless! I'm zappin' em.

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J

JakeH

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Mar 17, 2009
1,961
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Houston, TX
Apparently its well known that these worms will attack & eat baby shrimp as they are released from the female, burrow into molting shrimp, and swim into & kill females while laying. Ok great, but I found almost nothing about their interaction with snails & everything I did find said they were harmless & to just feed less! These stupid worms just killed off an entire generation of my ramshorn & pond snail population. Honestly, MFK needs a LOT more info about these little predatory monsters.

I have no idea how these things just exploded into my 30g rubbermaid snail farm overnight, but they have killed at least 100 baby snails in 2 days. Yes, I tested the water params & they're fine. It's definitely the dang worms & now there's like 10million of them in that tank. Of course I did a serious gravel-vac & water swap first, but there wasn't enough crud in there to be causing this outbreak, so I'm zapping them. I was going to use the dog deworming powder (fenbendazole, as recommended by the shrimpers) to clear them, but I'm trying Praziquantel first, since its made for tanks & I know it kills every other roundworm out there. Anybody else have this problem?
 
Now that you mention it, yes! I've been wondering why the two bladder snails in my LMB tank haven't had any batches make it to adulthood, and the planaria are doing well in there. Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to avoid spreading them to other tanks, even though I think they're awesome.

I'd expect them to eat fry and shrimp, for sure, but snails are a new one to me!

Good idea to use dewormer as a kill. *crosses fingers for you*
 
Oh, they definitely go after snails. The snail will float at the surface on his back, writhing around in pain, then go clear & dead in hours. I pulled one out with a black plastic spoon as he was struggling & as I was looking closely at the snail, a huge planarian worm came right out of his foot. They drill into a snail's soft body like a hot knife thru butter. Horrible. BTW, I think I figured out how this explosion of worms happened--There was a small pocket of "mung" trapped in a corner below the intake to the pump, right where I couldn't see it. If one planaria went into that pump & got chopped up, I'd get like 100, if 2 of those go in, now I have probably 400+... BTW, prazi is burnin 'em up! Snails are fine, though.
 
Hey Lupe! Thanks for chiming in! I'm not sure why its so rare, but you're right--there is almost no info out there regarding this. Obviously I would expect a mass of planaria on a snail that was already dead, but they are attacking healthy snails here. I grabbed a pondy this morning that was not visibly distressed in any way & "sacrificed" him only to find 20-30 planaria inside his shell! Either way, the Prazi is still wreckin shop & hopefully they're all gone by Monday. If not, time to try the fenbendrazole.
 
Just cleaning up the last of the stragglers now! It seems they bundle together in a worm-mass-ball thingy & are somehow protected from the chems...I'll break up their party with a plastic spoon & 15 or 20 will scatter, but once they are free-floating they immediately start to writhe & break their swimming rhythm, then shrivel very quickly. I'm using a combo of Prazi & diflubenzuron in the water, then feeding anti-parasite food containing levimasole. Snails are becoming much more active now.
 
Wow. Impressive. Would you mind posting pics of them forming in balls and breaking up? Nice way to document this.:D
 
I'll grab the camera from home tonight & try to get a pic of it, but I'm not sure if I have any worm-balls left! When I started finding those & realized the chems weren't effective on the balled-up worms, I went through & pulled out every one I could find. The balls were only maybe 1/4 to 1/2 an inch in diameter (usually attached to a remnant food pellet), but I bet there was 50 worms in each ball. I just threw the balls in the trash instead of releasing them into the water & waiting for the chems to knock them out... They are actually tough to see because the worms look white by themselves, but when they mass like that, it looks orangish-brown, so it's hard to spot them on the plants. Again, the snails seem much happier now & I'm seeing a lot more of my ramshorns especially, but I can still see single worms swimming around after I disturb the plants. I'd say 80% effective so far, but I'm gonna give it a few more days.
 
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