Hello all! I'm a new member, though I've been coming to AC for many years now for questions I had.
Unfortunately this time, there are no current threads (to my knowledge) that answer my question.
Here's a little backstory:
A couple of years ago I attained a bunch of microorganisms & scuds from a creek that runs behind my house in Central Florida. I had planned to start a scud culture from the ones I caught. Naïve as I was, I immediately began feeding my tank scuds from that culture. A couple months later I had a camallanus worm outbreak, which ended in me losing my entire tank, including a pair of breeding angelfish. I do not want that, nor any other parasitic infestation to happen again.
My culture is in an old 30g tank outside, with nothing but water, detritus, algae, duckweed, scuds, daphnia, and some sort of wriggling white worms. My theory is that since there haven't been any vertebrates in the tank for well over a year, parasites would have no substantial food source, and eventually die out. I understand that many parasitic planaria have a 2 or 3 stage life cycle; egg->intermediate host(invertebrate such as scuds)->final host (in this case, fish). The 2 stage parasitic planaria would bypass the intermediate host, and go straight for another fish.
However, there are also scavenger and herbivorous planaria as well, which is what I believe these little things to be. My question is: Is it possible for a colony of parasitic planaria to survive over a year with only intermediate hosts? Or are the little white worms wriggling about in an 'S' shape simply little herbivores?
As silly as it is for me to keep wild scuds rather than to bypass the worry and order a colony online, I've enjoyed these little guys as 'pets' I guess you could say, and want to keep this colony going. There must be thousands in there.
Unfortunately this time, there are no current threads (to my knowledge) that answer my question.
Here's a little backstory:
A couple of years ago I attained a bunch of microorganisms & scuds from a creek that runs behind my house in Central Florida. I had planned to start a scud culture from the ones I caught. Naïve as I was, I immediately began feeding my tank scuds from that culture. A couple months later I had a camallanus worm outbreak, which ended in me losing my entire tank, including a pair of breeding angelfish. I do not want that, nor any other parasitic infestation to happen again.
My culture is in an old 30g tank outside, with nothing but water, detritus, algae, duckweed, scuds, daphnia, and some sort of wriggling white worms. My theory is that since there haven't been any vertebrates in the tank for well over a year, parasites would have no substantial food source, and eventually die out. I understand that many parasitic planaria have a 2 or 3 stage life cycle; egg->intermediate host(invertebrate such as scuds)->final host (in this case, fish). The 2 stage parasitic planaria would bypass the intermediate host, and go straight for another fish.
However, there are also scavenger and herbivorous planaria as well, which is what I believe these little things to be. My question is: Is it possible for a colony of parasitic planaria to survive over a year with only intermediate hosts? Or are the little white worms wriggling about in an 'S' shape simply little herbivores?
As silly as it is for me to keep wild scuds rather than to bypass the worry and order a colony online, I've enjoyed these little guys as 'pets' I guess you could say, and want to keep this colony going. There must be thousands in there.
