I. hate. planaria.

vampie

vampie

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Oct 25, 2006
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So I woke up this morning to find what must be a hundred little white things crawling the walls of my 10g, and I thought "Oh darn, those planaria I got rid off months ago are back". But wait! They have shells! So I opened the hood to find that one of my Mystery snail clutches have hatched, and what do you know, all those things crawling about were baby snails! :) Really something, it hasn't even been three weeks since I bought the parents.

So I went on with the rest of my morning - took my happy shower, ate my happy breakfast, and when I returned to the tank to take another look, I spotted a planaria feasting on one of the newborn babies. I ended up catching three more throughout the day, so apparently yes, they have made their way back.

/rant

Gosh I hope they don't end up doing a number on the newborns.
 
I suggest doing a 25% water change and cut back on feeding for a while
 
I was told a bunch of times that planaria are harmless. Are you sure they're planaria?
 
NeonFlux said:
I suggest doing a 25% water change and cut back on feeding for a while
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This wouldn't help much in this case unfortunately. The planaria already have a food source in the snails, and cutting back on feeding will only starve the snails themselves. I'm probably not going the dewormer or brackbombing route either, since I'm not sure how well baby snails will handle that.. looks like I'll be sticking with the manual removal part for awhile.

captmicha said:
I was told a bunch of times that planaria are harmless. Are you sure they're planaria?
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Yep, I'm sure. They are harmless to most things, so what you've been told isn't wrong, but to small snails, they can be a real pain.
 
How do you manually remove them?? Have you tried a trap for them? Maybe that's what you mean by manual removal.
 
hate those things too. They are harmless to fish, but can really cause issues with shrimp juvies and snail babies.
 
Won't spixi snails eat planaria?
 
Ohhhh, maybe that's why my snails disappeared! I had a heck of a time with planaria a while ago, but I thought nothing of them being harmless. The tank they were in is heavily planted, so it is hard to do any gravel vaccuuming. I had been overfeeding accidentally (was new to shrimp/snails and was paranoid about them not getting enough) and cut back heavily when I saw them appear. Within 5 months, I had no more pond snails or ramshorns. I had lots of little babies, but after the planaria, I was gradually seeing fewer and fewer, and no egg sacs after a while. Do they also eat eggs? Or maybe that was because the baby snails were not growing up to take over for the snails dying of old age or getting fed to the puffer. Hmm, something to think about. Maybe I'll try breeding snails again.

Adult snails should be fine though, right? I've got 5 zebra nerites in there that are all at least nickel sized in that tank right now besides the cherry shrimp and amano shrimp. I haven't seen planaria in a few weeks, but like I said it's a heavily planted tank and they are so small.
 
Won't spixi snails eat planaria?
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I think assassin snails will eat Planaria. ;)

Yes- I'm kidding!

A few weeks back I asked about Spixi's reputation for eating small snails of other species (and their own species) and everyone that responded said their spixis did not appear to eat other snails- so putting spixis in the tank probably is safe.

Especially because ACers know how to look after snails properly and FEED them so they don't resort to shell-i-cide.

Still... with the spixi's reputation as a snail-eater... I don't know that I'd 100% trust spixis in a tank that is being used to raise baby briggs. Probably OK if fed well- but... there is always that chance that bridgesii become escargot.
 
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