Planaria all over my fry tank!

davexstumpe

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Mar 8, 2007
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Well i have these little white worms (almost looks like tiny pieces of hair) all over the glass and bottom of my tank. And after doing a search on here i've come up with planaria? I think thats right.

Its a 10 gallon tank, 84F, with GBR fry. I had well over 100 little guys 2 days ago. And now its about hald of that. I believe these guys are eating my fry!

Any ideas?
 
Not likely that they are eating your fry, they are probably dying because of the high bio load on the tank.


Here's a great article on planria http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Ali_Planaria_Worms.html

An excerpt:

These particular worms are, at times, a problem. How do they manifest? They usually become visible when:-
1. An aquarist has overfed his/her fish.
2. The aquarium gravel is not hoovered accordingly.
3. Aquarium ammonia levels have risen.

The only way you're going to stop losing fry is to give them a larger tank or multiple tanks. The article has information about getting rid of them.
 
Im not sure its the bioload. I've had over 150 Guppy fry in the same tank and they were all much bigger than the small GBR fry.

The tank has only been setup for a little over a week and a half. I have barely fed, but i haven't done a water change in 3 days, as ive been very busy and the only filter on it right now is a sponge filter. So im sure its that.

So i guess im just going to have to do 50% WCs daily for a couple weeks. Good idea?
 
What you just said says that the bioload is too high. Granted, it's from lack of maintenance rather than number of fry. 50% a day might be rough on the fry, I'd go with 25-30%.
 
what should i do about feeding?

all thewebsites say to go every other day with feeding, and feed a small ammount. But i dont know if this is such a good idea with fry? Could they handle it?
 
How much are you feeding them at a time? Remember to feed them only as much as they can eat in five minutes. The presence of the planaria would suggest overfeeding. Take the amount of food you would normally feed them and cut that amount in half. This would be better than trying to feed the fry only every other day.
 
i feed my fry twice a day without fail, and always feed them a very little amount. theyre eating more than it looks like.
 
well the problem is my fry don't seem to be eating at all. and i don't know why. so even the little ammount i put in probably just rests at the bottom.
 
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