QBNOD

@Atitagain I had considered starting a worm farm some time ago then opted for the snails since that seemed to be the lazy way to do it... until the mess got so out of hand with these snails. Now considering that option again. Unfortunately, I am very restricted to whatever I can find. I live in Kona, Hawai`i and we only have 1 Petco here + 1 Petco on the other side of the island. There are 3 other local folks that breed fish out of their homes (all 1-2 hrs away, only open very limited weird hours). I dream of having a LFS or of having less restrictions as far as what we can import via shipping (Hawai`i has lots of restrictions on what live animals can be brought in). So... I work with what I have or what I can get. Even the rams horn snails were a very convenient stowaway in the Petco shipment they received a few years back. They are technically supposed to euthanize any stowaways that they see. Thankfully, I am a regular - always there on fish receiving day then again on the day after their "one day quarantine" if there is anything I want! The fish person was able to sell me a plant that contained an "overlooked" stowaway RHSnail and the rest is history... We can't readily import lots of stuff, and what we can import, is subject to delays and inspections that often means dead on arrival. But alas, the puffers must eat! I'll look at your set-up for ideas. Thank you! Aloha!

@Odd Duck @Atitagain @mountaintoppufferkeeper @Lizzyduff My pea puffers are food snobs. Tried fasting them, tried all kinds of frozen foods (blood worms, krill, brine shrimp, etc.) & they only eat live rams horn snails or live baby brine shrimp. I have them in a 14g cube, started with 5 & now down to 3. After 7 months, I had to break down the tank today & do a heavy scrub down of everything because the dead snail bits & algae were too tough of a battle. Going to re-scape the tank now and try to find a better balance with more plants to deal with the algae situation. I can't believe how dirty these guys are! The substrate was gross. I rinsed a lot of the substrate (mix of fluval stratum, Landen aquasoil, & black aragonite) and going to start over. I find they go into hiding when the water fowls up & get much more active when I do a heavy water change (70%+). Weekly heavy water change seems to be a must for these guys. I have lots of wood in there to break up the sight lines but it makes it very tough to keep everything clean. They do love the hiding spots in between the wood. I only have a sponge filter hidden in the there but don't want to clutter the tank with HOB or other option since this is a display frameless tank in my entryway. Anybody have pea puffer food snob remedies besides starving them for several days (that hasn't been effective)? I even added 2 plenaria worms to this tank when i had an outbreak in another tank a few months back hoping they world be food for them and eat some of the detritus but the puffers ignored them and then I had to hunt down and kill the plenaria when they started to multiply before I had a bigger problem (I know... I know... I was desperate for food options for them 🤦‍♂️) I live in fear of running out of RHsnails so a lot of my other tanks look like snail breeding operations (which they essentially are) & I want my old tanks back to what they once were! I also worry about running out of BBShrimp. Never had to stress so much about feeding fish before. I was hoping live snails, BBS here & there, & frozen foods would be my strategy but it hasn't worked out at all. I love these guys but the maintenance + food issues are starting to annoy me & that defeats the point of keeping them – even though they are so rad! Thanks!

Beautiful tank... I think you might as well remove a few and do a trim on the rest. It's so nice to have full healthy plants to use elsewhere. I can't get my plants to grow this nice. Hard to get a good balance for my light schedule with a Fluval 3.0 Nano plant light in my 6.8gal betta tank without getting an algae bloom. Same problem on a 14gal pea puffer tank. My plants just look "blah". You are definitely doing something right!

And... I'm back. I ended up removing the fish and tossing the 10gal tank that had the planaria infestation I posted about earlier. University donation wasn't an option for me due to logistics where I live (remote area in Hawai`i). Last night I noticed my 20gal-L planted community display tank has an emerging planaria infestation. Not sure how they got in there. I assume I used a contaminated net or something else from the problem tank by mistake. I am not ever breaking down this tank as it is very well established and one of my favorite tanks. Going to order PanacurC and try my luck. Will update with how it goes. I hope the rams horn snails fair OK but we'll have to wait and see. I attached a terrible close-up of my sponge filter. Most of them seem confined to the sponge, but they are really all over. I may consider tossing out this filter when I treat the tank. I hate these worms!

Reading the threads on this forum after researching the heck out of this topic, I have decided to nuke my planaria infested tank and just break it down and throw everything away. It's a 10g quarantine tank that evolved into a planted tank to make snails for my pea puffers (who are absolute snobs and refuse to eat anything frozen and only like live baby brine or live rams horn snails). I only kept a couple of baby plecos and a bunch of snails with lots of plants in this tank. I suspect they hitchhiked on 2 pieces of wood I bought from the aquariums at Petco. It happens... At first, when i saw a few of them, I didn't mind (I thought this would just be free food for the plecos). But then... fish started to disappear. At this point, since the planaria showed up, my fish just vanished. So far I have lost 4 small plecos and 7 of the 8 guppies I added in the hopes that they would eat the planaria. I only ever saw one dead guppy in the bottom of the tank on my way out of the house when I was in a rush, came back home about 3 hours later and went to remove the dead body and there was no trace. That has been the case for all the fish in there that have simply vanished without a trace. I suspect the snails have been very efficient at disposing of the bodies. Regardless, I'm done. Will remove the fish that are left and throw everything else away except for the air pump and heater (plants, sponge filter, wood, substrate, even the air tubing). I don't even want to keep the tank itself. I considered dosing the tank with the planaria remedies but I am so disgusted by the whole thing and don't want to risk transferring these critters to any other tanks. I hate them!