Flat boi's in the fish tank

[Sweet T]

Have found these little flat worms through out a couple of my shrimp tanks recently. These jus mossy along lol

(Don't mind floating leaves, jus trimmed some plants)

Edited April 30, 2022 by Sweet T

[Guppysnail]

I cannot see if it has eyes. Not all planarian have arrow heads. Here if a planarian vs rhabdocoela as well as a picture of multiple type of planarian.  Planarians have eyes rhabdocoela do not is an easy identification but it may be neither of these flatworms. Hope that helps my eyes are bad magnifying glass will help you  

[Sweet T]

@Guppysnail I just put in a bunch of bladder snails, and trumpet snails, -to help with a separate algae problem- and the worms instantly became active and murked all the snails😐

There's three in this one..

[Guppysnail]

On 5/14/2022 at 7:50 PM, Sweet T said:

@Guppysnail I just put in a bunch of bladder snails, and trumpet snails, -to help with a separate algae problem- and the worms instantly became active and murked all the snails😐

There's three in this one..

Omg. I’ve never seen them go after snails. 

[Sweet T]

@Guppysnail Yeahhhhh.. I read that they are toxic to shrimp also?? I did just have one of my 7 shrimp die a couple days ago. Coincidence?

[Brandon p]

I don’t think that they are regular detritus worms. They look like they have triangle shaped heads. Sort like planaria, which will eat snails and shrimp. The other question is did you see them kill the snails or did you put them in and see them on the snail later?

Sorry guppy snail I didn’t read above to your comment 

[Torrey]

On 5/14/2022 at 5:50 PM, Sweet T said:

@Guppysnail I just put in a bunch of bladder snails, and trumpet snails, -to help with a separate algae problem- and the worms instantly became active and murked all the snails😐

There's three in this one..

Those look like planaria...

Let me find the article. 

I purposely breed planaria for homeschooling families to use for biology class.

I keep them with snails and amphopods, and plants. It's a fairly stable ecosystem. 

However, if I underfeed, the planaria will go after whatever they can eat. They hunt snails by following the 'snail trail' and immobilize with a toxin the planaria secrete. Typically, if there's enough food, they won't go after snails... but they will multiply like crazy.

According to a local biologist, the reasons I maintain a balance:

1. I don't siphon or gravel vac. So nothing to break the planaria into pieces to speed up reproduction (cut a planaria in half, and you have 2 ants).

2. I don't have any impellers (see above)

3. Amphopods are protein eaters, and will attack and eat planaria if they can do so without the planaria slime immobilizing them. 

[Torrey]

@Sweet T here's 2 articles on planaria. 

The first covers feeding/hunting & reproduction for researchers to keep planaria. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701699/

This second article shows how different light frequencies can inhibit growth. 

Since anything that kills planaria will damage your snails and shrimp, knowing how to use light to reduce reproduction and limit growth gives you a cushion while manually removing with traps.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31830733/

 

[QBNOD]

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!

 

[Guppysnail]

If you have a local college many biology classes pay for planarian from big companies to study. They are biologically extremely fascinating.  You may be able to just haul the entire thing there instead so that some good comes of it. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Guppysnail

[Torrey]

On 5/16/2022 at 9:00 AM, QBNOD said:

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!

 

I hear your frustration and anger.

I second Guppysnail, that donating to the college is beneficial. 

The other option is H2O2, it does kill them.

My tank I used for the Scapes from Scraps?

Several years ago, it had a planaria infestation. I was where you are now. Luckily, because it was so small, I could remove the fish, drained it, put plants in a 50/50 mix of H2O2 overnight (killed half my plants, and killed all the planaria), and ran the filter on the tank after filling the tank with straight H2O2.

It's a gorgeous tank now, and shrimp are thriving... and it ran empty for 2 years because I was so mad about the planaria. 

So I understand if you are just done, and need to walk away. 

[Solstice_Lacer]

I recently encountered planaria in one of my tanks as well. I bought some "no planaria" meds and just dosed this weekend. Shrimp were completely unaffected. I'm keeping an eye out for worms. I saw a couple when I first dosed crawling around but it's hard to tell if they were dying. It's a highly rated product so my hopes are I can control them. I'm sorry you're having problems with them.

[Guppysnail]

On 5/17/2022 at 7:18 PM, Solstice_Lacer said:

I recently encountered planaria in one of my tanks as well. I bought some "no planaria" meds and just dosed this weekend. Shrimp were completely unaffected. I'm keeping an eye out for worms. I saw a couple when I first dosed crawling around but it's hard to tell if they were dying. It's a highly rated product so my hopes are I can control them. I'm sorry you're having problems with them.

FYI I know you have snails in at least one tank. No planaria hurts snails. Their body composition is very much like that of planaria. It will take longer but it does harm and often kill them. 

[Griznatch]

 I've used No Planaria with good success. Very hard on Nerites, no issues with my shrimp and other snails. Took over 6 months before I could put the Nerites back in without them going comatose.

[Solstice_Lacer]

On 5/17/2022 at 7:25 PM, Guppysnail said:

FYI I know you have snails in at least one tank. No planaria hurts snails. Their body composition is very much like that of planaria. It will take longer but it does harm and often kill them. 

I'm aware, unfortunately both my snails already passed 😓 Idk if the planaria had anything to do with it. All my other parameters were good it seemed.

[QBNOD]

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!