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Hey All,
last night I couldnt sleep, so was up watching the fish. I currently have in a 5g tank, a baby white seam bristlenose pleco and some cherry shrimp growing a bit.
I have had some issues with planaria due to overfeeding.
Well last night I watched as the planaria converged in a mass and swarmed a cherry shrimp. The shrimp was dead in seconds. At that point I noticed the other 4 dead cherry shrimps, and the 3 red spots on the little pleco.
So I promptly moved the baby pleco and the remaining 5 cherry shrimp to my 10g tank.
The planaria have also killed both of the 2 small pond snails that were in there, and must have been responsible for the loss of the other baby pleco last week, which died suddenly with a strangely shaped wound on it.

So, Just a warning, keep the planaria numbers low, they can kill small creatures when in large numbers!
Ive never seen anything like it. Wish the tank had a light so I could have taken some pictures for you all.
Im sure many wont believe it. I certainly couldnt believe my own eyes.
Today I will be dosing the tank with a heavy dosage of Fenbendazole, which should kill the whole works of em right off.
planaria.


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Does this Planaria go by a more common name? I was going to look it up to see what you were talking about, but don't know where to start.

Where do you get this Fenbendazole?

I can't imagine that it was a true planaria species that did it. They have no way of killing a larger animal, even in high numbers. Their feeding orifice is a small tube on their ventral side that they use to vacuum up food. I know they're small, but could you snap a picture?

Joe Potato

I have to agree with Joe. I doubt that planaria can kill even a shrimp, let alone something like an armored pleco. The regular planarians aren't parasitic, so they have no need to attack fish.

Patty, planaria are flatworms. There is a page on them here]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planaria[/link]. They show up frequently in aquariums, and are pretty much harmless. The one in the Wikipedia link looks like a saltwater flatworm, the common freshwater ones are like [link=this.

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

These planaria...are they tiny and white?? Do they move? I have these little, squiggly, white things on the walls of my tank. They just appeared (while I was gone and someone else was feeding them) just in the last couple of days. Should I worry about them? Will they hurt my fish/tank? Should I do something to get rid of them??
I would appreciate ANY HELP!!
Leigh

Hi,
Unless you deliberately cultured these worms and freed
them in your tank, any worm in the tank indicates poor
maintenance, possibly combined with over crowding and
over feeding. The worms thrive on the sludge found in
between the grains of gravel.

You need to establish a regular maintenance schedule that
includes changing around 10-20% of the tank, weekly, and
at the same time vacuuming the gravel to pull out all
the sludge. The easiest way to be sure that your tank is
healthy, is to mentally divide the non-planted parts of the
tank into four sections and with each water change, vacuum
a section. The next week move on to another section, and
so on. That way, in a month, you have cleaned the entire
gravel bed and at the same time given each section 3 weeks
for the bacterial colonies to recover.

Water changes combined with gravel vacuuming will bring
the worms back under control and possibly eliminate them
all together.

Frank
Note... Copied from my response to another Thread on FP

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

thats correct frank,when i first started the hobby i had some of those little white worms,and once i stared regular water changes,and cleaning plus a vacume they vanished,also fishfan,as for hurting your fish i dont think they can,i remember seeing my convict babies picking them off the glass,this is how i first found the worms,and nothing happen to the babies,if they could hurt your fish,you would think that they would most certainly hurt babies,but the little cons were fine.as frank said above,just do some more ware changes and start vacuming and the worms will be gone b4 you know it

Cant be planaria, they really are harmless. It might be flukes. Some species have been known to swarm over victims, burrowing their heads into the flesh, some species, particularly those that go for the eyes can move very quickly and invade a host in seconds.In small fish this can actually cause death in as little as a day or two, although usually the host survives for months or even weeks.

Other options could include small species of leech, some are really tiny, and anchor worm, (which is not always as characteristically v -shaped as you might imagine,) often just appearing to the naked eye as a small whitish worm can kill fairly quickly if in large numbers.

There is a trematode worm , called cercariae which in a larval form (of Microphallus turgidus ) can move from snail hosts to shrimp and small fish, and in high numbers they too can kill. It is native to watercourses like in georgia US, and through to the yucatan.Shrimp farmers know them well, although their presence is perhaps less well known in the aquarium hobby. In fact snails and shrimp are the first and second stage hosts respectively, the worm itself intending to have a final destination of shrimp eating mammals and fish. They might just be visible to the naked eye,in the cercariae stage they have small tails , and given the symptomology of what you describe, a possible if not likely candidate for a source of infection. Anything intended as a treatment for roundworm will most likely kill them. Like planaria they are capable of scavenging until they find a decent host, and often wait in that form scavanging on dead material until large enough to make a move on hardier fare.

Its not that planaria kill, its that these little suckers might look like planaria to those without decent magnification!

It seems more than coincidence that you have this problem, and all of the 3 stage hosts required for the infection, snails, shrimp, and fish were present , and all were slaughtered. But yes the others were right too, if there wasnt spare gunge in the tank for them to scavenge on the problem might not have arisen, so make sure the cleaning regime is kicked into a different league from what you are used to doing. Since the cysts of this little bugger are hard to kill it might be worth ditching rocks , bogwood and gravel and filter media and or heating it in the oven to make sure the remaining cysts have been destroyed even after a fenbendazole treatment.

The worms damage the renal system very quicky once inside the host and liver tissue is a favourite target, their burrowing activity alone would be enough to kill small fish and shrimp, but most deaths will occur from hepatic damage, and in such circumstances you can expect reactions like osmotic failure, failure of the immune system and all the major symptoms associated with dropsy. The deaths of all species in rapid succession may be coincidental, and all may have been infected for weeks or even months. As parasite numbers rose all snails fish and shrimp may have weakened and died as the parasite burden increased.


Nail those little suckers, and since mammalian hosts are just as acceptable to this worm for the final stage, well, you might wanna worm yourself and your family too!

As always, I wish you good luck! Hope this helps.

If this aquarium IS infested with cercariae, then be advised that this could be a MEDICALLY SIGNIFICANT issue for you, the aquarist too!

One of the nastiest diseases in the Third World, namely River Blindness, is causes by Onchocerca volvulus, a parasitic worm transmitted by the bite of a fly in Africa (the fly has an aquatic larval stage). Cercariae of any kind should be regarded as a potential health hazard - another cercarian disease that is a major killer in Africa is Schistosomiasis, a cercarian disease that infects humans who stray into infested waters (these parasites can penetrate human skin) and which uses freshwater snails as intermediate hosts.

Basically, if your creature looks like this under the microscope, then take SWIFT action. Keep specimens for identification by a specialist invertebrate zoologist who is working in the field of cercariae, destroy the remainder on sight (if necessary strip the tank and carpet bomb it with suitably lethal chemicals), then seek expert medical advice about the possible risks that your infestation might have for YOU. Do NOT take chances here - those cercarians that are known to be medically significant in Man cause serious and often fatal diseases, and those that don't kill can leave the victim incapacitated by way of blindness, neurological damage (it's possible to end up tetraplegic after a Schistosoma mansoni or Schistosoma japonicum infection). You are HIGHLY advised to seek professional assistance in identifying your potential cercarians, firstly in order to eliminate them as a potential human health risk, and secondly, if they DO belong to a species that is medically significant in humans, to provide your doctor with the specialist knowledge required to deal with this. Which will probably involve a specialist course of drugs such as Mectizan (otherwise known as Ivermectin) or Praziquantel.

This is the one thing that worries me enormously about certain tropical snail species - they can harbour all kinds of unpleasant surprises.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Ive gotta agree with cal there,its worth checking out. In freshwater systems I have to agree on the snail front too.

I know people love snails, but they along with various nematode worms and others are a primary first stage host for all sorts of serious parasites. In the average aquarium its just not worth the risk of keeping them for the most part, since their presence instigates a progression of infection that can indeed be completed, and restarted, meaning an almost unending cycle of reinfection , and potentially massive parasite burden for your fish.

Snails raised from eggs in captive conditions might be a safer way of doing things, since few parasites infect the snail eggs themselves. Indeed for some people with a lot of fish to lose, who simply must have snails, either because they love them or are a required part of your fish's diet, it might be worth housing the original snails you procure seperately, waiting for the eggs, (lets be honest most snails breed quickly) and seperating the eggs from the parents before hatching.

Then potentially you may wish to keep this generation as the breeding stock, and dispose of the adults. Buying a snail you dont know the origin of, and dumping it into your tank always brings with it significant parasite risks. Many snails in the hobby are raised inoutdoor conditions or indeed collected from wild situations. Its pretty odds on pretty much all of such snails will have a parasite burden. Its through such creatures that nearly all others are affected.

The marine situation is slightly different basically because there are always parasite risks with living rock and the myriad of invertabrates anyway, to the point that you might as well stop worrying about it, and treat infections when they happen, but in freshwater you have the option to eliminate a major parasite source, and its of great advantage to the freshwater hobbyist to take that option of eliminating a needless source of infection.

If you keep a complete spectrum of creatures and like the complete ecostystem feel youmust always be aware of, and prepare for the risks. That includes your health too, because as cal so rightly points out, your not always off the menu. Gravel cleaning by starting the syphon with your mouth anyone?

Itll keep you slim lol.How many of us have blamed gastroenteritis on a saturday night curry I wonder?

In fact I sit here wondering cal old buddy, are our bellies down to gaseous bacterial distention,and parasite loads, or is it the beer?